MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2008 Copyright © 2008 The New York Times

Supplemento al numeroodierno de la Repubblica

Sped. abb. postale art. 1legge 46/04 del 27/02/2004 — Roma

A Rising Tide of Repression

Reporterscovering the tworemainingDemo-crats,HillaryClintonandBarackObama,havealreadyresorted to traditionalanalysisof style—fashionchoices,mannerof speaking,eventhewaythey laugh.Yet, according todesignexperts,

thecandidateshave leftaclearblueprintof theirpersonal style—perhapsevenawindowinto theirsouls—throughtheirWebsites.The differences between hill-

aryclinton.com and barackobama.com can be summed up this way: Barack Obama is a Mac, and Hillary Clinton is a PC.That is, Mr. Obama’s site is more harmonious,

with plenty of white space and a soft blue palette. Its task bar is reminiscent of the one used at Apple’s iTunes site. It signals in myriad ways that it was de-signed for a younger, tech-savvy audience. “With Obama’s site, all the features and elements

are seamlessly integrated, just like the experience of using a program on a Macintosh computer,’’ said Alice Twemlow, chairwoman of the graduate pro-gram in design criticism at the School of Visual Arts in New York (who is a Mac user).Incontrast tobarackobama.com,Mrs.Clinton’s

siteusesamore traditional colorschemeofdarkblue,

hassharper linesdividingcontentandemploysnon-descript iconsnext to itsbuttons forvolunteering.“Hillary’s is way more hectic, it’s got all these,

what look like parody ads,’’ said Ms. Twemlow.But Emily Chang, the cofounder of Ideacodes, a

Web designing and consulting firm, detected consis-tent messages: “His site is more youthful and hers more regal.’’JasonSantaMaria, creativedirectorofHappyCog

Studios, aWebsitedesigner,praisedbaracko-bama.comforhaving“thiswelcomingquality,’’ butheaddedthat itwas“ethereal,vaporousandsomeonecouldconstrue itasnebulous.”The “hectic” site that the Clinton cam-

paign is offering could actually be quite strategic. After all, Mrs. Clinton repeatedly emphasizes how hard she will work for the average American “starting on Day 1.’’ If she comes across as energetic online, that may simply be her intention. Mr. Obama’s site is almost universally

praised though. Even Martin Avila, the gen-eral manager of the company responsible for

the Republican Ron Paul’s Web site, said simply, “Barack’s site is amazing.’’ But the compliments clearly have a downside. While Apple’s ad campaign maligns the PC by

using an annoying man in a plain suit as its personi-fication, it is not clear that aligning with the trendy Mac aesthetic is good politics. The iPod may be a dominant music player, but the Mac is still a niche computer. It might carry an anti-conformist state like Vermont, but PC, no doubt, would win a national election by historic proportions.

If Candidates Were Computers, Democrats Evoke Mac-PC Divide

The UnmakingOf a TechnophobeA former Luddite

learns the

advantages of

being an early

adopter.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY VI

YugonostalgiaFromSlovenia to Serbia, longing

for the days of a unitedYugoslavia

and a dictator named Tito.

WORLD TRENDS III

By C. J. CHIVERS

KIEV, Ukraine — Late in the af-ternoon of January 24, an American military plane landed in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, carrying Admiral William J. Fallon, the com-mander of the United States Central Command.Admiral Fallon, who oversees the

wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, had arrived for an introductory meet-ing with the Uzbek president, Islam Karimov, one of the post-Soviet world’s durable strongmen.Relations with the United States

have been largely frozen since 2005, when Uzbekistan, bristling under American censure for a bloody crackdown against anti-government demonstrators, evicted the Pentagon from an air base that had been used to support the war in Afghanistan.

Admiral Fallon said he had no grand plan for Uzbekistan. He was not seeking restored access to the air base. His visit, he said by telephone, marked a renewal of dialogue and the possibility of warmer relations. It actually marked more than that.

It was the latest signal of an unde-clared shift in Washington’s foreign policy across the struggling democ-racies and outright dictatorships that lie to Moscow’s southeast, from the Caspian Sea to China’s borders. In the last three years in these

former domains of the Kremlin, the exuberant vision of nurturing plu-ralistic societies and governments responsive to popular will — enunci-ated by President Bush’s public calls for democratization — has met so

NEWS ANALYSIS

Promoting DemocracyRecedes From U.S. Agenda

JOSEPH SYWENKY/REDUX, FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Authoritarian rulers have shown resiliency despite calls for open societies. In 2005, police officers dispersed anti-government demonstrators in Azerbaijan.

By HOWARD W. FRENCH

WUHAN,China—Asan18-year-old student with an interest in the Inter-net, Zhu Nan had been wanting to say something about the country’s perva-sive online censorship system, widely known here as the Great Firewall.When China’s censors began block-

ing access to the popular photo-shar-ingsiteFlickr,Mr.Zhu felt themoment hadcome.Writingonhisblog lastyear, the student, who is now a freshman at auniversity in thiscity,questioned the rationale for Internet restrictions, and in subsequent posts, began passing along tips on how to evade them. “Officials in our country claimed

that Internet censorship is done ac-cording to the law,’’ Mr. Zhu wrote. “If so, why not let people know about this legal project, and why, instead,

ban the Web sites that publicize and examine those legalpolicies?Ifyou’re determinedtodothis,youshouldn’tbe afraid of criticism.’’ Mr. Zhu’s obscure blog post and his

subsequent activism is a small part ofwhat many here regard as an impor-tantmoment.Inrecentmonths,China’scensors have tightened controls overthe Internet, often blacking out sitesthat had no discernible political con-tent. In theprocess, theyhave fosteredabacklash.

Humanrightsadvocatessaythegov-ernmenthasbeenbroadeningitscrack-downonsignsofdissentastheOlympicGames inBeijingdrawnear.A growing number of Internet users

are becoming increasingly resentfulof restrictions on a wide range of Websites, including Flickr, YouTube, Wiki-pedia,MySpace(sometimes),Blogspotand other sites that the public sees assources of harmless diversion or infor-

Online RebelsIn China PierceGreat Firewall

ELIZABETH DALZIEL/ASSOCIATED PRESS

A sign posted

at the entrance

of an Internet cafe in Beijing

reads: ‘‘Please

come with

me because

you published materials to

harm the unity

of the nation.’’

Continued on Page IV Continued on Page IV

ILLUSTRATION FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

ESSAY

NOAM

COHEN

Repubblica NewYork

O P I N I O N & C O M M E N TA R Y

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BARRY BLITT

State SecretsAnd Human Rights

Madness in KenyaIt is far too easy to become inured to

bad news from Africa, a continent of great promise and peril. Kenya’s rampage of ethnically driven killings that has gone on since the end of last year is especially sick-ening and attention-grabbing because of how much hope the world had for Kenya’s democracy and economic revival — and how fast the country has descended into madness.

The vicious tribal violence — condemned by one American official as “ethnic cleans-ing” — has spread with stunning speed since late December when Kenya’s elec-toral commission hastily handed a second term to President Mwai Kibaki, despite independent reports of glaring voting ir-regularities. The toll is now more than 800 Kenyans dead, 70,000 driven from their homes and thousands more fled to neigh-boring countries. The economy is para-lyzed.

Instead of trying to calm their support-ers and negotiate a political solution, Mr. Kibaki and his principal challenger, Raila Odinga, have called for peace, and then in-cited more killing, accusing each other of orchestrating the mayhem.

Mr. Kibaki should renounce his re-

election — the electoral commission’s chairman said he was pressured into an early declaration. Mr. Odinga and he must quickly agree on some reasonable com-promise, a rerun of the vote or a power-sharing agreement. Together they have to urgently address constitutional and land reform issues that are at the heart of deep-seated grievances among Kenya’s ethnic groups, including Mr. Kibaki’s long-dominant Kikuyu group, and Mr. Odinga’s smaller, but politically impor-tant Luo tribe.

We are encouraged that United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon decided to personally intervene and that his chief mediator, Kofi Annan, the former secre-tary general, was able to announce on February 1 an agreement on a framework for talks that could resolve the crisis. Ma-jor countries, including the United States, which provides Kenya with more than $600 million in aid per year, need to bring a lot more pressure on both Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga to ensure that that happens. If reason can’t persuade them to reconcile, then sanctions and a suspension of nonhu-manitarian assistance must be seriously considered.

Eating Our Own Pollution

E D I T O R I A L S O F T H E T I M E S

President Bush’s excesses in the name of fighting terrorism are numerous. To avoid accountability, his administration has re-peatedly sought early dismissal of lawsuits that might finally expose government mis-conduct, brandishing flimsy claims that going forward would put national security secrets at risk.

The courts have been far too willing to go along. In cases involving serious alle-gations of kidnapping, torture and unlaw-ful domestic eavesdropping, judges have blocked plaintiffs from pursuing their claims without taking a hard look at the government’s basis for invoking the so-called state secrets privilege: its insistence that revealing certain documents or other evidence would endanger the nation’s se-curity.

