MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2009 Copyright © 2009 The New York Times

Supplemento al numeroodierno de la Repubblica

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

LENS

The opportunity to edit the past of-ten proves irresistible. Stalin erasedTrotsky; Nixon erased his 18 minutes;Japan’s textbooks pretend nothing bad happened in Nanking.

Ernest Hemingway’sgrandson recently decided toissue a “restored edition” of “A Moveable Feast.”

“I think this edition is right to set the record straight,”Sean Hemingway told The Times. The original por-trayed Sean Hemingway’sgrandmother, Ernest Hem-ingway’s second wife, in unflatteringterms. So, Sean reworked the originaltext, reordered the chapters, and thissummer Scribner published a new edi-tion in which Sean’s grandmother ap-pears in a more sympathetic light.

A.E. Hotchner, a friend of Hem-ingway’s who helped assemble theoriginal manuscript, excoriated thechanges.

“With this reworking as a precedent,what will Scribner do, for instance, if a descendant of F. Scott Fitzgeralddemands the removal of the chapter in ‘A Moveable Feast’ about the size ofFitzgerald’s penis, or if Ford MadoxFord’s grandson wants to delete refer-ences to his ancestor’s body odor,” he

wrote in The Times.Such temptations prompted Wiki-

pedia to change its editing policies. Before, it was not difficult for someone to insert false information into a Wiki-

pedia entry. In March an Irish student inserted a false quota-tion attributed to the Frenchcomposer Maurice Jarre after Mr. Jarre’s death. The false remark was reproduced inseveral newspapers.

Such revisions have prompt-ed Wikipedia to add a layer ofreview for articles about living

people, altering the online encylope-dia’s philosophy that everyone has anequal right to edit entries.

“There was a time probably when the community was more forgiving of things that were inaccurate or fudgedin some fashion — whether simply mis-understood or an author had some axto grind,” Michael Snow, the chairmanof Wikipedia’s board, told The Times.“There is less tolerance for that sort ofproblem now.”

Apparently, the editors of a Britishdocumentary about Muhammad Aliare less troubled by such changes.When the “Thriller in Manila,” aboutAli’s match with Joe Frazier, cameout this year it was criticized for be-

ing biased toward Frazier. When theDVD was released in June, a 10-minutesegment dealing with a previous fightin New York in 1971 in which Frazierfloored Ali, had been cut in half and thefilmed action replaced with still photos.

“Even after all these years, someone wants to save face for Muhammad Ali,” one reviewer said in The Times.

The urge to manipulate is not always pernicious. Sometimes technologycreates a new kind of fun. Fans of old movies can buy a product that putsa greenscreen in every living room. Greenscreens are the cornerstone of special effects in many movies, al-lowing actors to appear in outer space or ancient Rome while never moving from in front of the screen.

Now, for $170, anyone can buy a greenscreen with accompanyingsoftware and insert themselves into a movie scene.

So, if you think you could do a better job than Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in“Gone With the Wind” telling ScarlettO’Hara “I don’t think I will kiss you, al-though you need kissing badly. That’swhat’s wrong with you. You shouldbe kissed and often,” then this is yourchance.

That is, of course, until the next edi-tor comes along.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY TONY CENICOLA/THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Art of Manipulation

V VIIIMONEY & BUSINESS

Extracting natural

gas from shale.

THE WAY WE EAT

Catches of bluefin

tuna are dwindling.

The Dollar’s Shrinking Power

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

PARIS

ONE OF THE most ominous ef-

fects of the global downturn

is that many foreign central

banks are rethinking the dollar’s

status as the world’s premier reserve

currency, experts are saying. That, in

addition to domestic factors like his-

torically low United States interest

rates and a ballooning federal bud-

get deficit, are worsening the dollar’s

downward movement.

Over the long term, a weaker dollar

could narrow the long-running United

States trade deficit, helping close the

gap between exports and imports, as

American products become more af-

fordable overseas.

But for those trying to export goods

into the United States, such as as Ital-

ian suits, French wines, Japanese

electronics and Argentine beef, it

makes doing business more difficult

as their wares become more expen-

sive to Americans. The dollar’s drop is

a central factor in oil’s recent rise back

above $75 a barrel, which will mean

higher gasoline prices.

But there is another upside, at least

for Americans: a weak dollar could

prove beneficial to the American

economy by aiding long-suffering

manufacturers, rebuilding a stronger

industrial base and lifting exports

even if it makes life harder for trading

partners around the world, especially

in Europe.

“As long as it doesn’t crash, a grad-

ual, orderly decline is healthy,” said

Con tin ued on Page IV

Low interest rates and growing U.S. deficits

pose obstacles for overseas manufacturers.

VIIARTS & STYLES

A tragic aviator’s

enduring legend.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Repubblica NewYork

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

II MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2009

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TalkingTo Sudan

President Obama is offering Sudan’sleaders an opportunity that they do notdeserve but is necessary. The admin-istration will replace a punishment-heavy approach with one that is more balanced. Khartoum, he said, can look forward to rewards if it brings stabil-ity to Darfur and South Sudan and to tougher sanctions if it does not.

We have difficulty accepting theidea of any outreach to PresidentOmar Hassan al-Bashir, who has beenindicted by the International Crimi-nal Court for directing the genocidein Darfur. Washington officials insist that they will not work directly withMr. Bashir but will try to negotiatewith other Sudanese officials.

We are skeptical that any of Mr.Bashir’s henchmen can be trusted to keep their word. But complete isola-tion wasn’t working, not least because other countries — most notably China,which buys oil from Sudan — werenever willing to cut their ties.

The violence in Darfur — wheresome 300,000 people have been killedand 2.7 million driven from theirhomes — has lessened. But the situa-tion remains dire.

Refugees in camps must be protect-ed and a way must be found for them to return home and rebuild their lives.Sudan must declare a cease-fire andengage rebel groups in serious nego-tiations.

It must also implement a fragilenorth-south peace agreement thatended a devastating war in 2005 bypreparing for national elections nextyear .

In announcing the new policy, Mr.Obama also cited the need to ensurethat Sudan does not provide a safehaven for terrorists — that important goal cannot absolve Khartoum of the horrors it has committed.

Before the announcement on Octo-ber 20, President Obama’s special en-voy to Sudan, Major General J. Scott Gration, seemed to suggest that thenew policy change would stress only incentives. So we were relieved when Mr. Obama promised to renew exist-ing sanctions on Sudan, which include a trade embargo and freeze on assetsof the government and individuals heldresponsible for the violence in Darfur.

Incentives, including a graduallifting of sanctions, must be grantedonly for measurable progress. Mr.Obama also must be prepared to fulfillhis other promise: to persuade othercountries to increase pressure onKhartoum if it continues to abuse itspeople.

That which can’t continue doesn’t. A nation can spend and spend, pile debt upon debt, but eventual-ly there comes a reality moment when some leader emerges to say enough is enough and when decentpeople respond by demanding a return to respon-sibility.

In the United States, we’re not at that momentyet. Private debt is being replaced by public debt. New entitlements are being created, and the moneythat could be used to ward off fiscal disaster is be-ing used for other things. Here, Democrats still get ahead by promising tax cuts for the bottom 98 per-cent and Republicans get ahead by promising tax cuts for all and Medicare cuts for none.

But Britain has hit its reality moment. The Brits are ahead of many others when it comes to publicindebtedness and national irresponsibility. Spend-ing has been out of control for longer and in a more sustained way.

But in that country, the climate of opinion hasturned. There, voters are ready for a politician will-ing to face reality. And George Osborne, who would become the chancellor of the Exchequer in the like-

ly event that his Conservative Party wins the nextelection, has aggressively seized the moment.

In a party conference address earlier this month,Osborne gave the speech that an American politi-cian will someday have to give. He said that he isnot ideologically hostile to government. “Millions of Britons depend on public services and cannotopt out,’’ he declared. He defended governmentworkers against those who would deride them asself-serving bureaucrats: “Conservatives should never use lazy rhetoric that belittles those who are employed by the government.’’

But, he pivoted, “it is because we treat those who work in our public sector with respect that I want tobe straight with you about the choices we face.’’ TheBritish government needs to cut back.

Osborne declared that there would be no tax cutsany time soon. He said that as a matter of principle he believes that the top income tax rate of 50 per-cent is too high. But, he continued, “we cannot even think of abolishing the 50 percent rate on the rich’’while others down the income scale are asked toscrimp.

Osborne’s speech was not an isolated event. The Conservatives have treated British voters as adultsfor a year now, with a string of serious economicpositions. The Conservatives supported the La-bour government bank bailout, even though it wasagainst their political interest to do so. LastNovem-ber, Osborne opposed a cut in the value-added taxeson the grounds that the cuts were unaffordable andwould not produce growth.

And the public has responded. The Conservativesnow have a dominating lead over Labour. Over all,support for the Conservatives rose by 4 percentagepoints after Osborne’s speech. The polls reveal thatnearly 60 percent of Britons support the austerity measures.

The key is that Osborne is not merely offeringpain, but a different economic vision — differentfrom Labour and different from the Thatcherismthat was designed to meet the problems of the1980s.

If any Republican is looking for a way forward,start by doing what they’re doing across the Atlan-tic.

E D I T O R I A L S

O F T H E T I M E S

DAVID BROOKS

The Reality Moment Arrives

BERLIN

A few weeks ago, Americans “observed’’ theeighth anniversary of 9/11 — that day in 2001 when the Twin Towers were brought down by Al Qaeda.In a few weeks, Germans will “celebrate’’ the 20thanniversary of 11/9 — that day in 1989 when theBerlin Wall was brought down by one of the great-est manifestations of people power ever seen.

