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1554089_0 | Maker Warns of Scarcity Of Hormone for Dairy Cows | A genetically engineered growth hormone for cows that is widely used to increase milk production will be in severe short supply this year, its manufacturer, Monsanto, has told dairy farmers. In letters to farmers and a press release to dairy industry publications Thursday, Monsanto said that customers would be allocated 50 percent of the amount of the hormone that they had bought in the past. The allocation, beginning March 1, is expected to last all year. A Monsanto spokeswoman, Janice Armstrong, said the cutback came after a Food and Drug Administration inspection in November of the factory at which the product was made. The F.D.A. found that more batches of hormone than expected were failing the factory's quality control tests, she said. Although those batches were not sold, Ms. Armstrong said, the factory, which is in Austria and is owned by Sandoz, must make changes to correct the problems, cutting into output. The growth hormone, known as bovine somatotropin and sold under the name Posilac, is used in 22 percent of the nation's dairy cows, according to a 2002 survey by the Department of Agriculture. Injected once every two weeks, the hormone can increase a cow's milk output by 10 percent to 15 percent, according to the company and to farmers. The product, which has been sold in the United States since 1994, has not been approved in Canada and Europe, primarily because it can cause health problems in cows. The F.D.A. has said that milk from cows treated with the hormone is indistinguishable from milk from untreated cows. The shortage of growth hormone could tighten supplies of milk a bit, and milk futures prices surged last week in response. Steven A. Larson, managing editor of Hoard's Dairyman, a trade publication, said, however, that the Posilac cutback ''would be pretty far down the list'' of factors determining milk supply. Lloyd Holterman, a dairy farmer in Watertown, Wis., said that although the cutback would hurt his milk output, the rise in milk prices would offset that. ''We like the high price, so I can't be totally negative,'' he said. Monsanto, which is the only supplier of the hormone, told customers in December that it would cut supplies by 15 percent. But the company now says the manufacturing changes will have a greater effect on output than it initially thought. Monsanto has shifted some production of the main ingredient to a new |
1552185_3 | Ireland's Perennial Outsider: No Confession, No Apology | does he admit to being frustrated with the slow pace of those years out in the cold, and the tenacity of all those involved is often astounding. People who wonder what it felt like to be such a pariah get the simple answer that Mr. Adams never knew it any other way. His thoroughness in describing these and later discussions bogs his story down with unnecessary detail, like subtle shifts in party or government policy, making significant stretches of the book less accessible. It feels like extreme understatement when he writes, ''This was a long game, played slow.'' In his telling, playing that game meant trying and failing many times, until the conditions were right for an I.R.A. cease-fire and the 1998 Belfast peace accord, which set up a local government to share power between Catholics and Protestants, and created some links between Ulster and the Irish Republic. The legislature has functioned only sporadically -- in large part because of the I.R.A.'s failure to disarm fully -- but bloodshed has remained a small fraction of what it was. Thankfully Mr. Adams has a surprising tendency to goof around, and humorous anecdotes spice up the book's drawn-out passages. These occasional glimpses of his human side and his thoughtful defense of republican politics will do little to persuade those who see him as permanently tainted by violence. That view, that his resolve and sense of duty only rationalize acts of terror, is anticipated by the Seamus Heaney verse play that Mr. Adams quotes in his introduction to the book. Elsewhere in the work, ''The Cure at Troy,'' Mr. Heaney writes: No poem or play or song Can fully right a wrong Inflicted and endured. Mr. Adams expresses regret and sadness over times when the I.R.A., which killed more than half of the victims of the ''Troubles,'' claimed civilian lives, but also repeatedly says that he had no influence over its bloody acts. This two-step should make readers feel distinctly uneasy. But Mr. Heaney and Mr. Adams share a desire to believe that the guns will stay silent, and that their country has reached the moment when, in the poet's words: once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme. Given the transformation of Northern Ireland in the space of a generation, it is not hard to understand their optimism. BOOKS OF THE TIMES |
1552290_0 | At Ground Zero, Rebuilding With Nature in Mind | While most of the anguished debate about ground zero has focused on recreating and remembering what was once there, another effort has been moving forward to create on the site something that never existed, an environmentally sensitive city within a city that is attuned to nature as well as the real estate market. Over the last year, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and Larry A. Silverstein, the developer who holds the commercial lease on the World Trade Center, aided by environmentalists and builders, have put together development guidelines. Those guidelines will help shape how the office buildings and retail space, including the Freedom Tower, manage their energy consumption while minimizing their impact on the city's environment. The guidelines set a new standard for New York. The roofs of buildings will be designed to catch rainwater for flushing toilets and boosting cooling systems. Developers will be encouraged to reuse pilings and other materials already on site and to specify that recycled material and products made from renewable resources, like fast-growing trees and sunflower seed husks, be used for interior and insulating materials. The guidelines are not limited to the buildings but extend to the period of construction, requiring all large diesel engines on the building site to use ultra-low-sulfur fuel to reduce emissions. Half of all the waste wood, cardboard and metal generated during construction will be recycled, and construction crews will be encouraged to substitute corn oil or other natural substances for petroleum-based oils to keep concrete from sticking to wooden forms. Although individual buildings in New York and other cities have been built to exacting environmental standards in recent years, such ''green'' goals have never been applied to anything as large as the trade center site, which when complete will contain about as much commercial space as the city of Indianapolis. ''We're talking about building an environmentally sensitive city. That's never been done before,'' said Daniel R. Tishman, chairman of Tishman Construction Corp., which is overseeing construction of the first building at ground zero, the new 7 World Trade Center, as well as the Freedom Tower. Mr. Tishman, who holds degrees in environmental studies, helped devise the sustainable development guidelines. Environmental groups in New York generally support the effort, though they expect to continue to push for even higher standards. ''This 16-acre site should not result in very good buildings, |