As a result, victims of serious abuse have been denied justice, fundamental rights have been violated and the constitutional system of checks and balances has been grievously undermined.

Congress — which has allowed itself to be bullied on national security issues for far too long — may now be ready to push back. The House and Senate are develop-ing legislation that would give victims fair access to the courts and make it harder for the government to hide illegal or embar-rassing conduct behind such unsupported claims.

Last month, Senator Edward Kennedy,

the Massachusetts Democrat, and Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, jointly introduced the State Secrets Pro-tection Act. The measure would require judges to examine the actual documents or other evidence for which the state secrets privilege is invoked, rather than relying on government affidavits asserting that the evidence is too sensitive to be publicly disclosed.

To allow cases to go forward, the bill gives judges the authority to order the gov-ernment to provide unclassified or redact-ed substitutes. It also gives those making claims against the government a chance to make a preliminary case using evidence that they have gathered on their own.

In October, the Supreme Court declined to take up the case of Khaled el-Masri, an innocent German citizen of Lebanese de-scent who was kidnapped, detained and tortured in a secret overseas prison as part of the administration’s extraordi-nary rendition program. Lower federal courts had dismissed Mr. Masri’s civil lawsuit, reflexively bowing to the admin-istration’s claim that proceeding would compromise national security.

Since the Supreme Court has abdicated its responsibility, Congress must now act. Too many laws have been violated, and too many Americans and others have been harmed under a phony claim of national security.

Many New Yorkers have come to love the convenience, taste and aesthetic appeal of sushi. But as The New York Times report-ed after testing tuna from 20 Manhattan stores and restaurants, sushi made from bluefin tuna may contain unacceptable lev-

els of mercury, which acts as a neurotoxin. Every piece of that tuna, glistening on its bed of rice, is a report on the worrisome state of the oceans.

Bluefin tuna contain higher levels of mercury than other species of tuna be-cause they live longer and, like humans, ac-cumulate more mercury in their body tis-sues. The trouble for sushi-lovers is that it is very hard to tell what kind of tuna you’re getting, whether you’re dining at an exclu-sive restaurant or picking up some sushi at the market on the way home from work.

The owners of the establishments whose tuna was tested said they would talk to their suppliers, and the suppliers will no doubt talk to their fishermen. For all this talk, no one is going to be able to find a mature blue-fin tuna that is mercury-free, at least not until the oceans are mercury-free.

It’s easy enough to understand the trans-fer of mercury from fish to diner. What is harder to keep in mind is how mercury is transferred from the environment to the fish themselves.

Though some mercury in the atmosphere occurs naturally, roughly two-thirds is pro-duced by industrial sources — especially coal-burning power plants. It settles into the water in a form called methylmercury, is ab-sorbed by bacteria and then makes its way up to the very top of the food chain — to hu-mans. It is a reminder of how interconnected all life on earth really is. The mercury that worries us in the tuna we eat is the very resi-due of the way we live. The only way to re-duce the one is to improve the other.

Before John F. Kennedy was a president, a legend, a myth and a poltergeist stalking America’s 2008 campaign, he was an upstart con-tender seen as a risky bet for the Democratic nomination in 1960.

Kennedy was judged “an ambi-tious but superficial playboy” by his liberal peers, according to his biographer Robert Dallek. “He nev-er said a word of importance in the Senate, and he never did a thing,” in the authoritative estimation of the Senate’s master, Lyndon Johnson. Adlai Stevenson, who was the Dem-ocratic presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956, didn’t much like Kennedy, and neither did Harry Truman, who instead supported Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri.

J. F. K. had few policy prescriptions beyond the standard Democratic agenda (a higher minimum wage, “comprehensive housing legisla-tion’’). As his speechwriter Richard Goodwin recalled in his riveting 1988 memoir “Remembering America,” Kennedy’s main task was to prove his political viability. He had to persuade his party that he was not a wealthy dilettante and not “too young, too inexperienced and, above all, too Catholic” to be president.

How did the fairy-tale prince from Camelot vanquish a field of candidates led by the longtime lib-eral warrior Hubert Humphrey? It wasn’t ideas. It certainly wasn’t experience. It wasn’t even the cha-risma that Kennedy would show in that fall’s televised duels with Rich-ard Nixon.

Looking back almost 30 years later, Mr. Goodwin summed it up this way: “He had to touch the secret fears and ambivalent longings of the Ameri-can heart, divine and speak to the desires of a swiftly changing nation — his message grounded on his own intuition of some vague and spread-ing desire for national renewal.”

In other words, Kennedy needed two things. He needed poetry, and he needed a country with some de-sire, however vague, for change.

Mr. Goodwin and his fellow speechwriter Ted Sorensen helped with the poetry. Still, the placid America of 1960 was not obviously in the market for change. The outgoing president, Eisenhower, was popular. A glossy suburban boom was under way. The Red Panic of the McCarthy years was in temporary remission.

But Kennedy’s intuition was right. America’s boundless self-confidence was being rattled: the surprise Sovi-et technological triumph of Sputnik; anti-American riots in even friendly non-Communist countries; the ar-rest of Martin Luther King Jr. at an all-white restaurant in Atlanta; the inexorable national shift from man-ufacturing to service-sector jobs. Kennedy bet his campaign on, as he put it, “the single assumption that the American people are uneasy at the present drift in our national course’’ and “that they have the will and strength to start the United States moving again.”

For all the Barack Obama-J. F. K. comparisons, what has often been forgotten is that Mr. Obama’s weak-nesses resemble Kennedy’s at least as much as his strengths. But to compensate for those shortcom-ings, he gets an extra benefit that J. F. K. lacked in 1960. There’s noth-ing vague about the public’s desire for national renewal in 2008, with a reviled incumbent in the White House and only 19 percent of the population finding the country on the right track, according to the last Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll. America is screaming for change.

Either of the two Democratic con-tenders will swing the pendulum. Their marginal policy differences notwithstanding, they are both orthodox liberals. The overrid-ing question they face, as defined by both contenders, is this: Which brand of change is more likely, in Kennedy’s phrase, to get America moving again?

Lost in the fuss over Teddy and Caroline Kennedy’s endorsement of Mr. Obama was the parallel en-dorsement of Hillary Clinton by three of Robert Kennedy’s children. In a Los Angeles Times column, they answered this paramount question as many Clinton supporters do (and as many John Edwards support-

ers also did). The “loftiest poetry’’ won’t solve America’s crises, they wrote. Change can be achieved only by a president “willing to engage in a fistfight.’’

That both Clintons are capable of fistfighting is beyond doubt, at least on their own behalf in a campaign. But Mrs. Clinton isn’t always a fist-fighter when governing. There’s a reason why Robert Kennedy’s chil-dren buried the Iraq war in a single clause (and never used the word Iraq) deep in their endorsement. They know that their uncle Teddy, unlike Mrs. Clinton, raised his fists to lead the Senate fight against the Iraq misadventure at the start. They know too that less than six months after the “Mission Accomplished’’ banner was flown, Senator Kennedy called the war “a fraud’’ and voted against pouring more money into it. Senator Clinton raised a hand, not a fist, to vote aye.

In what she advertises as 35 years of fighting for Americans, Mrs. Clin-ton can point to some battles won. But many of them were political campaigns for Bill Clinton: seven even before his 1992 presidential run. The fistfighting required if she is president may also often be political. As Mrs. Clinton herself says, she has been in marathon combat against the Republican at-tack machine. Its antipathy will be increased exponentially by the co-

president who would return to the White House with her on Day One.

It’s legitimate to wonder whether sweeping policy change can be ac-complished on that polarized a battlefield. A Clinton presidency may end up a Democratic mirror image of Karl Rove’s truculent style of G.O.P. governance: a 50 percent plus 1 majority. Seven years on, that formula has accomplished little for the United States beyond extending and compounding the mistake of in-vading Iraq.

The main criticism of Mr. Obama remains that he preaches the im-portance of unity. He is all lofty po-etry and no action, so obsessed with transcending partisanship that he can be easily taken advantage of. Implicit in this criticism is a false choice — that voters have to choose between his pretty words on one hand and Mrs. Clinton’s combative incrementalism on the other.

There’s a third possibility, of course: A poetically gifted presi-dent might be able to bring about change without relying on fistfight-ing as his primary modus operandi. Mr. Obama argues that if he can bring some Republicans along, he can achieve changes larger than the microinitiatives that have been

a hallmark of Clintonism. He also suggests, in his most explicit policy invocation of J. F. K., that he can en-list the young en masse in a push for change.

His critics argue back that he is a naïve weakling who will give away the store. They have mocked him for offering to hold health-care ne-gotiations so transparent (and pre-sumably feckless) that they can be broadcast on C-Span. Obama sup-porters point out that Mrs. Clinton’s behind-closed-doors 1993 health-care task force was a fiasco.