As the Obama team tries to figure out how to pro-ceed vis-à-vis Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, itis worth reflecting for a moment on why Germans are celebrating that day in November and we are reliving that day in September — basically debat-ing whether to re-invade Afghanistan to preventit again from becoming an Al Qaeda haven and to prevent Pakistan from tipping into civil war.

The most important difference between 11/9 and 9/11 is “people power.’’ Germans showed the world how good ideas about expanding human freedom — amplified by people power — can bring down a wall and an entire autocratic power structure, with-out a shot. There is now a Dunkin’ Donuts on Paris Square adjacent to the Brandenburg Gate, where all that people power was concentrated. Normally, I am horrified by American fast-food brands near

iconic sites, but in the case of this once open sore be-tween East and West, I find it something of a balm. The war over Europe is indeed over. People power won. We can stand down — pass the doughnuts.

The events of 9/11, by contrast, demonstratedhow bad ideas — amplified by a willingness of just a few people to commit suicide — can bring downskyscrapers and tie a great country in knots.

I toured Paris Square the other day with Ulrike Graalfs, a program director at the American Acad-emy in Berlin, where I am a visitor, and she men-tioned in passing that she was in America on 9/11, asa student at the University of Pennsylvania, and shewas a 9-year-old schoolgirl standing on the BerlinWall on 11/9. I was struck by her recollections. On9/11, she said, she was overwhelmed by the sense of “anger and hurt’’ that so many of the Penn studentsaround her felt. By contrast, on 11/9, “there werepeople singing and dancing and someone lifted me up on the wall,’’ she said. “I still get emotional think-ing about it.’’ People power won, and Germany has been united and stable ever since.

The problem we have in dealing with the Arab-Muslim world today is the general absence or weak-ness of people power there. There is a low-grade civ-

il war going on inside the Arab-Muslim world today,only in too many cases it is bad ideas versus badideas, amplified by violence, rather than bad ideas versus good ideas amplified by people power.

In places like Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Af-ghanistan or Pakistan you have violent religiousextremist movements fighting with state securityservices. And while the regimes in these countries are committed to crushing their extremists, theyrarely take on their extremist ideas by offering pro-gressive alternatives.

These states are not promoting an inclusive,progressive and tolerant interpretation of Islamthat could be the foundation of people power. And when their people do take to the streets, it is usuallyagainst another people rather than to unify theirown ranks around good ideas.

So as we try to figure out how many troops tosend to stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan, let’sremember: Where there is people power weddedto progressive ideas, there is hope — and Americanpower can help. Where there is people power har-nessed to bad ideas, there is danger. Where there isno people power and only bad ideas, there will be no happy endings.

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Lessons From Berlin

Giving Europe a Voice

To the Editor:The Intelligence column in The New York Times

International Weekly proposing that Tony Blair be the first president of the European Union has hurt many genuine Europeans.

Most Europeans are proud to belong to the E.U., an economic entity that has no interest in wieldingmartial power around the globe. Tony Blair hasdamaged Europe’s image in the world by support-ing the illegitimate Iraq war, driven by ideologyand hubris of those who consider themselves to be“chosen” to rule the world. This makes him inap-propriate to fill the highly symbolic position of firstpresident of the E.U. His agenda, focused on so-called Euro-Atlantic integration, means furthersubordination of the E.U. to American geopoliticalobjectives and strategic interests, first of which isthe Afghan quagmire. His nomination would add insult to injury.

FRANçOIS ETTORI

Paris

To the Editor:I read with interest your comments about the

European Union presidency in the Intelligencecolumn published in Le Monde on October 17.

You assume that:1. Everyone in Europe is happy with appointing

a president, which is not true.2. You take the view that Britain will remain

strongly involved, even if David Cameron will beprime minister. Nothing is further from reality.The anti-E.U. sentiment in the U.K. is now so greatthat its prime minister will not give the popula-tion a referendum. If he did so 78 percent of the

population would vote for either leaving the E.U.altogether or at least claw back the parliamentarypowers already lost.

3. You wish to make the discredited Mr. Blairthe president of Europe. I am confident he will not be. The resistance in the U.K. to Mr. Blair, who isregarded by many on the left a war criminal, is ex-treme. The right will not countenance him either.

I am not anti-European otherwise I would not have chosen to live in France. However the U.K.is not Europe and the Brits are not Europeans,whether “the Left” acknowledges this or not.

Proof? Just ask randomly in the street what thepeople feel they are, the answer will invariably beEnglish, Welsh, Scottish, and sometimes British.

Ask whether they are European the answer willbe ambiguous indeed, “nice place to go on holiday to.” Or starker still, pitch any sports team against either the Germans, or sometimes the French andthe language in the tabloids gives you all the an-swers you need.

J. LOUIS C .SALLONS

France

Living With the Crisis

To the Editor:I welcome that the issue of the economic crisis

is gradually disappearing from the pages of theThe New York Times International Weekly thatis published in Clarín in Buenos Aires. At onepoint, during the recent months, many of yourarticles were related in one way or another to the crisis.

I have lived 43 years in Argentina; all my life I have experienced an economic crisis. However, Ilive a happy and fulfilling existence. Maybe Amer-

icans should try to understand that economics are not the only important issue in life.

HÉCTOR HORACIO OTERO

Buenos Aires

The Debate Over Climate

To the Editor:The public discussion about climate and green-

house gases centers about this or that percentageof emission reductions — and, by ignoring the ef-fects of growth on the accelerating consumption ofresources, misses the important points.

The uncontrolled population explosion, where the number of inhabitants will surpass 10 billion on this earth in 2050, let a group of senior scientistswonder about the consequences regarding cli-mate change: More poor people leads to defores-tation and increasing use of cheap coal, which willdefeat ambitious climate goals.

The other “growth” is the one of national andworld economies. More income corresponds withmore goods and energy consumed.

“Green” Energy encountered problems recently.Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen said almost twoyears ago that the massive use of nitrogen fertil-izers to grow diesel fuel from rape seed or ethanolfrom wheat produces more greenhouse gases thancan be saved by using these sources of “clean ener-gy”. There are also carbon dioxide emissions fromthe production and use of pesticides. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel still ignores these factsand furthers this adverse development with mas-sive subsidies.

DR. HANS-HINRICH WITT

Germany

LETTERS TO THE INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

Repubblica NewYork

W O R L D T R E N D S

MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2009 III

By STEVEN ERLANGER and

MAÏA de la BAUME

PARIS — The Hôtel Lambert, in acorner of the Île Saint-Louis overlook-ing the Seine, was once one of Paris’sbest-kept secrets. But when a wealthyQatari prince bought the crumbling 17th-century palace in 2007 for $88 mil-lion, the Lambert became the center ofattention, not all of it so attractive.

The Lambert was built as a private residence (a “hôtel particulier”) for the Lambert family and was finishedin 1644. But it has been through vari-ous owners, who have made various architectural changes, some of them disastrous. The building was most recently used as a kind of apartment complex for friends of the Rothschildfamily, and some of the most beauti-ful rooms, with frescoed ceilings and18th-century paneling, are moldy and

cracked. The plumbing is outdatedand leaks; the original floors are a mess, or have been replaced.

The stupendous “Gallery of Hercu-les,” with its paintings by Charles LeBrun, who also worked at Versailles, is dark with smoke and age; restorers have cleaned small sample sections.

Now some preservationists areupset over the plans of Prince Abdul-lah bin Khalifa al-Thani to restore the4,000-square-meter building and itsfinest features, while modernizing itfor his family and his extensive collec-tion of 17th- and 18th-century Frenchart. The prince plans to spend about$60 million to renovate the place.

There is also a small cloud of xeno-phobia hanging over the controversy,which is currently stuck in the courts.

Last month, in response to a suit byan association of preservationists,

“Paris Historique,” a Paris admin-istrative judge suspended the workpermit granted to the prince in June.A final decision is expected in a fewmonths.

Opponents see the plans as a threat to France’s “patrimoine,” or its cul-tural heritage. They say that some of the prince’s proposed modifications would ruin the building .

“It’s a true pearl, and like any true pearl, you have to protect it,” saidPierre Housieaux, the leader of “Par-is Historique,” which recently col-lected 8,000 signatures in an onlinepetition decrying the prince’s project.

“It is not just a postcard,” Mr. Hous-ieaux said. “There is the work of man behind it: there is masonry, there are stone carvings, there is woodwork.”

The French government, with close ties to Qatar, has supported the resto-

ration and modernization. The workon protected buildings must be over-seen by a state-certified architect.For the Lambert, that job belongs to Alain-Charles Perrot, the chief archi-tect for historic monuments. He seesmisplaced patriotism and a touch of racism at work, suggesting that op-ponents are seeing an unwelcome for-eign intrusion and a loss of what theyconsider to be rightfully theirs.

“The project is attacked because,

behind the scenes, the French can’t stand that the people buying hôtelsparticuliers in France are Arab princ-es,” he said.

Mr. Perrot said he believed that thecontroversy could lead the prince to abandon his plans. “If Karl Lagerfeld had bought the Lambert, he could have done anything; no one would have said anything,” Mr. Perrot said.“On the contrary, everyone would have applauded.”

By JIM YARDLEY

AMRAVATI, India — RajendraShekhawat, nicely polished in apressed white shirt and neatly part-ed hair, his face sunburned fromcampaigning in the south Indiansun, says he is running for office as acommon man. His pink cheeks sug-gest otherwise, though, since com-mon men in India usually toil out-doors without requiring sunscreen.