A better argument might be that transparency could help reveal the special-interest players hiding in Washington’s crevices. You’d never know from Mrs. Clinton’s criticisms of subprime lenders that one of the most notorious, Countrywide, was a client as recently as October of Bur-son-Marsteller, the public relations giant where her chief strategist, Mark Penn, is the sitting chief ex-ecutive. Other high-level operatives in her campaign belong to Dewey Square Group, a company that just last year provided lobbying services for Countrywide.

The question about Mr. Obama, of course, is whether he is tough enough to stand up to those in Wash-ington who oppose real reform, whether Republicans or special-in-terest advocates like, say, Mr. Penn. That is still an open question, though Mr. Obama has now started to toughen his critique of the Clintons. By framing that debate as a choice between the future and the past, he is revisiting the J. F. K. playbook.

What we also know is that, un-like Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama is not hesitant to take on John McCain, who appears headed for the Repub-lican nomination. He has twice trig-gered the McCain temper, in spats over ethics reform in 2006 and Mr. McCain’s Baghdad market photo-opportunity last year. In a recent Democratic debate, Mr. Obama led an attack on Mr. McCain twice before Mrs. Clinton followed with a wan echo.

All that’s certain is that the poll-sters and pundits have so far got-ten almost everything wrong. Mr. McCain’s campaign, once declared dead, is being called one of the great-est political comebacks ever. Mrs. Clinton has gone from invincible to near-death to near-invincible again. Mr. Obama was at first not black enough to sweep black votes and then too black to get a sizable white vote in South Carolina.

Richard Goodwin knew in 1960 that all it took was “a single signifi-cant failure” by Kennedy or “an act of political daring” by his opponents for his man to lose — especially in the general election, where he faced the vastly more experienced Nixon, the designated heir of a popular president. That’s as good a snapshot as any of where we are right now, while we wait for the voters to de-cide if they will take what Mrs. Clin-ton correctly describes as a “leap of faith” and follow another upstart on to a new frontier.

FRANK RICH

Obama in Camelot

What J.F.K. can tell us about Obama’s strengths and weaknesses.

W O R L D T R E N D S

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2008 III

’06’01

200

400

600

4

8

G.D.P. OFBRAZIL,ARGENTINA

In billions(Year 2000U.S. dollars)

Percent change.G.D.P. GROWTH

’06’02

’02

’06’06’01

ARGENTINABRAZIL

ARGENTINA

–10.9%

BRAZIL

THE NEW YORK TIMES

BRAZIL

ARGENTINA

COL.

PERU

BOL.

VEN.

CHILE

URUGUAY

PARA.

ECU.

PacificOcean

AtlanticOcean

Buenos Aires

São Paulo

Sources: Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean; Eurasia Group

Rivals and Friends

NEWS ANALYSIS

Argentina Sees Brazil’s Bright Future, and Envies It

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

RIO DE JANEIRO — Early in the last century, Argentina was one of the world’s 10 richest coun-tries. Its fabled beef and other farm exports were building an industrial economy. In 1928, it had more cars than France and more telephone lines than Japan. The dream of its Spanish founders — to transform a wild land tucked near the bottom of the world into a great country of European cul-ture and education inhabited by white-skinned people — was coming true.

But those days are deep in the past. As the Argentine author Tomás Eloy Martínez wrote in “Requiem for a Lost Country,’’ a nation once obsessed with its “greatness’’ is “obsessed by the fear of being thrown into irrelevance. ’’ Mr. Mar-tínez wrote those words in 1993, before a crush-ing economic crisis in late 2001. In its aftermath, crime-filled slums sprang up and the country’s currency lost two-thirds of its value. Today, there are beggars in the streets of Buenos Aires; wealthy neighborhoods fall prey to thieves and crack-cocaine addicts.

For many prideful Argentines, the hardest thing to accept has been the inexorable rise of their much-larger neighbor and perennial rival, Brazil.

That rise, in the works for decades, was en-hanced by the discovery of a huge oil field off Brazil’s coast last fall, followed by a natural gas discovery last month just as large.

And that has deepened Argentine feelings of nostalgia and introspection. Over the course of two generations, they reacted to Brazil’s rise first with denial, then resignation, then respect. Now, many seem to be arriving at the most humbling feeling of all: a desire to emulate the nation they had thought was something less than their own.

Brazil has always been seen from Buenos Aires as a wild place that was late to abolish slavery, and whose fusion of African and Latin American vital-ity was no match for Argentina’s homogeneity and European sophistication.

In the last 50 years, Brazil, like Argentina, suf-fered through economic crises, military dictator-

ship and political corruption before attaining stable democracy. But it also found a path to dis-placing Argentina as the continent’s economic gi-ant. And since the Tupi oil field announcement in November, Buenos Aires’ newspapers have been dwelling on how far ahead Brazil has surged.

“Is it possible, still, to emulate Brazil?’’ asked a headline over a column by Mariano Grondona in La Nación, a leading daily newspaper in Buenos

Aires. “For the generation of our parents it was offen-

sive for us to be compared with Brazil,’’ he wrote in December. Even in the 1960s, when Brazil’s economy grew by 10 percent a year, Argentines consoled themselves with thoughts of their high-er per capita income. True, production levels had reached par, but Brazil’s population was more than three times as big.

But now, Mr. Grondona wrote, “my generation has seen, in contrast, how Brazil has pulled away from us.’’

Part of Argentina’s enthusiasm for cooperation stems from the welcoming stance that Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has taken. Shortly after the Tupi announcement, he asked Petrobras, the Brazilian national oil company, to help explore for oil in Argentine waters. And last year, Argentina and Brazil carried out $24.8 billion in trade with each other, a record amount.

Argentines realize they have made mistakes in the past. While they were pegging their peso to the dollar and rapidly privatizing industries in the 1990s, Brazil was betting early on sugar-

cane-based ethanol, creating a huge industry well suited to times of $100-a-barrel oil.

And Brazil was making itself the world’s larg-est beef exporter. By contrast, Argentina, which in the 1960s controlled 24 percent of global meat exports, saw its protectionist rules cut its share to 4 percent by 2000, according to Dante Sica, director of Abeceb.com, a Buenos Aires economic consulting firm.

In the last five years, Argentina has rebounded somewhat from its low point in 2002, when more than half its people fell under the poverty line. But the 20 percent now in poverty are still far from the 1975 level of less than 7 percent.

But there is a sense that any new alliance won’t keep Argentina and Brazil from being forever intertwined, and not just economically. Their storied soccer rivalry, for example, was appar-ently on Mr. da Silva’s mind when he announced in Geneva in October that Brazil would be the site of the 2014 soccer World Cup.

Beaming, he joked that Brazil would hold an event so good “that not even Argentina could find fault.’’

REUTERS

Argentina, now led by the wife of Nestor Kirchner, left, sees Brazil as a model of economic success. It is seeking more cooperation with Brazil and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

By DAN BILEFSKY

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia — This spring, Bostjan Troha and 50 of his friends from across the for-mer Yugoslavia plan to celebrate the official 116th birthday of the former dictator Josip Broz Tito with a pilgrimage in boxy Yugoslav-era Fico cars to Tito’s Croatian birthplace and his marble tomb in Belgrade.

To mark the occasion, Mr. Troha has hired a Tito impersonator and dozens of child actors, who will wear Yugoslav partisan berets, wave Yugoslav

flags and applaud enthusiastically after the imper-sonator’s address. The revelers will down shots of Slivovitz, the Serbian national drink, and dance to the lurching melodies of Yugoslav folk music along the 579-kilometer route.

His group of pilgrims will be modest compared with the 20,000 from the former Yugoslavia’s six republics — Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia and the Republic of Macedonia — who traveled daily to the tomb dur-ing Communist times after Tito’s death in 1980.

But sociologists here say it reflects a trend across the Balkans they call Yugonostalgia, in which young and old yearn for the past — even an authoritarian one — as they struggle with a legacy of wars, economic hardship and the grim reality of living in small countries the world often seems to have forgotten.

“I miss Yugoslavia,’’ said Mr. Troha, 33, a Slo-vene entrepreneur, from a warehouse crammed with his collection of memorabilia, including por-traits of Tito, Serbian dolls and 50-year-old bottles of Cockta, the Yugoslav Coca-Cola. “We didn’t have anything, but we had everything.’’

Nearly 5,000 Slovenian youths made a pilgrim-age to Belgrade, the former Yugoslavia’s capital, to celebrate the New Year. Cross-border invest-ment among the former Yugoslavia republics has seldom been higher. The “.yu” Internet domain

name remains popular on Web sites. Croats have been voting for Serbian songs during the Eurovision Song Contest. Basketball, a unifying pas-sion in the former Yugoslavia, is played in a league that includes teams from across the region.

All the while, Tito’s image is still used to sell everything from comput-ers to beer.

Critics of Yugonostalgia say it is driven by a dangerous and anachro-nistic fringe of crybabies who crave the social safety net of the Commu-nist era and the cult of personality of Tito while ignoring the poverty, the nationalism and 1,000 percent infla-tion of the 1990s, and the political repression and the censorship.