Another obvious clue in everyroom in which he campaigns in thiscity in the state of Maharashtra:Mom. She is Pratibha Patil, the presi-dent of India.

“I’m not using my parents’ nameat all,” Mr. Shekhawat, 42, statedin an upstairs office in his parents’home, which he is indisputably usingas a campaign headquarters. “I’mrunning on my own. But for sure, be-ing in a political family for so manyyears does help me, and gives me easy accessibility for doing the workof the people.”

Democracy is built on the oft-tar-nished ideal that any man or womancan get elected, but in India, home to the world’s biggest democracy, ithelps to be part of a political family.The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, scionsof the governing Congress Party, isIndia’s version of the Kennedys. Butother political dynasties, large and small, have proliferated so rapidlythat many analysts believe nepotismis corroding the political system.

India’s chaotic politics can some-times seem democratic to a fault: theelection cycle rarely pauses and the country has roughly 1,050 registerednational and regional political par-ties. But most of the major parties,including the majority CongressParty, are internally undemocratic;

there are no primaries and partyleaders discourage public dissent.Party bosses select candidates andhave shown an increasing tendencyto select their own relatives.

Here in Amravati, the decisionby Congress Party leaders to runMr. Shekhawat for this month’selections in Maharashtra State hasprovoked an angry backlash. He isrunning for a state assembly seat inthe same district where his parentsonce held elected office. But to put him there, Congress leaders pushedaside Mr. Sunil Deshmukh, a formerradiologist and two-term Congress incumbent with broad local support.

Leaders offered Mr. Deshmukh thechance to run elsewhere, but he re-belled and is seeking his own seat asan independent.

“This is a fight against injustice,” declared Mr. Deshmukh, warming to his role as political insurgent. “If he is defeated, that will send a verystrong message to all parties, no? Ifthe person is only the son or daugh-ter or a nephew of an important per-son, you can’t just thrust him on the people.” (At press time, the election was too close to call.)

Across India, political families areentrenched at every level of govern-ment and politics. At least nine of

the 32 members of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s cabinet eitherdescended from political familiesor have children seeking or holdingoffice. Parliament is littered with po-litical families; a recent study found that 31 of the 58 women elected had a husband, brother, father or father-in-law in politics.

The trend is even more glaring at the state level. In Maharashtra, ana-lysts estimate that 30 or more party candidates running this month are from political families.

“It has gotten into the DNA of the Indian political system,” said Jag-deep Chhokar, a founding memberof the Association for DemocraticReform in New Delhi. “To controlthe workings of the party, the leaderdepends on trusted people. And one of the traditions of Indian culture is that you trust family members morethan outsiders.”

Mrs. Patil, 74, the Indian presi-dent, has less than three years re-maining in her term. The position of president is largely ceremonial, withreal power invested in the primeminister and his cabinet, though thepresidency does command defer-ence. Mrs. Patil’s press officer saidthe president had not been involvedin her son’s candidacy but that the son, like anyone, has a constitutionalright to seek office.

Her son’s opponents belittle any suggestion that his family did notorchestrate his candidacy, pointingout that he has spent much of his lifeaway from Amravati.

“His only asset is his mom,” saidDr. Pradeep Shingore, 56, a cardiolo-gist who is the Bharatiya Janata Par-ty candidate for the seat. “Politics isbeing used as ancestral property.”

ED ALCOCK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

ADAM FERGUSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

PARIS JOURNAL

Palace Overhaul Raises Specter of Racism

Fears that nepotismhurts the world’slargest democracy.

Family Ties Dominate Indian Politics

Congress Party leaders pushedaside a popular incumbent torun Rajendra Shekhawat,center, the son of the Indianpresident, for elections inMaharashtra State.

By ROBERT F. WORTH

TARIM, Yemen — This remote des-ert valley, with its towering bluffs andancient mud-brick houses, is probablybest known to outsiders as the birth-place of Osama bin Laden’s father. Most accounts about Yemen in the Westernnews media refer ominously to it as “the ancestral homeland” of the leader of AlQaeda, as though his murderous ideol-ogy had somehow been shaped here.

But in fact, Tarim and its environs are a historic center of Sufism, a mysticalstrand within Islam. The local religiousschool, Dar al-Mustafa, is a multiculturalplace full of students from Indonesia andCalifornia .

“The reality is that Osama bin Laden has never been to Yemen,” said HabibOmar, the director of Dar al-Mustafa.“His thinking has nothing to do with thisplace.”

Lately, Al Qaeda has found a new sanc-tuary here and carried out a number of

attacks. But the group’s inspiration, Mr.Omar said, did not originate here. Most ofthe group’s adherents have lived in SaudiArabia — as has Mr. bin Laden — and itwas there, or in Afghanistan or Pakistan,that they adopted a jihadist mind-set.

Mr. Omar set out 16 years ago to re-store the ancient religious heritage ofTarim. It is an extraordinary legacy foran arid, windswept town in the far south-east corner of the Arabian Peninsula.

About 800 years ago, traders from Ta-rim and other parts of Hadramawt, as thebroader area is known, began travelingdown the coast to the Arabian Sea and onward in rickety boats to Indonesia, Ma-laysia and India. They thrived, and theybrought their religion with them. Nineespecially devout men, all with roots inTarim, are now remembered as “the ninesaints,” Mr. Omar said, because of their success in spreading Islam across Asia.

“This town, with its thousand-year tra-dition, was the main catalyst for as many

as 40 percent of the world’s Muslims’becoming Muslim,” said John Rhodus, a32-year-old Arizonan who has studied atDar al-Mustafa off and on since 2000. Ta-rim’s Sufist tradition also appears to havehelped shape the relatively moderate Is-lam practiced in much of South Asia.

Hadrami merchants remained anextraordinarily intrepid and successfulnetwork until well into the 20th century.Some made their fortune in Saudi Arabia— including Muhammad bin Laden, Osa-ma’s father, who became a construction magnate — and remained there. Others returned home and built flamboyant pal-aces as monuments to their success.

Most of the merchants fled after aCommunist junta seized power after the British withdrawal from south Yemen in1967. Now their palaces are abandoned and decayed. The Communist years,which lasted until North and South Ye-men unified in 1990, were even worse for those who refused to accept the new gov-

ernment’s enforced secularism.“Some religious scholars were

tortured, others murdered,” Mr.Omar said. “Some were tied to the backs of cars and driven through the streets until they were dead.”Mr. Omar’s father, who had been a renowned religious teacher in Ta-rim, was kidnapped and killed.

In 1993, Mr. Omar began teach-ing Sufi-inspired religious classes in his home. Three years later,he moved into a two-story whiteschool building, with a mosqueattached. There are now about700 students, at least half of them South Asians, with a rising num-ber of Americans and Britons.

Most of the students are be-tween 18, the minimum age, and 25. They usually spend four yearsstudying here before returning totheir homes. Mr. Omar encouragesthem to pursue careers and spread

their beliefs quietly.But even as the school grew, a more

militant Islam was gaining followersacross the region. Saudi Arabia, on Ye-men’s northern border, was financingultraconservative religious schoolsand scholars in an effort to shore up its influence here. In 1991 the Saudi king,angered by Yemen’s public support for Saddam Hussein, abruptly sent home a million Yemeni laborers, many of whom had lived in Saudi Arabia for decades andhad been shaped by it.

The Yemeni president, Ali AbdullahSaleh, accommodated the Saudis andwelcomed many Arab jihadists who hadfought in Afghanistan.

Mr. Omar acknowledged, somewhat re-luctantly, that his own, milder approachto Islam had enemies in Hadramawt.

“There are differences,” he said. “Butwe find the appropriate way to deal withthese people is to remind them of Islamicprinciples, not to speak ill of them.”

In a Remote Valley,Moderate Face of Islam

BRYAN DENTON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Tarim, Yemen, is a historic center ofSufi Islam, a mystical strand.

A Qatari princeis renovating the Hôtel Lambert in Paris, to the dismay of somepreservationists.

Repubblica NewYork

W O R L D T R E N D S

IV MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2009

By BETTINA WASSENER

HONG KONG — In December,Christie’s will auction off “the VividPink,” a bubble-gum-colored five-car-at diamond with an estimated value of$5 million to $7 million. But insteadof scheduling the sale for New Yorkor Geneva, the city chosen was Hong Kong.

Asia’s role in the market for superhigh-end luxury goods is mushroom-ing, reflecting an underlying shift inconsumer spending power that hasbeen creeping along for years, butwhich received a boost from the globaleconomic crisis.

Christie’s and its rival Sotheby’ssay that in the last few years HongKong has emerged as a top location for sales of expensive jewelry, gems and fine wines. Asians have also becomemajor buyers of ultraluxury goods at their auctions in London, New Yorkand Geneva.

Christie’s clear 101-carat Shizukadiamond, for instance, sold in HongKong for $6.2 million in May 2008. Thatsale, and the one coming December 1 of its big pink diamond, “are both greatexamples showing how important this

market has become at the very topend,” said Vickie Sek, head of jewelryat Christie’s Asia.

In another telling example, Rolls-Royce, which did not even have dealer-ships in Asia until 2003, immediately received 20 orders for its new $250,000Ghost when it presented the car inHong Kong last month — despite taxesthat double the price.

More broadly, household spendingin developing Asian nations is expect-ed to increase as continued growth,rising populations and improvinggovernment health and retirementsafety nets reduce the need for fami-lies to save.