“I am puzzled by this nostalgia,’’ said Dimitrij Rupel, Slovenia’s for-eign minister. “People say it was not so bad, that socialism was more hu-man. But everyone was egalitarian in the former Yugoslavia because ev-

eryone was poor. Yugoslavia was a dictatorship.’’ Peter Lovsin, the lead singer of a punk band in

the former Yugoslavia who also founded a best-selling sex magazine in the late 1980s, said that Yugonostalgia was an outgrowth of the former Yu-goslavia’s mix of laziness and relative liberalism.

“In Yugoslavia, people had fun. It was a system for lazy people; if you were good or bad, you still got paid,” he said. “Now, everything is about money, and this is not good for small people.’’

For others, being Yugonostalgic means going back to a time of multicultural co-existence be-fore Yugoslavia collapsed, before the autocracy of Slobodan Milosevic and before the Balkan wars of the 1990s in which at least 125,000 people died. “Yugonostalgia expresses the pain of a severed limb that is no longer there,’’ said Ales Debeljak, a prominent Slovene cultural critic.

LJUBLJANA JOURNAL

Longing for the Days of Tito And a United Yugoslavia

ANDREW TESTA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Tito may have been a dictator, but some admire him for uniting the six republics of the former Yugoslavia.

WOR LD TR ENDS

IV MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2008

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mation. The resentment has inspired awave of increasingly determined socialresistanceofakindthat isuncommoninChina.Thisresistance is takingmanyforms,

fromlawsuitsbyInternetusersagainst government-owned service providers, claiming that the blocking of sites is il-legal, to a growing network of software writers who develop code aimed at overcoming the restrictions. “I had had an impression that some

kind of mechanism controls the Inter-net in China, but I had no idea about the GreatFirewall,’’ saidPanLiang,awrit-

erof children’s literatureandaWebsite operator who first learned the extent of the controls after a friend’s blog was blocked.“Iwasreallyannoyedat first,’’ Mr.Pansaid. “Thenthe17thPartyCon-gresscame,andIreceivedanorderthat my Web site, which is about children’s literature, had to close its message board. It made me even angrier.’’Like others, Mr. Pan used his Web

page to post solutions for overcoming the restrictions to some banned sites, and then he used a historical allusion to mock his country’s censorship system. “Many people don’t know that 300

years after Emperor Kangxi ordered anendtoconstructionof theGreatWall, our great republic has built an invisible great wall,’’ he wrote. “Can blocking really work? Kangxi knew the Great

Wall was a huge lie: just think how many soldiers are needed to guard those thousands of miles.’’ A 17-year-old blogger from

Guangdong Province who posted instructions on how to get to YouTube, overcoming the firewall’s restrictions, was no less philosophical. “I don’t know if it’s better to speak out or keep silent, but if everyone keeps silent, the truth will be buried,’’ wrote the girl, who uses the online name Ruyue. “I don’t want to be silent, even if everyone else shuts up.’’Others have taken more direct ac-

tion. One such person is Du Dongjing, 38, an information technologyengineer inShanghaiwhosuedabranchofChina Telecom for contract violation because

of the service provider’s unacknowl-edged restrictions on Web content. In this case what initially angered Mr. Du was the surprise blocking of his own business Web site last February. The sitemarketspersonal financesoftware, andhadnoeditorialcontentofanykind. His lawsuit was rejected by a Shanghai court in October, but the case has been heard inappeal. “Ibelieve thatwith the helpof today’s Internet, themoodof the

public, I can win this case,” he said. “I can even make a contribution to im-proving Chinese democracy.’’Yuan Mingli, who created an anti-

GreatFirewallevasiongroupbecauseofhis love forWikipedia, said the govern-ment was already at work on new gen-erations of Internet technology aimedat insulating Chinese users even morefrom the rest of world. But he predictedits failure.“That’s impossible, fundamentally,

becausepeople’sheartshavechanged,’’he said, adding that the system would“eventually break down preciselybecause China cannot be completelydisconnected to the outside world any-more.’’

many obstacles that it has been reca-librated. Throughout the region, jour-nalists and opposition figures have been harassed, threatened, beaten, imprisoned and sometimes killed. American policy has accepted less ambitious goals.Democracy promotion is not gone.

But it has taken its place in a wider portfolio of interests. These include access to oil and gas, improving trade and transportation infrastructure and expanding military, counter-nar-cotic and counter-terror cooperation — all informed by a sense that in the competition with Russia and China for regional influence, the United States has lost ground. Three years ago, street demonstra-

tions had forced exhausted govern-ments from power in Georgia and Ukraine, and the new governments were vowing to embrace the West. In February 2005, Mr. Bush spoke as if one of his principal aims was to res-cue repressed populations and help them choose their own course. “The ultimate goal,” Mr. Bush said, was “ending tyranny in our world.” Weeks later, demonstrators in

Kyrgyzstan chased President Askar Akayev over the border, the after-math of yet another rigged election. Popular discontent seemed on the rise. Except that it was already over. Mr.

Akayev’s departure was the last act of a revolutionary phenomenon that

had only just found its name. Two months after Mr. Akayev fled,

in May 2005, a prison break by in-mates who said they had been falsely tried by Uzbek authorities triggered an anti-government demonstration in the Uzbek city of Andijon. “Free-dom!” the crowd chanted.Uzbek soldiers struck back before

nightfall, dispersing the demonstra-tors with machine-gun fire. At least several hundred unarmed people were killed, survivors said. The West condemned the violence.

But isolation weakened Mr. Kari-mov only to a degree. He blocked independent investigation of his government’s conduct and evicted the United States military. He also tightened relations with China and the Kremlin, his former patron. Democratization in the region had

stalled. Inoil-richAzerbaijan, thegovern-

mentofPresidentIlhamH.Aliyev,whoindependentobserversandWesterngovernmentssayhasneverpresidedoveracleanelection, falsified thepar-liamentarycontest inNovember2005.

Heusedriotpolicewithclubsandwa-tercannonstodisperseprotesters.The State Department briefly

scolded Mr. Aliyev. But in 2006, when the White House invited Mr. Aliyev to meet Mr. Bush, the signals from Washington became mixed. Russia, which gives the strong-

men political cover and support, has followed a similar arc. Last Decem-ber, its parliament also became a legislature without opposition when elections seated only parties loyal to President Vladimir V. Putin. And last month, Russia’s government denied registration to the only true opposi-tion candidate in the March 2 presi-dential election. The election is being scripted to en-

sure the victory of Dmitri A. Medve-dev, a first deputy prime minister who is Mr. Putin’s chosen successor.This was the political climate to

which Admiral Fallon returned. He arrived in Uzbekistan a month after President Karimov engineered an election that gave him a third term, even though Uzbek law limits presi-dents to two terms. The admiral said he had made clear

to Mr. Karimov and Uzbek officials that human rights and political plu-rality were problems in Uzbekistan’s relationship with America, but that he hoped relations could improve in ar-eas where the countries might agree and their interests might align.“I told them that we couldn’t do

much about the past, but that we could look at the future,” he said.

By JULIA PRESTON

WAUKEGAN,Illinois—Sheisahome-owner, a taxpayer, a friendly neighbor and an American citizen. Yet because she is married to an illegal immigrant, these days she feels like a fugitive. WheneverherMexicanhusbandven-

turesoutof thehouse, “itmakesmesick to my stomach,’’ said the woman, who insisted on being identified only by a first name and last initial, Miriam M.“I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, he took too

long,’ ’’ she said. “I’ll start calling. I go into panic.’’ Even though Miriam M. is a citizen,

it is difficult for her husband to obtain legal papers, since he entered illegally from Mexico 12 years ago. Over the last year, thousands of ille-

gal immigrants and their families who live here have retreated from commu-nity life in Waukegan, a microcosm of a growing underground of illegal im-migrants across the United States who are clinging to homes and jobs despite the pressure of tougher federal and lo-cal enforcement.From Illinois to Georgia to Arizona,

these families are trying to avoid beingdetectedby immigrationagentsandde-ported.Theydo their shopping in townsdistant fromhome, avoidparties anddonottakevacations.Theystayawayfromethnic stores, forgo doctor’s visits andmeetingsattheirchildren’sschools,andpostponegirls’normally lavishquincea-ñeras, or 15thbirthdayparties.Theyavoid thepolice, evenhesitating

to report crimes.“When we leave in the morning we

know we are going to work,’’ said Elena G., a 47-year-old illegal Mexican immi-grant and Waukegan resident of eight yearswhoworks ina factorynearhere. “Butwedon’tknowifwewill becoming home.’’Last year, federal Immigration and

Customs Enforcement agents arrested morethan35,000 illegal immigrants, in-cluding unauthorized workers and im-migration fugitives, more than double the number in 2006. They sent 276,912 immigrants back to their home coun-tries, a record number.Since about three-quarters of an es-

timated 11.3 million illegal immigrants nationwide are from Latin America, and many have spouses, children or other relatives who are legal immi-grants and citizens, the sense of alarm has spread broadly among Hispanics.Asurveyby thePewHispanicCenter,

a nonpartisan research group inWash-ington, found in December that 53 per-cent of Hispanics in the United Statesworry that they or a loved one could bedeported.Stores catering to Hispanic immi-

grants inplaces likeAtlantaandCincin-nati have closed because of the drop incustomers.DouglasS.Massey, ademographerat

PrincetonUniversityinNewJerseywhohas studied Mexican immigrants forthree decades, said the “palpable senseof fear and of traumatization’’ in immi-grant communities was more intensethan at any other time since the massdeportations of Mexican farm workersin 1954.For many residents in Waukegan,

fear has become a daily companion. One woman, a 37-year-old natural-ized citizen who was born in Central America but grew up in Waukegan, has decided to stay away from the city even though her mother still lives here. The woman, a lawyer practicing in the Chi-cago area, fell in love with an illegal im-migrant from Guatemala. After they were married in 2004, she

realized that under immigration law itwouldbedifficultforhimtobecomelegal,even though she is a citizen. Because hehadcrossedtheborder illegally,seekinglegal statuswould require him to returnto Guatemala for years of separation,withnoguarantee of success. She aban-donedplans tomoveback toWaukegan.She andher husband feel safer inChica-go,with its largeHispanicpopulation.“IknoweverythingaboutWaukegan;

it’s my town,’’ said the woman, whoasked to remain anonymous because ofher husband’s status. “I know the highschool, the first Mexican restaurant. IshouldfeelfreetogoinandoutwheneverI want to. But it’s not the same freedomanymore.’’Hispanic business owners in Wauke-

gan complain of a sales slump that theysaid went beyond the effects of a slug-gish national economy.At theBelvidereMall, which caters to Hispanic custom-ers, María Sotelo, a legal Mexican im-migrant, said she was closing her storethere after 17 years because her salesdropped in the last six months to $500a week from $5,000. She sold satin andvoiledressesforquinceañerapartiesandT-shirts fromMexicansoccer teams.“Since it all started with immigra-

tion,peopledon’t comehereanymore,’’ Ms. Sotelo said.

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At a mall in ,aukegan, $llinois, a store that caters to #ispanic customers is being forced to close because its clientele is shopping less.

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Fan Wenxin contributed reporting from Shanghai.

Competing with Russia and China, the U.S. warms to police states.

NEWS #N#L+SIS

Democracy Recedes From U.S. Agenda

Online Rebels in China Pierce Great Firewall

From Page I

From Page I

Climate of Fear Envelops Illegal Immigrants in U.S.

*ome $nternet users in China are growing resentful at the arbitrary nature of ,eb censorship.

Repubblica NewYork

MONEY & B U S I N E S S

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2008 V

By BROOKS BARNES

LOS ANGELES — To gain control over escalating costs, the movie in-dustry is increasingly striving for a global strategy. While the studios once tailored their product to the tastes of American audiences and made mi-nor adjustments for the international crowd, the reverse is becoming true.Indeed, the internationalmoviebusi-

ness — of strategic importance to stu-dios for two decades — has become so lucrative that many movies are now built primarily to appeal to people out-side the United States. “Clearly, international is playing a

bigger role than ever in the green-light process for pictures,” said Jeff Blake, chairmanforworldwidemarketingand distribution at the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group. “You’re having big conversations about what you can do to increase your chances overseas.”What sells best internationally is a

simple message, preferably one that is nonverbal and can be communicated with a single dominant image. “The Day After Tomorrow” was an easy global sell for 20th Century Fox. (Man-hattan freezes over.) But “Spanglish,” with its complicated story about an An-glo chef falling in love with a Hispanic household helper, and with a difficult title to translate, was a nightmare for Sony marketers.The obliteration ofNewYork, in fact,

is an ongoing trend. Most recently, “IAmLegend,” theWarnerBrothers hit,starredWill Smith in a post-apocalyp-tic Manhattan. “Cloverfield,” a Para-mount film, featured a monster thatimplodes the Empire State Building,

reducing the internationally recogniz-able skyline to a smokingpile of rubbleand despair.Hollywood does use the stunt to sell

movies — but not primarily to anyone in the United States. If Americans go to see the Statue of Liberty’s head ripped off, as they have in large numbers for “Cloverfield,”all thebetter.But the fans the studios are really trying to attract with such imagery are in Eastern Eu-rope, South Korea and Latin America. Ticket sales in theUnitedStateshave

declined over the last decade despite the efforts of studios and theater own-

ers. In 2007, sales totaled $9.7 billion, up 4 percent from the previous year, according to Media by Numbers, a box-office tracking company. But the at-tendance figures puncture that happy story: the number of people going to

the movies was flat, after a narrow in-crease in2006andthreepreviousyears of sharp declines.The international market, mean-

while, is sizzling. Foreign receipts for the six biggest studios rose 9 percent in

2007 from a year earlier, to $9.4 billion. “Spider-Man 3” illustrated the shift.

Released last May, the movie was a low point for the series domestically. But foreign sales for the picture were the best ever for the series, totaling $554 million. While there are no reliable indepen-

dentdata forattendance, thenumberof people outside the United States going to the movies is soaring, too, partly be-cause more modern theaters are open-ing, said Patrick Wachsberger, the co-chairman of Summit Entertainment, a boutiquestudiowitha large foreignfilm sales business.Most studio movies now earn more

abroad than they do at home. With many markets still growing, the prac-tice of tailoring scripts for a global au-dience is only going to increase, said David Maisel, the chairman of Marvel Studios.He should know. “The Incredible

Hulk” from Marvel (set for a Junepremiere) has been meticulouslyconstructed to appeal to moviegoersacross the planet. In one sequence,Dr.BruceBanner, the scientistwho trans-forms into a green monster when hisemotions run high, travels to Brazil tosearch for a cure. Instead of buildingBrazil onaback lot,Mr.Maisel sent theproduction toRio de Janeiro—amovethat could help sell the movie in SouthAmerica.If that doesn’t work, he always has a

backup: The script also calls for a fight in which the Hulk must save a city from “total destruction.”Guess which city.

By PETER S. GOODMAN

Not longago,manyexpertswerecon-vinced that a vibrant world economy would prevent an American recession. Even if the beleaguered American con-sumer suddenly turned thrifty, they reasoned, healthy spending on other shoreswassupposedtokeeptheexpan-sion rolling.But now, with the turmoil in financial

markets resonating around the world, those same experts see signs that eco-nomic growth abroad will probably not be strong enough to prevent the United States from slipping into a recession.Theveryglobal interconnections that

many thought might spare the UnitedStates now appear to be working in re-verse: American consumers will pullback from their exuberant spending,cooling demand for goods worldwide,dragging down the global economy.This could in turn stifle foreign demandforAmericangoods.“Exports had been seen as the one

strong sector of the American econo-my,’’ said Alan Ruskin, a strategist atRBS Greenwich Capital. “Now there’sa sense that the American contagion isspreadingabroad.’’For all the furious economic activity

in China and India, the recent upheavalis a reminder that the American con-sumer remains a central engine of theglobal economy, the chief appetite forgoods and services that has kept facto-ries humming, mines at full productionandcargoholds full ofproducts.

But in recent weeks, several signs have emerged suggesting a slowdown throughout the global economy. The price of oil, after spiking at $100 a bar-rel, has lately pulled back, reflecting an expected dip in demand for energy. The price of shipping important com-

modities likecoal, ironoreandgrainhasdropped sharply recently, though it stillremains high by traditional measures,according to the Baltic Exchange DryIndex, a much-watched gauge of ship-pingpricesthat isseenasanindicatorofglobaldemand.And in Asia, exporters like Chinese

garment companies and JapaneseequipmentmakersarereportingslowerdemandfromtheUnitedStates.All of which suggests there still is no

substitute for the American consumer. Yes, China and India are developing rapidly, adding millions of newly mid-dle-classpeopleyearning forgoods like pillowcases and laptop computers. Lat-in America and Australia are enjoying a bonanza supplying raw materials to factories from Asia to Eastern Europe. Russia and the Middle East are selling energy at near-record prices, spending the proceeds on the wares of the world.Americancompaniescouldsurelyex-

ploit thisgrowth, the theoryran.Even if consumers at home went into hiberna-tion, buffeted by rising unemployment and the sagging value of real estate, companies could still count on strong sales abroad. Much of this narrative may still

be true, and yet, as stock markets in Shanghai,LondonandNewYorkplum-meted inaboutofpanicsellingrecently, it suddenly seemed an inadequate fix for what ails the economy.Consumerspendingamountstoabout

70 percent of the $14 trillion American economy. This stream of money has in recentyearsbrought inawideningbas-ket of imports. American companies have capital-

ized on this reality. For example, Cat-erpillar, the construction equipment company based in Peoria, Illinois, sells earth movers used to dig out iron ore from the red earth of western Austra-lia, sending it to China to feed smelters. American companies sell oil-drilling

gear that isharvestingenergy inplaces like Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.All of this activity has rested to a con-

siderable degree on the willingness of Americans tobuy.But the latest indica-tors point to a slowdown in consump-tion as available sources of credit dry up. This, say economists, is predomi-nantly why markets around the world have been recoiling.