At the same time, many of the world’seconomies are struggling to return togrowth after the financial crisis. Rus-sia and the Middle East are taking a hitfrom lower oil prices. And consumers inthe world’s traditional spending power-house, the United States, are weigheddown by debt and expected to be muchmore cautious about opening their wal-lets for quite some time.

“The United States is in the earlystages of a multiyear retrenchment,”Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan

Stanley’s Asia operations, said in a re-cent speech in Hong Kong.

The result is a gradual rebalancing in spending power toward emergingnations in Asia — and China, in par-ticular.

China, the world’s most populous na-tion, has already become the biggestglobal car market, having overtakenthe United States earlier this year.And Credit Suisse forecast last month that China’s share of global consump-tion would overtake that of the UnitedStates by 2020.

China’s population of “high networth individuals,” those worth $1 mil-lion or more, surpassed that of Britain for the first time last year, according toan annual study published by Capgem-ini and Merrill Lynch in June.

North America, Japan and Ger-many together still accounted for 54percent of the global total, but the au-thors of the report also predicted that the Asia-Pacific region would surpass North America by 2013.

Asia has already seen a large risein the number of individuals who can spend a lot in the auction halls of Chris-tie’s and Sotheby’s. In the world of top

Fred Bergsten, director of the Peter-son Institute for International Eco-nomics. “The dollar went up 40 per-cent between 1995 and 2002, so this isa necessary rebalancing.”

Nevertheless, this has been thedollar’s fastest drop in six years; inrecent weeks the dollar has neared$1.50 against the euro, comparedwith $1.25 in March. The pound hasedged up against the dollar as well,from $1.41 in April to $1.64 this pastweek.

The political argument in America over the dollar’s trajectory is ac-companied by a fierce debate among economists.

“Dollar weakness is a major prob-lem for American jobs and livingstandards,” said David Malpass, aWall Street economist and outspokencritic of the dollar’s decline.

“As the dollar devalues, we haveless capital and purchasing powercompared to the rest of the world, andthere is an increasing risk of higher interest rates and inflation,” Mr. Mal-pass said.

But Mr. Bergsten argues the dollaris only now getting back to a fair valu-ation against other currencies if the United States is to continue to closeits trade gap.

With the recent drop, he said, thedollar is fairly valued against theeuro but needs to ease 10 percentagainst Asian currencies like theJapanese yen to create a level play-ing field for American business.

And for all the fluctuations against the dollar by major currencies, thedollar has not moved at all recentlyagainst the Chinese renminbi, which is managed by Beijing in ways thatallow Chinese exporters to enjoy aweaker currency and gain marketshare worldwide.

The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, has consistently said the administration favors a strong dollar,but currency markets focus on theunlikely prospect of concrete action,like an interest rate increase.

“The Obama administration maysay they want a strong dollar,” saidNeil Mellor, a currency strategistat BNY Mellon Global Markets inLondon. “But everyone knows they haven’t got the means to supportit. The Federal Reserve can’t raiserates, and the White House can’t cut the budget deficit anytime soon.”

If the dollar does keep falling and the euro keeps rising, it could in-crease trade tensions with Europe,especially big exporters like Germa-ny, which have already been hard hit by the global economic slump.

“The strength of the euro is comingat absolutely the wrong time,” saidJens Nagel, head of the international department of the German Export-ers Association in Berlin. “The U.S. isour biggest trading partner after the European Union, and it’s a big blowto the recovery of auto companiesand industrial exporters.”

Mr. Mellor predicts the dollarwill keep dropping, reaching $1.60against the euro by early next year.

As the global economy recoversand international manufacturersramp up output, they are giving

priority to their more competitiveplants, including those in the UnitedStates, said Pierre Dufour, seniorexecutive vice president at Air Liq-uide, a French supplier of industrialgases to steelmakers, semiconduc-tor firms, and other industrial giantsworldwide.

“It has two sides, like it alwaysdoes,” said Carl Martin Welcker,owner of a machine tools maker,Schütte, in Cologne, Germany.

“On the one hand, it makes ourmachines significantly more expen-sive,” said Mr. Welcker, whose equip-ment churns out 80 percent of theworld’s spark plugs. “On the otherhand, we’re seeing internationalcompanies move production backto the U.S., which helps our salesthere.”

By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

MOSCOW — Nearly two decades after the collapse of the Communist Party, Russia’s rulers have hit upona model for future success: the Com-munist Party.

Or at least, the one that reigns nextdoor.

Like an envious underachiever,Vladimir V. Putin’s party, UnitedRussia, is increasingly examininghow it can emulate the Chinese Com-munist Party, especially its skill inshepherding China through the finan-cial crisis relatively unbowed.

United Russia’s leaders even con-vened a special meeting this month with senior Chinese CommunistParty officials to hear firsthand how they wield power.

In truth, the Russians express no desire to return to Communism as afar-reaching Marxist-Leninist ideol-ogy, whether the Soviet version or the much attenuated one in Beijing. What they admire, it seems, is the Chinese ability to use a one-party system to keep tight control over the country while still driving significant eco-nomic growth.

It is a historical turnabout that res-onates, given that the Chinese Com-munists were inspired by the Soviets,before the two sides had a lengthy rift.

For the Russians, what matters isthe countries’ divergent paths in re-cent decades. They are acutely aware that even as Russia has enduredmany dark days in its transition to amarket economy, China appears to have carried out a fairly similar shift more artfully.

The Russians also seem almostashamed that their economy ishighly dependent on oil, gas and other natural resources, as if Russia were athird world nation, while China excelsat manufacturing products sought bythe world.

“The accomplishments of China’s Communist Party in developing its government deserve the high-est marks,” Aleksandr D. Zhukov, a deputy prime minister and senior Putin aide, declared at the meetingwith Chinese officials on October 9 in the border city of Suifenhe, China,northwest of Vladivostok. “The prac-tical experience they have should beintensely studied.”

The fascination with the Chinese Communist Party underscores Unit-ed Russia’s lack of a core philosophy.The party has functioned largely asan arm of Mr. Putin’s authority, even

campaigning on the slogan “Putin’sPlan.” Lately, it has championed“Russian Conservatism,” without detailing what exactly that is.

Whatever the motivation, Russiain recent years has started moving toward the Chinese model politically and economically. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia plunged into capitalism haphazardly, sellingoff many industries and loosening regulation. Under Mr. Putin, the gov-ernment has reversed course, seiz-ing more control over many sectors.Today, both countries govern with apotent centralized authority.

Corruption is worse in Russia thanChina, according to global indexes,and foreign companies generally consider Russia’s investment cli-mate less hospitable as well, in partbecause of less respect for propertyrights.

The world financial crisis accentu-ated comparisons between the econo-mies, drawing attention to Moscow’s

policies. In June, the World Bank pro-jected that China’s economy would grow by 7.2 percent in 2009, while Russia’s would shrink by 7.9 percent.

Mr. Putin’s political aides havelong studied how to move the political system to the kind that took root formany decades in countries like Japan and Mexico, with a de facto one-party government under a democraticguise, political analysts said. The Russians tend to gloss over the factthat in many of those countries, long-serving ruling parties have fallen.

Dmitri Kosyrev, a political com-mentator for Russia’s state news agency and author of detective novelsset in Asia, said it was only natural that the Kremlin would cast its gazeto the East.

“When they discovered that therewas a way to reform a formally so-cialist nation into something muchbetter and more efficient, of coursethey would take note,” Mr. Kosyrev said. “Everyone here sees China asthe model, because Russia is not the model.”

YM YIK/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

PHILIP SCOTT ANDREWS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The dollar’s slide hurts companies trying to export goods to the U.S. Shipping containers lined up at the Port of Long Beach in California.

NEWS ANALYSIS

In Chinese Communist Party,Russia’s Rulers See Model

Auction Houses Shift Focus to Asia’s Emerging Economies

DownsideIn the FallOf the Dollar

From Page 1

Beijing’s handling ofthe economy is envied by those in Moscow.

wines, for example, Asian buyers are center stage. Christie’s said that in thespring season, Asian buyers account-ed for 61 percent of the total sales val-ue at its New York, London and Hong Kong wine auctions. Four years ear-lier, the figure was 7 percent.

Its Hong Kong wine auctions, more-over, have the highest average lot price— roughly three times that in NewYork or London — because Christie’sputs only the rarest, most expensivevintage wines up for sale in the city,

said David Elswood, Christie’s inter-national head of wines.

The vast majority of Asian buyers, he said, fully intend to drink the winesthey buy. “It’s all about prestige ratherthan investment,” Mr. Elswood said.“You cannot show off a wine without opening and drinking it.”

Colin Kelly, Asia-Pacific regional di-rector at Rolls-Royce, agreed. “Peoplehere in Asia are more likely to be com-fortable with showing their wealth,”he said.

Christie’sand other auctionhouses are offeringhigh-enddiamonds like ‘‘the Vivid Pink’’in the Asian market.

Repubblica NewYork

M O N E Y & B U S I N E S S

MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2009 V

#+)%(*' $, "&..&-

Source: Global Trade Atlas

The global financial slowdown has affected all

of the largest exporters ...

But it has affected China less than the others.

China

United States

Japan

Germany

$800

700

600

500

400

300

200

100

billion EXPORTS

First six months of each year

EXPORTS

Through 6/09

CHANGE

2009 vs. 2008

’97 ’09’07’05’03’01’99

THE NEW YORK TIMES

China

Germany

United States

Japan

Netherlands

France

Italy

Belgium

South Korea

Britain

$521.8

515.9

498.2

250.9

229.3

223.2

189.1

172.6

165.4

160.8

–21.7

–34.1

–23.8

–37.3

–31.5

–31.9

–34.1

–32.8

–22.7

–34.2

% bil.

By DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI — With the global re-cession making consumers and busi-nesses more price-conscious, China isgrabbing market share from its exportcompetitors, solidifying a dominance in world trade that many economistssay could last long after any economicrecovery.

China’s exports this year have al-ready vaulted it past Germany to be-come the world’s biggest exporter.Now, those market share gains arethreatening to increase trade frictionswith the United States and Europe.

Although world trade declined thisyear because of the recession, consum-ers are demanding lower-priced goodsand Beijing is finding a way to deliver.Chinese factories are aggressively re-ducing prices, allowing China to gainground in old markets and make in-roads in new ones.

The most striking gains have come inthe United States, where China has dis-placed Canada as the largest supplierof imports. In the first seven months of 2008, just under 15 percent of Americanimports came from China. Over thesame period this year, 19 percent did.

In knit apparel, for instance, Ameri-can imports from China jumped 10percent through July of this year —while America’s imports from Mexico,Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvadorplunged 19 to 24 percent in each coun-try, according to Global Trade Infor-mation Services. A similar tale is toldaround the world, from Japan to Italy.

One reason is the ability of Chinese manufacturers to quickly slash prices by reducing wages and other costs inproduction zones that often rely on mi-grant workers. Factory managers heresay American buyers are demanding they do just that.

“The buyers are getting more and

more tough in bargaining for lowerprices, especially American buyers,”says Liao Yuan, the head of interna-tional trade at the Changrun GarmentCompany, which is based in China andexports jeans to Europe and the UnitedStates. “They offer $2.85 per pair of jeans for a package of a dozen, when thereasonable price is $7.”

Because China produces a diverseportfolio of low-priced and essentialitems, analysts say its exports canhold up well in a recession. Few other countries can match what has come to be called the “China Price.”

The expiration of textile quotas inlarge parts of the worldthis year has also allowedChina to increase its mar-ket penetration.

But equally importantare government policiesthat support this country’s export sector — from Bei-jing keeping its currencyweak against the dollarto subsidizing exportersthrough tax credits andlow-interest loans fromstate-run banks.

All told, in the first halfof 2009, China exported$521 billion worth of goodsto the rest of the world.

Its share of furniture im-ports in the United States has grown to 54 percent,from 50 percent, over the last year, while furniture exports to the UnitedStates from Canada andItaly have plunged 40 per-cent from a year ago. In Europe, Chi-nese textiles and apparel have gainedmarket share in every major country,after the quota expiration in January.Not long ago, Italy’s shoe imports were

It has many names: “buycotting,” ethical consumerism, moral eco-nomics. Whatever you call it, buy-ing is getting ever more politicalacross the affluent world.

A car is no lon-ger just a car, nor a cup of coffee just a cup of coffee. Inthe age of hybrids and fair trade, the mall is a forum to

express convictions and hopes.Today one can buy not just carbon

offsets, organic fruit and recycledpaper, but also an iPod whose pur-chase combats mother-to-child H.I.V. transmission in Africa; a sneaker from Timberland made of biodegradable wool and organically tanned leather; and fair-trade con-doms, made with sustainable latex.

But, as the trend has gatheredmomentum, a debate has begun: isconsumption an exciting new formof citizenship? Or is it a sign of howcorroded citizenship has become?

Political consumption is not new;its history streaks through the civil-rights movement, the campaignagainst apartheid and other causes.What is new is that boycotting is sur-rendering to buycotting, the sendingof positive, not just negative, signals;and that it is practiced by main-stream shoppers, not just activists.

A study published this fall in the Political Science Quarterly found that 62 percent of Americans were willing to pay $5 extra for a $20 sweater produced more ethically,and three-quarters would spend 50cents a pound more for fair-trade coffee.

Proponents of buycotting seethese premiums as pure politicalexpression: citizens’ parting with

money to refine the world. Someeven argue that cash-voting goesfurther than ballot-casting: we buyevery day; but we vote far less often.

But, ethical consumption has begun to attract critics. One set are free-enterprise champions who argue that politicizing consumptiondistorts prices and spurs overpro-duction while imposing arbitrary conditions on producers — like in-sisting that developing-world farm-ers enroll their children in school.

Another group bemoans that citizenship has come to this. Citi-zenship, for them, is about voting, marching, writing — about being involved. They say, we have begunto turn inward.

In an article last year in TheLancet, the British medical journal,the scholars Colleen O’Maniqueand Ronald Labonte strongly con-demned RED, the marketing cam-paign for iPods and other productswhose purchase helps to finance thebattle against H.I.V./AIDS in Africa.

“Be wary of the 21st century’s new noblesse oblige that replacesthe efficiency of tax-funded pro-grams and transfers in improving health equity with a consumption-driven ‘charitainment’ model,” they wrote.

Market citizenship, as critics callit, lets the state evade its responsi-bilities, they say. Public goods likehealth systems should be publicly provided, they say. Privatizing compassion may tempt the state to neglect problems.

The question is this: have we, withour ethical cars, condoms and car-rots, found a way to make markets humane? Or have we rather found away to make politics bearable to usby turning it into shopping?

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

OKLAHOMA CITY — A new tech-nique that tapped previously inac-cessible supplies of natural gas in the United States is spreading to the rest of the world, raising hopes of a huge ex-pansion in global reserves of the clean-est fossil fuel.

Italian and Norwegian oil engineersand geologists have arrived in Texas,Oklahoma and Pennsylvania to learnhow to extract gas from layers of ablack rock called shale. Companiesare leasing huge tracts of land across Europe for exploration.

The global drilling rush is still in itsearly stages. But energy analysts are already predicting that shale could re-duce Europe’s dependence on Russiannatural gas. They said they believedthat gas reserves in many countriescould increase over the next two de-cades, comparable with the 40 percentincrease in the United States in recentyears.

“It’s a breakout play that is going to identify gigantic resources around theworld,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, an ener-gy expert at Rice University in Texas.“That will change the geopolitics ofnatural gas.”

More extensive use of natural gascould aid in reducing global warming, because gas produces fewer emis-sions of greenhouse gases than eitheroil or coal. China and India, which havegrowing economies that rely heavily on coal for electricity, appear to havelarge potential for production of shale gas.

Shale is a sedimentary rock rich inorganic material that is found in many

In Slump, China SolidifiesIts Lead in Global Trade

JINAN YU/REUTERS

ANANDGIRIDHARADAS

ESSAY

Political Statements

At the Cash RegisterIn Shale,

New Way

To Tap Gas

MATT NAGER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

The recession has increased demand for low-cost goods from China.A seamstress at work in Anhui Province.

parts of the world. It was of little use as a source of gas until about a decade ago, when American companies devel-oped new techniques to fracture therock and drill horizontally.

Because so little drilling has beendone in shale fields outside of the Unit-ed States and Canada, gas analystshave made a wide array of estimatesfor how much shale gas could be tappedglobally. Even the most conservativeestimates are enormous, projectingat least a 20 percent increase in theworld’s known reserves of naturalgas.

One recent study by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a con-sulting group, calculated that the re-coverable shale gas outside of NorthAmerica could turn out to be equiva-lent to 211 years’ worth of natural gas consumption in the United Statesat the present level of demand, andmaybe as much as 690 years. The low figure would represent a 50 percentincrease in the world’s known gas re-serves, and the high figure, a 160 per-cent increase.

The projections suggest that thenew method of producing gas “is the biggest energy innovation of the de-cade,” said Daniel Yergin, chairmanof the Cambridge consulting group.“And the amazing thing is there was no grand opening ceremony for it. It

just snuck up.”Over the last five years, production

of gas from shale has spread acrosswide swaths of Texas, Louisiana andPennsylvania. Now American compa-nies are looking abroad for lucrativeshale fields in countries hungry formore energy. They are focusing par-ticularly on Europe, where gas prices are sometimes twice what they are inthe United States, and large shale bedsare located close to some cities.

Exxon Mobil has drilled a few ex-ploratory wells in Germany in recentmonths. Devon Energy is teaming upwith Total, the French oil company,seeking approval to drill in France.ConocoPhillips announced recentlythat it had signed an agreement witha subsidiary of a small British firm to explore 400,000 hectares in the BalticBasin of Poland.

European energy executives saythey are excited about the prospectsbecause the Continent’s conventionalgas reserves are too small to meet de-mand.

“It is obvious to everybody that it hashuge potential,” said Oivind Reinert-sen, president of StatoilHydro USA andMexico, a Norwegian company withgrowing shale interests. “You see a lot of land-grabbing by different compa-nies in Europe, potentially spreading to the Far East, China and India.”

Using a new technique,engineersare learninghow to extract natural gas from shale,a black rock which is rich in organic material.

dominated by Romania; now Chinahas a commanding share.

Japan once relied on electronicsshipments to the United States, butevery year for the past decade Japan

has lost market share to China. In1999, electronics goods from Japanmade up 18 percent of America’s elec-tronics imports. Today, that figureis down to 7 percent. China’s market

share has climbed 10 to 20 per-cent from a year ago.

China’s leaders are well aware of the need to shift the economy away from heavy dependenceon exports and toward stronger domestic consumption. China iseager to sell higher-priced goods like computer chips, aircraft andpharmaceuticals — all of which would bring better-paying jobsand healthier economic growth.