During the years of the real estate boom, Americans pulled more than $800 billion a year out of their homes through refinanced mortgages, home sales and home equity lines of credit. Falling housing prices have drastically shrunk that pool. Now, fresh data shows that Ameri-

cans, as a last resort, have been tap-ping their credit cards aggressively,while increasingly falling behind onthe payments.If thoughts of a newfoundAmerican

thrift helped scare world markets,so did continuing worries about theextent of losses facing banks as themortgage crisis spreads. Here, too,whatwas once seen as themoderatingforceof global connectednesshasgonemalignant.“The real fear is that there’s a kind of

total systems meltdown,’’ said Michael Darda, chief economist at MKM Part-ners. “There’s a real sense that we just deteriorate from here and fall deeper and deeper into the abyss.’’

Itprobably isnotahugesurprise tolearn thatwhileemployees inmanycompaniessit in thecafeteriagossipingaboutwork,or theboss, or thecompeti-

tion,atGoogle theyaredoingsomethingelse.AtGoogle, employees

areencouragedtogoon-lineandplacebetsonapredictionmarket—anexchange that tries to

forecasteventsbasedonthemoneywa-geredonaparticularoutcome.In the last twoandahalfyears, 1,463

employeeshavemadewagerswithplay

money(Goobles, rhymeswithrubles)onquestions like:willGoogleopenaRussiaoffice?willApplereleaseanIn-tel-basedMac?The lure,nominally, isaccumulating

thoseGoobles,whichcanbeconvertedtoprizes—$10,000wortheachquar-ter.As ithappens,Googleemployeeswerealso takingpart inanexperimentonhowinformationcourses itswaythroughthecompany.Astudyof thosemarkets—bytwooutsideeconomists,JustinWolfersof theUniversityofPennsylvaniaandEricW.ZitzewitzofDartmouthCollege,andaGoogleeco-

nomicanalyst,BoCowgill—usedthebettingpatternsofemployeesandtheirdemographicdetails to try to findcom-monfactorsamongpeoplewithsimilaropinions—is it typeof jobor levelwithin thecorporatestructure,beingfriendsorsittingclose tooneanother?According to thereport, thestron-

gestcorrelation inbettingwas foundamongpeoplewhosatveryclose tooneanother, trumpingeven friendshiporotherclosesocial ties.This is tangibleevidence, theauthorsargue, that in-formation issharedmosteasilyandef-fectivelyamongofficeneighbors, even

atanInternetcompanywhere instantmessagingande-mail aregenerallypreferred to face-to-facediscussion.It isanargument, theauthorssay, for

givinggreater importance to“micro-geography,”orhowpeople interact intheworkplace.The finding that infor-mationmoved fastestamongpeoplewhowere theclosest together isalsoanendorsementof thecompany’s“thirdrule formanagingknowledgeworkers:PackThemIn,” theauthorssay.“Peoples’primary job isn’t to trade

thesecommodities,”Mr.Zitzewitzsaid.“Whatwearepickingup iscommunica-

tionon ‘lowpriority topics.’But that’showcreative ideascomeabout.”Theothercrucial findingof thereport

wasthat therewasadetectable“opti-mismbias.”That is, results thatweregoodfor thecompanytendedtobeover-priced,particularly for“subjectsunderthecontrolofGoogleemployees, suchas,wouldaprojectbecompletedontimeorwouldaparticularofficebeopened.”Dopredictionmarketswork?Whenthesemarketsexistexclusive-

lywithinacompany, theyareawayofextractinghiddenknowledge fromthework force: if a floorsalesman learnsthatanewTVmodelwill bea failure,withapredictionsmarkethecanprofitfromthatknowledge,andperhaps thechiefexecutivecan learn thataswell.

The Thrifty American BecomesA Nightmare for Global Economy

ILLUSTRATION BY THE NEW YORK TIMES

PARAMOUNT PICTURES; LEFT, COLUMBIA PICTURES

ESSAY

NOAM

COHEN

Gambling and Lunchtime Gossip at Google

With Havoc and Rubble, Hollywood Panders to World

Studios follow the money,which is increasinglybeyond American borders.

Films featuring destruction in New

York City, like ‘‘Spider-Man 3’’

or ‘‘Cloverfield,’’ often do well in

markets outside the United States.

Repubblica NewYork

S C I E NC E & T ECHNO LOGY : G ADG E T S

VI MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2008

Printed books provide pleasures no device created by an electrical engi-neer can match. The sweet smell of a brand-new book. The tactile pleasures of turning a page. The reassuring sight

on one’s bookshelves of personal journeys. But not one of these

explains why books have resisted digitiza-tion. That’s simpler: Books are portable and

easy to read.Building a portable electronic

reader was the easy part; match-ing the visual quality of ink on paper took longer. But display technology has advanced to the point where the digital page looks good, too. At last, an e-reader performs well when placed in page-to-page competition with paper. As a result, the digitization of personal book collections is certain to have its day soon. Music shows the way. The

digitization of personal music collections began, however, only after the right combination of software and hardware — iTunes Music Store and the iPod — ar-rived. And as Apple did for music lovers, some company will devise an irresistible combination of software and hardware for book buyers. That company may be Amazon. Amazon’s first iteration of an

electronic book reader is the Kindle. Introduced in November, it weighs about 300 grams, holds more than 200 full-length books and can display newspapers, magazines and blogs. It uses E Ink technology, developed by the company of that name, that produces sharply defined text yet draws power only when a page is changed, not as it is displayed. Sony uses E Ink in its e-book Reader,

which it introduced in 2006, but the Kindle has a feature that neither Sony nor many e-reader predecessors ever possessed: books and other content can be loaded wirelessly using the high-speed EVDO network from the phone company Sprint.The Kindle is expensive — $399

— but it sold out in just six hours after its debut on November 19. The Kindle gets many things right.

I can see that the text looks splendid. But when one presses a bar to “turn’’ a page, the image reverses in a way I found jarring: the light background turns black and the black text turns white, then the new page appears and everything returns to normal.Steven P. Jobs, the chief executive

of Apple, has nothing to fear from the Kindle. No one would regard it as com-petition for the iPod. It displays text in four exciting shades of gray, and does that one thing well.

Yet, when Mr. Jobs was asked what he thought of the Kindle, he heaped scorn on the book industry. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is; the fact is that people don’t read any-more,’’ he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.’’ But the business is not as dire as he suggests. In 2008, book pub-lishing will bring in about $15 billion in revenue in the United States, accord-ing to the Book Industry Study Group, a trade association. Asurveyconducted inAugust2007by

IpsosPublicAffairs forTheAssociatedPress foundthat27percentofAmeri-canshadnot readabook in thepreviousyear.However, thesameshare—27percent—read15ormorebooks.In fact, when we exclude Americans

who had not read a single book in that year, the average number of books

read was 20, raised by the 8 percent who read 51 books or more. In other words, a sizable minority does not read, but this is balanced by those who read a lot.Books were Amazon’s first business.

And Andrew Herdener, a company spokesman, said that Amazon’s book sales “have increased every year since the company began.’’The book world has always had an

asset that makes up for what it lacks in outsize revenue and profits: the pas-sionate attachment that its authors, editors and frequent customers have to books themselves. The object we are accustomed to

calling a book is undergoing a pro-found modification. Kindle’s long-term success is still unknown, but Amazon should be credited with imaginatively redefining its original product line, replacing the book business with the reading business.

By SAM LUBELL

As TVs grow ever larger, viewers sit farther and farther back from the screen for the more theatrical experi-ence. But there is a concurrent trend in

consumer electronics to shrink the screenandbring it closer to theviewer — within centimeters of the eyeball it-self.Videoeyewear,which isworn like glasses, uses two small liquid-crystal displays to give the wearer a feeling of looking at a large-screen TV from about 2 meters away. Video eyewear didn’t become very

popular in the1990s,when itwas intro-duced. Consumers probably remem-ber them as looking like the helmets used to train astronauts — and cost thousands of dollars. Major electron-ics companies like Sony and Olympus discontinued models several years ago because of slow sales. But the new user-friendly versions

continue to get lighter, cheaper and more portable, although they still look as if they come from outer space. Also known as personal media view-ers, video glasses or head-mounted devices, these gadgets generally cost $200to$400.Theycomewiththeirown headphones and plug into portable videodevices like iPods,DVDplayers, video game consoles, video cameras and even some cellphones. You generally can’t see what is go-

ing on around you. But then, the peo- ple around you can’t see what you’re watching, so the eyewear is useful on planes or elsewhere where privacy is an issue. Most of the tiny screens have a resolution of 320 pixels by 240 pixels, but models are coming out with twice that resolution. The devices are popu-lar with gamers because they offer an immersion experience.Thedevices remainanicheproduct,

saysMichaelGartenberg, researchdi-rectorofJupiterResearchinNewYork. Despite higher resolution, consumers still find that the bother of carrying andchargingonemoreitemoutweighs the reward of an unobtrusive immer-sion experience. “For now, iPods and computers are good enough for most people,’’ Mr. Gartenberg said.But the bigger issue, he says, is that

the devices become uncomfortable after prolonged viewing. They force theeyes to focusa little closer together than is normal. The intense viewing can also throw off your sense of bal-ance, and if the two lenses are even slightlyuneven,youreyeswill quickly tire from trying to reconcile the two screens.

In December 2006, I bought a televi-sion set, my first ever as an adult. I was, in the terms of the classic studies on the diffusion of innovation in the 1950s, a very late adopter, or “lag-

gard.”People warned me

that television was a window on the world. I turned it on, and the world blew in. But after a season or two,

there was something about it, though it was a late-model, 1-meter, flat-panel HDTV, that was not quite new. In September, two months after it

was introduced, I bought an iPhone when the price dropped $200. My old cellphone worked fine. I had never used its advanced features; I just made calls. Now, iPhone in hand, with music, messaging and Internet mobil-ity at my fingertips, I was part of the “early majority,” in the terms of the in-novation studies, that is, the group one step behind those who have it first, the early adopters.In October, I upgraded my computer

to Leopard, the newest Apple operat-

ing system, within a day of its release. I bought it online.I am now, technically, an early

adopter. It happened quickly.In the diffusion of innovations

theory, based on a study of purchase patterns of hybrid seed corn by farm-ers, early adopters were young, edu-cated leaders in the community, and respected as sources of information. Laggards, the end of the innovation line, were old, uneducated, had small farms and were suspicious of sales-men. Eager to enjoy — and share — the advantages of being an early adopter, I went shopping.Personal G.P.S.’s, or global position-

ing system devices that tell you where you are, are popular. But I don’t want one. Or do I? Also, video games and consoles, of which I remain ignorant. “Guitar Hero III,” an electronic air guitar game, had sales of $38 million in October in one of three console formats it plays on, according to David Riley at NPD, which tracks product sales. Combined sales could approach those of flat-panel televisions, the current consumer electronics best-seller.

Iwasstarting to feel a little lateagain, until I engagedMr.Riley inapersonaldiscussionon the telephone.“It’s adisease, really, tome,”hesaidofearlyadoption.He is, byhisowndefini-tion, a “hardcoregamer,”whichmakeshim likeabartenderwhodrinks, andaperfectmodel of anearlyadopter.“I have to have everything first,” he

explained. “There’s no reason why.” Mr. Riley bought the iPhone at $600 when it came out, and didn’t bother to redeem the rebate that was offered by the company when it dropped the price two months later from $600 to $400. He has two personal G.P.S.’s.He said that the early adopter crowd

often ends up with gadgets that don’t work very well that they overpaid for. “I don’t care. I have no kids. I have no life. I have a great entertainment cen-ter. It really has to stop.”But Mr. Riley, who is 39, can still re-

member the excitement of his first jolt of adoption at 14, when he was given a Mattel Intellivision, an early video game console, for Christmas.“I was in shock for hours after open-

ing the gift,” he recalled. “That feeling

has never left.”Jason Pontin, editor in chief of Tech-

nology Review, published by M.I.T., echoed Mr. Riley’s euphoria. “You achieve a transitory bliss,” he

said of early adoption. “When I first started using Facebook, the network was quite small, private, intimate and blissful. It was blissfully novel. As it ex-panded, my bliss evaporated. I’m still looking for my next.” Henry Petroski, a professor of

civil engineering and history at Duke University and the author of “The Toothpick: Technology and Culture,” explained that the toothpick’s adop-tion was pure fashion.“It became fashionable to stand in

front of restaurants and chew on wood-

en toothpicks,” he said. “It was not function, but the fact that you had one. The best people of society were chew-ing on toothpicks, and women began to adopt the practice. Most people didn’t know what they were.”In the 1950s, when the term ap-

peared, early adopters were heroes, said Edward Tenner, a visiting scholar of history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and the author of “Our Own Devices.” “They were model citizens, they kept

the economy going,” he said. A pioneer, he reminded me, in its original mean-ing, was the laborer who dug the roads for everyone else. But Mr. Tenner shared an interesting anecdote, about acquaintances in Menlo Park, Califor-nia, who wouldn’t drive, on environ-mental grounds. Friends drove them where they had to go. As laggards, or “un-adopters,” they enjoyed the free-doms of aristocracy. The technologi-cally capable did the work.Which means that, without a per-

sonal G.P.S., I can stay lost, until I’m found.

How a Technophobe Learned to Love His iPhone

WILLIAM

L. HAMILTON

ESSAY

Off the Printed Page,

But a Book Nonetheless

Moving rapidly from no television to the latest personal G.P.S.

A new generation

of video eyewear

includes, from top, the

Myvu Personal Media

Viewer Universal

Edition, the One i-Vue

and the Vuzix.

Eyewear Transforms the View

AMAZON.COM

The Amazon Kindle uses E Ink

technology to display images in

four shades of gray.

Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of busi-ness at San Jose State University in California.

ESSAY

RANDALL

STROSS

Most makers include warnings to take breaks, and the devices become uncomfortable after half an hour to an hour. But there is little research show-ing that the devices harm vision. Dr. EliPeli, professorofophthalmologyat Harvard Medical School, has exam-inedseveralproductsand foundnoas-

sociation with eye problems.Indeed, Dr. Peli has begun using

the devices along with small video cameras to help relieve eye problems like night blindness and tunnel vision. He does warn that children under 5, whosebinocularvision isstill develop-ing, should not use the devices.

Repubblica NewYork

AR T S & S T Y L E S

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2008 VII

If it’s February, you can be pretty sure that some pretty, plucky actress will be traipsing around some glam-orous and photogenic American city (or its Canadian double) in search of

the dimple-chinned fellow who embodies her one true love.KatherineHeigl, the

star of “27 Dresses,” has already rushed to the altar ahead of a

crew that will include Kate Hudson, Uma Thurman and Paul Rudd. (Not all of them are getting married; some are avoiding divorce.) In general, the trough of late win-

ter and early spring is Hollywood’s designated time for predictable, unchallenging genre movies. Horror and action for the teenagers, family comedies for the kids, and, for grown women and their companions, sto-ries of dating and mating and preor-dained happy endings. The dispiriting, uninspired same-

ness of romantic comedy strikes me as something of a scandal. This is not because the plots are predictable, though goodness knows they are. Predictability in itself isa feature

of thegenre.Themarriageplot, afterall, isoneof theoldest in literature,flourishing inRomancomedy, in theplaysofShakespeareandMolièreandin thenovelsofJaneAusten.More tothepoint, theobstacle-strewnroadtodiscoveredorrecoveredblisswasheavily traveled in theoldstudiodays,fromthecomediesof the1930sand’40s to their loopyTechnicolordescen-dantsof the late ’50sandearly ’60s.Our parents and grandparents had

Rock Hudson and Doris Day, or Spen-cer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Or Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Or Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. We have Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey.Who are perfectly charming. Don’t

get me wrong. Mr. McConaughey is mostly shirtless in “Fool’s Gold,” which reunites him with Ms. Hudson as a bickering, still-in-love couple whose divorce is disrupted by a search for undersea treasure. Now, this premise is no more laughable — or perhaps I mean no less laughable — than the leopard on the loose in Connecticut in “Bringing Up Baby” or the pairs of squabbling journalists or politicians in “His Girl Friday.” But if you have seen “27 Dresses,”

or other wedding-theme comedies disgorged by the studios — you will know what I mean. How did this genre fall so far, from one that reliably deployed the talents of the movie industry’s best writers, top di-rectors and biggest stars to a source of lazy commercial fodder?There are several possible an-

swers. The most obvious one (and to me the least persuasive) is just that they don’t make them like they used to, that the history of American cin-ema since its classical era has been a sorry chronicle of decline. It may be true that you rarely hear the kind of sharp, sparkling dialogue that used to animate the films of Ernst

Lubitsch, George Cukor and Preston Sturges, but it would be hard to look at movies and television today and conclude that there is a shortage of funny writing or sharp storytelling.With a few exceptions, the rituals

of heterosexual courtship no longer provide as flexible or adaptable a framework as they once did. The sex-ual revolution, of course, had some-thing to do with this, since it dented the symbolic prestige of marriage. While the romantic comedy has

almost always trafficked in happy endings, that happiness is rarely ac-companied by a sense of risk or exhil-aration. When you think of, say, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn — or even Doris Day and Rock Hudson — you recall the emotional combat of two strong-willed, independent indi-viduals ending in mutual conquest. Love, in those old pictures, was a dangerous and noble sport that re-quired skill and cunning. Which brings me back to Mr. Mc-

Conaughey, Ms. Hudson and their photogenic ilk. They are, for sure, better looking than the rest of us, but in their screen incarnations almost programmatically less interesting. The actresses are spunky and

sweet, but lacking in the vinegar that made Barbara Stanwyck in “The Lady Eve” or Claudette Colbert in “It Happened One Night” so definitively sexy. Those ladies were not always nice, and neither were their gentle-man counterparts.The few remaining stars who show

the kind of audacity and charisma that great romantic comedy requires tend to be busy with other things.And so the dry martinis of the past

have been sweetened and diluted. We emerge lulled and soothed, but rarely intoxicated.