Many economists say that asChinese consumers become rich-er, they will buy more of their owngoods. And as the dollar falls, itwill make American exports morecompetitive globally, including

in China. Those trends together couldhelp rebalance global trade, which be-came overly reliant on Americans buy-ing cheap Chinese goods and Chinabuying American debt.

Repubblica NewYork

S C I E N C E & T E C H N O L O GY: G A D G E T S

VI MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2009

By BRAD STONEand ASHLEE VANCE

SAN FRANCISCO — The high-tech industry has excited lately over anidea that is not exactly new: tabletcomputers.

Quietly, several high-tech compa-nies are lining up to deliver versionsof these keyboard-free, touch-screenportable machines in the next fewmonths. Industry watchers have their eye on Apple in particular to sell sucha device by early next year.

Tablets have been around in vari-ous forms for two decades, thus far de-livering little other than memorablefailure. Nonetheless, the new batch of devices has gripped the imaginationof tech executives, bloggers and gad-get hounds.

In these visions, tablets will savethe newspaper and book publishingindustries, present another way towatch television and movies, playvideo games, and offer a visually rich way to enjoy the Web and the expand-ing world of mobile applications.

“Desktops, laptops — we alreadyknow how those work,” said BrianLam, editorial director of the populargadget site Gizmodo, which reportsand hypothesizes almost daily aboutthese devices. Tablets, he said, “areone of the last few mysteries left.”

Tablet computers were first con-ceived as a way to supplant plain oldpaper, in the same way that PCs re-placed the typewriter.

In 1993, Apple’s Newton Message-Pad, with its expansive screen andstylus pen, became known less forits innovative features than for being lampooned in “Doonesbury,” whichridiculed the device for its flawedhandwriting recognition. Steven P.Jobs killed the Newton when he re-turned to Apple in 1997.

Then in 2001, at Comdex, the indus-

try trade show, Bill Gates introducednew Windows software for tabletswith a bold prediction: within fiveyears, he said, tablets “will be the mostpopular form of PC sold in America.” Itdidn’t happen, of course. Tablets run-ning Windows sell only a few hundred thousand units a year, mostly in busi-ness fields like health care and finan-cial services.

There were basic problems withthese early tablets: they cost too much and did not do enough. “Software en-gineers got ahead of the hardware ca-pabilities,” said Paul Jackson, a con-sumer product analyst at ForresterResearch, an independent technologyand market research company. “But

we may be finally getting to the point where the dreams and aspirations ofthose designers are actually meeting capable and reasonably priced tech-nology.”

The drumbeat of tablet productintroductions has already begun. InJune, Archos, a French consumer elec-tronics company, began selling a smalltouch-screen tablet running Google’sAndroid software. It will introduce an-other tablet that runs on Microsoft’sWindows 7, which has built-in support for touch screens.

“A road warrior doesn’t want to takea big clamshell netbook with him,”said Frédéric Bala, vice president formarketing at Archos.

The industry blog TechCrunch has

also commissioned its own Web tab-let, called the CrunchPad, which it hassaid it will start selling later this year.

Despite its past problems in the tab-let business, Microsoft appears ready to try again. In September, imagesof a booklike Microsoft device calledCourier, with two 18-centimeter color screens, surfaced on Gizmodo.

Apple’s rumored tablet is the mosthighly anticipated of the lot. Analystsexpect Apple to introduce it early nextyear — a sort of expanded, updatedversion of the iPod Touch, priced ataround $700.

Colin Smith, an Apple spokesman,declined to comment on the compa-ny’s product plans. But Apple’s tablet will most likely have little in commonwith the Newton, which was essen-tially a personal digital assistant. The new crop of tablets is being viewed asmore flexible — gadgets that combine elements of the iPhone, e-book readerslike the Kindle and laptops.

Apple has been working on such atablet since at least 2003, according to several former employees.

Despite the preponderance of apps, there is still the persistent question of whether regular people will really finda use for tablet computers. Smallercellphones are increasingly multipur-pose and fit nicely in a jacket pocket.And low-end laptops are inexpensive,run a full-fledged operating systemand offer the luxury of a keyboard.

“I can imagine something like theiPhone with a much bigger screenbeing a gorgeous device with greatcapacity, but I don’t know where Iwould fit that into my life,” said a for-mer Apple executive, who declined to be named because of Apple’s secrecy policies, but who anticipates an Apple tablet next year. “Those are the de-bates that have been happening insideApple for quite some time.”

By ANNE EISENBERG

People with diabetes often injectthemselves with insulin at mealtimeto help control their blood sugar lev-els. But a new, palm-size device may let them discreetly inhale a dose ofinsulin instead of using a needle.

A small inhaler and insulin pow-der created by the MannKind Corpo-ration, a drug developer in Valencia, California, are before the Food and Drug Administration for marketingapproval.

The insulin powder, called Afresa, is inhaled into the lungs, dissolvesthere and then travels into the blood-stream, says Matthew J. Pfeffer,chief financial officer at MannKind.

Using insulin or other drugs tocontrol blood sugar helps diabeticsavoid serious complications, includ-ing heart disease, kidney failure,blindness and nerve damage.

Leonid Poretsky, chief of endocri-nology at Beth Israel Medical Center

in New York and director of the Ger-ald J. Friedman Diabetes Institutethere, said that the MannKind sys-tem will face many problems even ifit is approved.

“Injections today are essentiallypainless,” he said of the short, thinneedles that are commonly used to inject insulin. And you don’t neces-sarily “have to draw from a bottle in-to a syringe. Injections work so wellthat the advantages of a new routelike this are unclear.”

Dr. Poretsky was also concerned about using the lungs to transportdrugs. “It’s possible for people tostay on insulin for decades,” he said. “The whole issue of exposing thelungs to insulin for a long period oftime has to be examined carefully.”

The use of insulin in an inhaled

form is not new. It was introducedby Pfizer with a product called Exu-bera in 2006. But the inhaler usedwith Exubera was large and awk-ward, some critics contended, which may have been a reason the product didn’t become popular. It was with-drawn less than two years after fed-eral approval.

But MannKind may have betterprospects because of its smallerinhaler and fast-acting insulin. Mr.Pfeffer says the MannKind inhalerfits neatly in one hand, and a second-generation version the company isusing in clinical trials is even small-er, the size of a whistle.

Patients put insulin doses — pre-packaged in cartridges — into theinhaler and turn the mouthpiece torelease the insulin. The inhaler uses no electricity or compressed gas.

“The patient’s breathing actiondoes the job,” Mr. Pfeffer said. “The airflow through the cartridge al-

lows the powder to beinhaled.”

The system now be-fore the F.D.A. is foradults with Type 1 dia-betes, which often be-gins in childhood, andType 2 diabetes, whichtypically occurs whenpeople are older.

Simos Simeonidis,a senior biotechnol-ogy analyst at the New York investment bankRodman & Renshaw,who wrote a report onMannKind, said he ex-pected its system to beavailable next year, ifthe F.D.A. approved.

(Dr. Simeonidis hasno stock in MannKind, but Rodman & Ren-shaw has provided in-

vestment banking services for it.)Dr. Gerald Bernstein, a New York-

based endocrinologist who is a for-mer president of the American Dia-betes Association, agreed that thelong-term use of inhalable insulinmight carry risks for some patients. Dr. Bernstein is vice president of the Generex Biotechnology Corpora-tion, which is developing an insulin delivered through the lining of themouth.

“It’s counterintuitive to use thefragile cells of the alveoli,” the tiny air sacs within the lungs, “to get in-sulin to the bloodstream,” he said.“The lungs were developed to trans-port gases, not proteins.”

Mr. Pfeffer of MannKind said that the company’s clinical data included no signs of damage to lungs.

By JIM MOTAVALLI

For decades, automakers have been on a quest to make cars quieter: anauto that purrs, and glides almost si-lently in traffic.

They have finally succeeded. Plug-in hybrid and electric cars, it turns out,not only reduce air pollution, they cut noise pollution as well with their whis-per-quiet motors. But that has created a different problem. They aren’t noisy enough.

So safety experts, worried thathybrids pose a threat if pedestrians,children and others can’t hear them approaching, want automakers to sup-ply some digitally enhanced vroom. In-deed, just as cellphones have ring tones,“car tones” may not be far behind — anoption for owners of electric vehicles tochoose the sound their cars emit.

Working with Hollywood special-effects wizards, some hybrid autocompanies have started tinkering insound studios, rather than machineshops, to customize engine noises.The Fisker Karma, an $87,900 plug-

in hybrid expected to go on sale nextyear, will emit a sound — pumped out of speakers in the bumpers — that the company founder, Henrik Fisker, de-scribes as “a cross between a starshipand a Formula One car.”

Nissan is also consulting with thefilm industry on sounds that could beemitted by its forthcoming Leaf bat-tery-electric vehicle, while Toyota has been working with the National High-way Traffic Safety Administration, theNational Federation of the Blind andthe Society of Automotive Engineerson sounds for electric vehicles.

“One possibility is choosing yourown noise,” said Nathalie Bauters, aspokeswoman for BMW’s Mini divi-sion, who added that such technologycould be added to one of BMW’s elec-tric vehicles in the future.

The notion that battery E.V.’s andplug-in hybrids might be too quiet has gained backing in Congress, amongfederal regulators and on the Inter-net. The Pedestrian Safety Enhance-ment Act of 2009, introduced early this

year, would require a federal safetystandard to protect pedestrians from ultra-quiet cars.

Karen Aldana, a spokeswoman fortraffic safety agency, which is alsoworking on the issue, said, “We’re look-ing at data on noise and E.V. safety, but manufacturers are starting to addressit voluntarily.”

A Toyota spokesman, John Hanson, said: “I don’t know of any injuries re-lated to this, but it is a concern. We are moving rapidly toward broader useof electrification in vehicles, and it’sa fact that these cars are very quietand could pose a risk to unsightedpeople.”

A study published last year by theUniversity of California, Riverside and financed by the National Fed-eration of the Blind evaluated the ef-fect of sounds emitted by hybrid and internal-combustion cars traveling at 8 kilometers per hour. People listen-ing in a lab could correctly detect agas-powered car’s approach when itwas eight meters, but could not hear

KAREN BLEIER/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

MINH UONG/THE NEW YORK TIMES

DAVID A. KRAMER

An insulin inhaler from the MannKindCorporation is awaiting approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

High-tech gurus project wild dreamsonto blank slates.

Elusive Tablet Computer May Take Root

Benefits Are Unclear Of New Insulin Inhaler

For the Hybrid Car, Pick a Customized Engine Noise The FiskerKarma, aplug-in electrichybrid, will emita sound created in a studio, not a machine shop.

the arrival of a hybrid operating in si-lent battery mode until it was only two meters away.

Some electric-vehicle drivers havetaken a low-tech approach to alerting pedestrians. When Paul Scott of San-ta Monica, California, drives his 2002Toyota RAV4 electric car, he often rollsdown the windows along busy streets and turns up his radio so people knowhis virtually silent vehicle is there.

Mr. Scott, vice president of the ad-vocacy group Plug In America, saidhe would prefer giving drivers control

over whether the motor makes noise,unlike, say, the Fisker Karma, whichwill make its warning noise automati-cally.

“Quiet cars need to stay quiet — weworked so hard to make them thatway,” he said. “It’s the driver’s respon-sibility not to hit somebody.”

Mr. Scott has already warmed up to the idea of a car ring tone. “It shouldbe a manually operated noisemaker,a button on the steering wheel trig-gering a recording of your choice,” he said.

Repubblica NewYork

A R T S & S T Y L E S

MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2009 VII

By DAVID CARR

Fame is fleeting, of course, but cer-tain types last longer than others.More than seven decades after herdeath, the aviator Amelia Earhart stillfascinates. Known for her willingness to attempt ill-advised, even foolhardy feats, she has been the subject of more than 100 books, and her name is plas-tered on bridges, United States Navyships and museums.

Now she is the subject of a biograph-ical film, “Amelia,” directed by MiraNair, starring Hilary Swank, whichreverently portrays a celebrity whoremained irreverent and humble until her death while trying to circumnavi-gate the globe. It opens this monthin the United States and has a widerglobal release this winter.

The mystery about Earhart’s dis-appearance in 1937 accounts for someof the ongoing allure, but she enduresbecause she was a pioneer whose ad-ventures went beyond personal ag-grandizement. She took on the lawsof nature (humans were not meant to fly) and the conventions of the time(adventure was a man’s business) andseemed to soar above both. “I want todo it because I want to do it,” she said,as a way to explain her desire to accom-plish what no woman had.

Ms. Nair, director of Indian-thememovies like “Salaam Bombay!” and“Monsoon Wedding,” calls EarhartAmerica’s first modern celebrity. Ahero of the protofeminist movementfor her single-mindedness, Earhartwas also commercially shrewd.

But what put her in the cockpit of all those endeavors was an ability to flyairplanes, often over long distances,at a time when flying was considered

a sport, and a risky one at that.“In the last week I have flown from

Los Angeles to Italy, back to L.A., then a few days later I flew to Dubai, thenDubai to London,” said Ms. Swank,who won best actress Oscars for “BoysDon’t Cry” and “Million Dollar Baby.”“We take all of that for granted, butpeople paid a price to make that a real-ity. Amelia Earhart found something that she loved, a passion, and went af-ter it. All of us, especially women, are the better because of it.”

The magic of flying, the sheer im-probability of it, is restored in “Ame-lia,” which traces how civil aviation

came to be a commonplace part ofAmerican life.

At the same time it depicts thebirth of modern media management. George Putman had published a suc-cessful book on Charles A. Lindbergh and he asked Earhart, who was notyet well known, to be part of a transat-lantic flight attempt in 1928. A former newspaper publisher, Putman had anidea for a book (Lindbergh in a skirt)and he cast Earhart as the heroine.

“I was just baggage, like a sack of po-tatoes,” she observed ruefully, but in1932 she accomplished the feat on her own, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross for her bravery. She and Putman

were a powerful promotional team andeventually fell in love and married, but“Amelia” makes clear that she contin-ued to live an independent life, strikingup a separate romantic relationshipwith Gene Vidal, an aviation pioneer(and father of the author Gore Vidal).

Born in Atchison, Kansas, in 1897,Earhart was the daughter of one ofthe first women to reach the summit of Pikes Peak, and her father, althoughcrippled by alcoholism, was a lawyer and inventor. She received her flying license in 1921, and in 1928 flew as apassenger across the Atlantic, writ-ing about it in “20 Hrs., 40 Min.,” which established her fame. After her soloflight across the Atlantic four years later she became the first pilot to flysolo to California from Hawaii in 1934.

But if Earhart’s life was lived un-der the spotlight, her death remains a mystery. Earhart, who disappeared at 40 during a flight over the Pacific, has never been found. On July 2, 1937, she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, took off from New Guinea, about 35,400kilometers into their effort to circum-navigate the earth. They aimed forHowland Island, 4,000 kilometers into the Pacific. Almost everyone, eventoday, is aware that they never made it; they most likely ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean.

For the makers of “Amelia,” the forc-es that compelled Earhart to take thoserisks are common. “The more I readabout her, the more I thought she islike I was,” said Ms. Nair, who comes from a small village in India. “Beyond the enigma of how she died, I’m hopingthat people will see themselves in herdecisions to set aside her fears and liveher life to the fullest.”

Questions hovered in the art world air recently after the White House released the list of paintingsthat the Obamas have borrowedfrom various Washington museums

for their presidentialhome.

How, peoplemused, did the choices rate, cool-ness-wise? Fair. Jasper Johns and Ed

Ruscha have a certain senior chic. Mark Rothko and Richard Dieben-korn are a bit blue-chip bland. Still, if there was nothing rad on the list, at least there was nothing bad.

Why were there so few women?Why no Hispanics or Asian-Americans? And why, a few art-worldlings fretted, did the Obamasstay with the stodgy old medium of painting?

I had one pressing question. If

the offer were made, which artist from the White House list would I choose for my New York City apart-ment? I knew the answer: Alma W.Thomas.

Thomas was born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1891, and moved to Washington in her teens. She lived there until her death in 1978. Her parents had relocated for two rea-sons: racial violence was on the rise in Georgia, and Washington hadexcellent public schools. Thomasgot a solid, though segregated, education, and taught art in one of the city’s junior high schools for 35years.

Before taking that job, she didother things. In 1921, she enrolledin a home economics program at Howard University, with an inter-est in making theater costumes. Aninstructor suggested she study art

instead. She became Howard’s first fine art major, with a specialty inpainting.

The painting continued sporadi-cally during her teaching years.Only when she retired could she finally start to paint full time. She was 69.

You can see her making the leap into abstraction in the earlier of her two paintings on the White House list, “Watusi (Hard Edge),” from 1963. It’s a steal of a Matisse col-lage. Thomas just shifts the pieces around and cools the colors down. But through copying Matisse, she began to work out a format she would use repeatedly.

This consisted of short, block-likestrokes of color lined up in columns and bands set against a different color or unpainted ground. The second Thomas painting on thelist, “Sky Light” (1973), is a classic

example of the type: a wallof close-together verticalcolumns made of linked blue strokes, with a white ground showing through.

In 1972, at 80, she was the first African-Americanwoman to have a solo at the Whitney Museum. Critics raved. There was a second retrospective in 1977, and Jimmy Carter invited her to the White House.

Her art was accessible. Her abstraction was never really abstract: you could always see the nature in it: flowers,wind. In a racially charged era, her art wasn’t political, or at least not overtly so. When asked if she thought of herself as a black artist, she said: “No, I do not. I’m a painter.I’m an American.”

Instead of talking anger,she talked color: “Through colorI have sought to concentrate on beauty and happiness, rather thanon man’s inhumanity to man.”

But when Thomas said color what was she really saying? She vividly remembered being barred frommuseums as a child because of her race. A lifetime later, she acknowl-edged that things were still hard.“It will take a long time for us to get equality,” she said in an interview.“But what do you expect whenwhites closed up all the schools and libraries on us for so long? Theyknow that schooling would give us our salvation.”

In many ways she’s an idealartist, and power of example, for the Obama White House: forward-looking without being radical; post-racial but also race-conscious; inlove with new, in touch with old.

By KIRK SEMPLE

BEIJING — Over the course of sixyears Zhao Dayong, an independentfilmmaker from Guangzhou, China,spent many months living among the residents of Zhiziluo, an impoverishedand forgotten village in the ruggedmountains near the Myanmar border, and filming their lives.

Using his own money and simpledigital filmmaking equipment hemade “Ghost Town,” a quiet, hypno-tizing, three-hour documentary thatprovides an intimate portrait of Chi-nese life.

Like independent filmmakers ev-erywhere, Mr. Zhao worked with noguarantee of an audience, or even aplace to show his work. By his esti-mates only a few thousand people haveseen “Ghost Town” in China since he finished it last year. Several hundred saw it in late September when the filmhad its international premiere at the

New York Film Festival.But what makes Mr. Zhao’s commit-

ment particularly noteworthy is thathis project was apparently illegal.