Romance on FilmIs Losing Heart

ALLAN

KOZINN

ESSAY

A Rocker Hones His Classical Instincts

Across Cultures, Varying Levels of Repugnance

BARRY WETCHER/20TH CENTURY FOX

Katherine Heigl and James Marsden in “27 Dresses.”

By PATRICIA COHEN

WASHINGTON — You can kill a horse to make pet food in California, but not to feed a person. You can hoist a woman over your shoulder while run-ning a 253-meter obstacle course in the Wife-Carrying World Championship in Finland, but you can’t hold a dwarf-tossing contest in France. These prohibitions are not imposed

because of concerns about health or safety or unfair practices, some econo-mists say, but because people tend to find such activities repugnant. People don’t pay enough attention

to how repugnance affects decisions about what can be bought and sold, as-serts Alvin Roth, an economist at Har-vard University. Mr. Roth spoke at a recent panel on

the economics of repugnance at the American Enterprise Institute, a con-servative research organization in Washington. For conservatives the issue can be particularly pointed.

Economic conservatives tend to favor eliminating as many hindrances on the market as possible, while social con-servatives believe some practices are so “repugnant” — because they vio-late traditional values or religious and moral prohibitions — that they should be banned from the marketplace alto-gether. In recent years groups have fought

over whether it is acceptable to display and sell art that offends religious sensi-bilities, like a photograph of a crucifix in urine or a sculpture of Jesus on the cross, made out of chocolate. “Bodies ... The Exhibition’’ and similar shows, which feature the preserved and dis-sected remains of people, would once have been considered both ghoulish and profane. Although religious lead-ers, human-rights activists and medi-cal officials have condemned the ca-daver exhibitions, they have attracted millions of visitors around the world.But as Mr. Roth pointed out, ideas

about what is repugnant change all the time. Selling oneself into indentured servitude was once thought permis-sible, while charging interest on loans was not. Often introducing money into theexchange iswhatpeople findrepug-nant. Money is clearly the issue in situa-

tions involving the human body. Pay-ing young women for eggs to be fertil-ized and men for sperm is now com-mon practice. Yet the sale of organs for transplant is still the subject of vehe-ment dispute.Pope John Paul II said that treating

human organs as part of a commercial exchange is “morally unacceptable,” a view echoed by the Council of Europe’s Convention on Human Rights and Bio-medicine. United States federal law prohibits thesaleorpurchaseofhuman organs. Sally Satel, a psychiatrist and resi-

dent scholar at the institute who was herself the recipient of a kidney dona-

tion in 2006, asserts that the issue does not need to pit human dignity against saving a life. “A salaried fireman who saves a life is not less heroic,” she said. She has forcefully argued that the

sale of human organs with properoversight to prevent exploitation ofthe poor should be permitted. Thereare 74,000 people on the waiting list,and in 2006 about 4,400 died beforethey could get a kidney. Theneed is too

great, she said.To the theologian Michael

Novak, who is also a residentscholar at the American En-terprise Institute, instinc-tual human revulsion is animportant attribute. QuotingAristotle, he said that “repug-

nancemakesanecessary contributionto the good life, especially when thereis not time for intellectual evalua-tion.”Still, such intuitions are “not always

the best director,” Mr. Novak said. As in the case of kidney transplants, one must choose “between two great moral ends,” he said.That is why, he added, “mere repug-

nance is not enough.”

Withall the fuss overRadiohead’snew“InRainbows”album,with itspay-what-you-wantdownloadingpol-icy in the fall, and itsCDversion top-ping the charts, fansof thebandmight

havemissedanothersignificantmilestonefor thegroup, or atleast for oneof its play-ers. The innovative,genre-mixingWordlessMusic seriespresented

the firstAmericanperformance lastmonthof “PopcornSuperhetReceiv-er,” a 2005 stringorchestraworkbyJonnyGreenwood,Radiohead’s leadguitarist, onaprogramwithmusic byJohnAdamsandGavinBryars.“When I read that theBBCOrches-

trahadgiven thepremiereof a com-missionedworkbyJonnyGreenwood,”saidRonenGivony, the 29-year-oldfounderanddirector ofWordlessMu-sic, “I thought, ‘Ohwow, I’vegot togetin on that.’ So Iwrote toRadiohead’smanagement, thinking: ‘I’m just somekid inNewYorkwith this little thread-bare series. SurelyEsa-PekkaSalonenand 10other conductors andorches-tras alreadyhave this in thepipeline.’But I got ane-mail back the sameday,saying, ‘No, you’re actually the firstpersonwho’s askedmeabout this.’ ”Inaway this is apeculiar program

forWordlessMusic, now in its secondseason.Most ofMr.Givony’s concertshaveofferedboth indie rockbands (ormembersofmore famousgroups insolo spinoffs) andclassical perform-ers, anexpressionofMr.Givony’sconviction, as a longtime rock fanand

newcomer to classicalmusic, thatanyonewho likesBjork,Radioheador other experimental popwouldalsoenjoy classical pieces.But the recentprogramwasdevoted

entirely to contemporary classicalworks, performedbyanensemble of50musicians,withBradLubmancon-ducting.Mr.Greenwood is theobviouslink to rock, but his score ismoreakinto earlyPenderecki orStockhausenthan towhathedoeswithRadiohead,evenat theband’smostexploratory.It also soundsmore like

a contemporary classicalwork thanmostpiecesbyrock starsmoonlightingasconcert composers.“Newmusicwasalways

abigdeal tome, growingup,”Mr.Greenwoodsaidby telephone fromhisstudio inOxford,England.“Tome it justmadesensethat I hadPixies recordsandMessiaen’s ‘Turan-galîla Symphony.’ I startedthinkingof them in thesameway, really.”Mr.Greenwood, 36, hasbeenwork-

ingwith classical composition for thelast several years. InRadioheadhehas complementedhis guitarwithanondesMartenot, anelectronic instru-mentused in severalMessiaen scores.His first solo album, “Bodysong”(2003), includedpieces for stringquar-tet andpercussion. In 2004 theBBCappointedhimcomposer in residence.“Smear,” awork for orchestraand

ondesMartenot, had its premiere thatyear, and“PopcornSuperhetReceiv-er” followed in 2005. Sectionsof theworkalso turnup inhis orchestral filmscore for “ThereWillBeBlood.”“PopcornSuperhetReceiver”— its

title taken fromashortwave radiocatalog— isanexplorationof “whitenoise,” a formof electronicnoise thatembraces everyaudible frequencyandcansound likehissingor static. In itspurest form, all frequencies areheard

at the same intensity, butMr.Greenwood takesar-tistic license: evenwhenthe chordsareat theirdensest,melodies emergeas the strings changepitches.At theJanuary16concert

at theChurchofSt.Paul theApostle,nearColumbusCircle inManhattan,Mr.Greenwood’sscore,evenat itsmostdenselyatonal,hadaconsistentlyalluringshimmerandembracedlushvibrato, suddendy-namicshiftsandslowlyris-ingchromatic themes.

Hashe considered takingup thebatonandconducting thesepieceshimself?“No, thatwouldbe just awful,” he

said. “Youneed tohavea steelyglare. Itried conductingat aRadioheadstringsession, and insteadof tellingpeoplewhen to come in, Iwas just vaguelysuggesting that if they’d like tobeginat somepoint, thatwouldbegreat.Andyoucan’t do that.”

TAINA RISSANEN/LEHTIKUVA, VIA REUTERS

What is considered offensive, like dwarf tossing or organ donation for pay, can change over time. The 2006 Wife-Carrying World Championship in Finland.

ROBERT CAPLIN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Works by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead have been heard in concert and in the film “There Will Be Blood.”

Cary Grant and KatharineHepburn in “Bringing Up Baby.”

A.O.

SCOTT

ESSAY

Jonny Greenwood

Repubblica NewYork

Cassa 40,5 mm d'acciaio lucidoinossidabile. Movimento meccanico acarica automatica calibro Cartier 049(21 rubini, 28.800 alternanze/ora).Lunetta girevole unidirezionale conindicatore in materia luminescente.Decoro clous de Paris di ceramicanera. Bracciale d'acciaio inossidabilesatinato rivestito di caucciù nero.Impermeabilità a 100 metri.

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