The Chinese government has de-creed that all films must be approvedby government censors before beingdistributed and screened, including inoverseas film festivals.

Mr. Zhao, 39, said getting the ap-proval of the censors was never aconsideration. “It’s like asking to beraped,” he said in an interview. “The government certainly has its ownagenda. They want us to stop. But atthe same time we know we’re doingsomething meaningful.”

For decades the Chinese govern-ment had nearly full control over all aspects of the film industry. An un-derground filmmaking subcultureemerged in China in the late 1980s, but it began to flourish only about a decadeago with the advent of inexpensivedigital cameras and postproductioncomputer programs that helped put

filmmaking further out of reach of the authorities.

Many of this latest generation ofChinese filmmakers have no formalfilm training and shoot on minimalbudgets .

Several leading filmmakers put the annual production of unsanctionedfilms at fewer than 200. But this workhas provided views of China that pos-sess an unvarnished authenticity of-ten missing from mainstream films.

About 20 filmmakers have beenbanned from making films for two to five years, according to Zhang Xian-min, an independent film producer anda professor at the Beijing Film Acade-my. Others have received intimidatingphone calls, had tapes confiscated or been detained and interrogated.

But according to several filmmak-ers and film scholars both here andabroad, the government recently ap-pears to have adopted a somewhathands-off, though highly watchful,posture toward this film vanguard.

An Aviator’s Second Turn at Fame

Hilary Swank portrays Amelia Earhart, left, in a film on her life and disappearance while tryingto fly around the world.

LEDGER-ENQUIRER, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

Alma W. Thomas began paintingfull time after retiring as a teacher.

SHIHO FUKADA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Independent Filmmakers, China’s New Guerrillas

A pilot, adventurerand role model who died in her prime.

Colors From a WorldOf Black and White

HOLLANDCOTTERESSAY

Zhang Jing contributed research.

GETTY IMAGES; RIGHT, KEN WORONER/FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES

Zhao Dayong released“Ghost Town” without state approval.

It seems that as long as certain in-cendiary topics are not broached —among them the Tiananmen Squaremassacre, Tibet, the Cultural Revolu-tion — then independent filmmakersare allowed to work.

Yet no one is absolutely sure where the boundaries are, or whether thegovernment will start to clamp down

more fiercely. “You don’t know where that limit is,”

said Zhang Yaxuan, a critic and docu-mentary filmmaker. “You have to try to touch it. In the process of trying, you know.”

There are now at least four majorindependent film festivals around the country and at least two theaters dedi-cated to showing Chinese independentfilms.

Meanwhile Chinese audienceslargely remain out of reach.

As a result the most accomplishedfilmmakers have found their largestaudiences overseas.

“I feel very frustrated,” Mr. Zhaosaid. “I’m a Chinese filmmaker, andof course my audience should be theChinese people, especially since myfilms are about ordinary working Chi-nese people.” He added, “That would be more valuable than winning an in-ternational film festival.”

Repubblica NewYork

T H E WAY W E E AT

VIII MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2009

A Tuna Town’s Efforts to Save Its Fish

KO SASAKI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Kazuo Uyeda of Tokyo invented the “hard shake.”

A Stirring Debate OverHow to Shake a Cocktail

By MARTIN FACKLER

OMA, Japan — Fishermen here callit “black gold,” referring to the darkred flesh of the Pacific bluefin tunathat is so prized in this sashimi-lovingnation that just one of these sleek fish, which can weigh 450 kilograms, canearn tens of thousands of dollars.

The cold waters here once yieldedsuch an abundance of bluefin, withsuch thick layers of tasty rich fat, thatthis tiny wind-swept seaport became Japan’s answer to California’s NapaValley or the Brie cheese-producingregion of France: a geographic loca-tion that is nearly synonymous withone of its nation’s premier foods.

So strong is the allure of Oma’stuna that during the autumn fishingseason, tens of thousands of hungryvisitors descend on this fishing town, located on the northernmost tip of Ja-pan’s main island of Honshu. On a re-cent Sunday, dozens of tourists, filmedby no fewer than three local television

crews, crowded into an old refriger-ated warehouse on a pier where Oma’s mayor presided over a ceremony toslice up a 100-kilo bluefin into brick-size blocks for sale.

“This is a pleasure you can only havea few times in your life,” said Toshiko Maki, 51, a homemaker from suburbanTokyo, as she popped a ruby-red cubeof sashimi into her mouth.

But the number of tuna has begundropping precipitously in recent yearsbecause of overfishing. This has given Oma another, less celebrated distinc-tion, as a community that has stoodout by calling for greater regulationof catches in a nation that has opposedglobal efforts to save badly depletedtuna populations.

Just a decade or two ago, each boathere could routinely catch three orfour tuna a day, fishermen say. Now,they say Oma’s entire fleet of 30 to 40boats is lucky to bring in a combinedtotal of a half-dozen tuna in a day.

The problem, they say, is that all thefish are being taken by big trawlersthat come from elsewhere in Japan, orfarther out to sea from Taiwan or Chi-na. Some of these ships even use heli-copters to spot schools of tuna, which they scoop up in vast nets or catch en masse with long lines of baited hooks.According to local newspapers, there have been repeated incidents of smallfishing boats from Oma and other portsintentionally cutting such trawl lines.

“I’m furious at Tokyo’s bureaucrats for failing to protect our tuna,” said Hi-rofumi Hamahata, 69, the president of the Oma fishermen’s co-op, who hasworked as a commercial fishermansince age 15. “They don’t lift a fingeragainst the industrial fishing that just sweeps the ocean clean.”

Such flares of temper are rare in nor-mally reserved Japan, and especially in conservative fishing communitieslike this one. But this is a town fiercelyproud not only of its tuna, but also of

KO SASAKI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

By TONY CECCHINI

Once upon a time, ice was simply cold and hard. A barkeeper would scoop some into a shaker, pour on the spirits, cap it, giveit a ride and strain it out, creating one of life’s great simple en-tertainments.

But now a coterie of young, ambitious mixologists are using enormous cubes custom made by ice sculpture suppliers forshakers, ice balls the size of oranges for drinks on the rocks,long ice tubes for highballs, pea-size ice in frosty swizzles and pieces muddler-crushed in muslin for juleps.

Shaking styles themselves have also come under new scru-tiny, becoming for bartenders the showcase of élan that knifeskills are for cooks.

For this, we largely can thank Kazuo Uyeda, who’s been mix-ing drinks for four decades in Tokyo, where a bartender canapprentice for six months simply hand-carving ice shapes likediamonds and balls from blocks of ice.

Mr. Uyeda, who owns a bar named Tender in the Ginza dis-trict, is the inventor of a much-debated shaking technique he calls the hard shake, a choreographed set of motions involv-ing a ferocious snapping of the wrists while holding the shaker slanted and twisting it.

According to his Website, this imparts, among other things, greaterchill and velvety bubbles that keep the harshnessof the alcohol from con-tacting the tongue, while showering fine particles of ice across the drink’ssurface.

In an attempt to shine the light of scienceon these issues, EbenKlemm, senior managerof wine and spirits forB.R. Guest restaurantsand a former biotechresearcher; Alex Day, abartender at Death & Co. in Manhattan; and DaveArnold, the director ofculinary technology atthe French Culinary In-stitute, recently present-ed a seminar at Tales ofthe Cocktail, an annualconvention in New Or-leans, Louisiana.

They conducted ex-periments to determinehow shakers, sizes of ice and shaking styles affectdilution and chill rates.

To measure these, they rigged cocktail shakers with elec-tronic thermocouples that projected data in graph form onto a screen. Using variations of large hunks, normal cubes and crushed ice, they ran trials shaking a variety of drinks. To the astonishment and embarrassment of more than a few bartend-ers present, they found effectively no difference for any of the variables.

Across a range of ice sizes and shaking styles that variedfrom Mr. Day’s mannered syncopation to Mr. Arnold’s self-described “crazy monkey,” all approaches arrived at almost exactly the same temperature and dilution.

The few defenders of the hard shake in the United Statesclaim the experiment proves little, as the hard shake is moreabout the texture it creates than merely chilling and dilut-ing.

Can such intangibles be measured? Gentlemen, start yourthermocouples .

In orange-size balls and long tubes, ice takes center stage.

how it catches them: in two-man open boats, using hand-held lines.

Mr. Hamahata described catch-ing tuna in this traditional way as abattle of wits against a clever preda-tor that he called “the lion of the sea.”After hooking one, it becomes a battleof strength: he said it typically took

one or two hours to pull a big tunaclose enough to the boat that it couldbe stunned with an electric charge.In one battle, Mr. Hamahata said hefought for 12 hours with a huge bluefin that finally broke free.

Despite such difficulties, Oma’s fish-ermen said they preferred their gen-erations-old fishing method because itallowed them to catch just large, adult fish, leaving the smaller young ones to sustain local stocks.

To maximize prices, Oma has regis-tered its name as a trademark that canbe used only with tuna brought ashorehere. This has made Oma a brand that is gaining recognition even outside Ja-pan. In March, a sushi chef from HongKong paid some $50,000 to buy half ofa 127-kilo Oma bluefin.

One unfortunate side effect, said the town’s mayor, Mitsuharu Kanazawa, was that few of Oma’s 6,200 residents can now afford their own town’s tuna.

A giant bluefin in Oma,Japan, where overfishing has depleted the stock.

Repubblica NewYork