1552272_2 | MEMO PAD | aircraft forward,'' said Rob Maruster, Delta's director for airport customer service. First-class passengers will continue to be the first to board. But there is a change for coach passengers with Medallion elite status in Delta's frequent-flier program, who used to be boarded in one group, right after first class. Now they will be boarded by two zones, depending on whether they are seated toward the front or the rear of the plane, Mr. Maruster said. The new boarding procedure -- which was tested on Delta's low-fare subsidiary Song and is already used by several other airlines -- is part of a drive by Delta to reduce on-ground turnaround time for aircraft and get them ''flying more,'' Mr. Maruster said. Over all, ''boarding is going to be a lot more efficient, and it's going to be a lot less hassle,'' he said. The new procedure ''saves us between 7 to 10 minutes'' in boarding a fully booked airplane, he said. International Meetings Expected to Increase The growing demand for international travel is being reflected in the meetings and conventions industry. United States meetings planners expect an 11 percent rise in the number of international meetings this year over last year, according to Future Watch 2004, a report by Meeting Professionals International and American Express that will be issued this week. In a survey for the annual report, corporate and professional meetings planners projected an average 3 percent increase in spending this year over last year, when spending decreased 1 percent over 2002. Another Chance to Pass Through Metal Detectors Now you get a second chance to fish out those overlooked coins in your pocket when you go through airport checkpoint metal detectors. Under a new policy by the Transportation Security Administration, passengers who set off metal detectors are invited to try one more time, after depositing metal objects in a tray. Previously, setting off the metal detector meant an automatic secondary screening. Only 3 U.S. Airports Show Rise in Capacity Only 3 of the 31 largest domestic airports had increases in scheduled air service capacity as of last month over December 2002, according to a report by the Office of Inspector General in the Transportation Department. The three with increases in available seats were Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (up 16 percent); Kennedy International in New York (up 7 percent); and McCarran International in Las Vegas (up 1 percent). At the bottom of |
1551649_0 | PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL | |
1551626_0 | PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL | |
1551659_12 | What's the Problem, Officer? | problems for a municipality to tackle, and that even a seemingly simple solution may backfire. If a street has too many stop signs, for example, some drivers start to ignore them, while other drivers actually speed up to make up for lost traveling time. In general, traffic engineers say, stop signs are more useful for controlling traffic flow than for stopping speeders. Lately, many Westchester communities have been turning to digital speed displays to discourage would-be speeders. Still, many local traffic experts say that these displays -- as well as the three-foot-high, people-shaped fluorescent green signs that are increasingly popping up around the county -- are most effective for educating would-be speeders, rather than for stopping them. To deter speeders more effectively, some towns and cities in the United States -- especially those with populations of 100,000 or more -- have been turning lately to a variety of traffic calming measures. These measures can include speed humps and speed tables, raised crosswalks, traffic circles, diagonal diverters and chicanes, which are curb extensions that alternate from one side of a road to the other, forming S-shaped curves. In general, traffic engineers say, traffic calming measures that try to narrow the width of a particular road appear to be less effective at reducing the number of speeders than those that work vertically, like speed tables and humps. Still, not all vertical traffic calming measures are created equal. Many traffic experts think that speed bumps, for example, should be installed in parking lots only, and that speed humps or speed tables are less jarring to drivers on the open road. Even then, communities can expect tradeoffs. Speed tables, for example, are made to have flat tops so that they will be less jarring to emergency vehicles like fire trucks, but they are slightly less effective at reducing road speed than speed humps, which are simply rounded, raised areas placed across a roadway. SANA SIWOLOP Correction: February 8, 2004, Sunday An article on Jan. 18 about speeding in Westchester misstated figures for speeding summonses issued in Rye. They increased by more than 9 percent in 2002 over 2001; they did not rise to almost twice as many in 2002. The article also referred incorrectly to Rye's hiring of its first full-time officer for conducting radar patrols; the officer was already on the force, and was reassigned to radar patrols last summer from other duties. |
1551784_5 | The SAT III? | Maryland -- has applied for a $400,000 federal grant to help create a test based on Dr. Sedlacek's research that would ''more accurately assess university applicants'' than admission exams can do alone, says Raymond Ting, associate professor of counselor education at North Carolina State. Dr. Ting, who coordinated the grant application, says efforts to standardize psychological and personal measures are the new wave, especially as higher education's minority population grows. ''Students have to be considered more fully as individuals, not just test scores,'' he adds. Dr. Sedlacek finds it pointless to revisit traditional tests of academic readiness. ''We focus too much on how to improve what we already have, like the SAT,'' he says. ''But that's the wrong question. We don't know how to do the verbal or quantitative testing any better than we do.'' Oregon State University is using Dr. Sedlacek's measures to assess applicants' potential, to provide direction once the student is on campus, and in making financial aid decisions. The measures are also used by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering to select students for scholarships. Dundee Holt, the council's vice president for development and communications, says the council finds such measures a better ''indicator of success than the SAT for minority students'' and doesn't consider entrance exam scores. ''We've had enough students who've earned their doctorate with 900's on their SAT's to know that there are other things going on,'' Mr. Holt says. SO which student will make it through four years of college? According to a study by the Department of Education, the most significant precollege factor in whether a student graduates is the intensity of high school curriculum. Curriculum ''reflects 41 percent of the academic resources students bring to higher education,'' the report states. Class rank and grade point average -- less reliable benchmarks because of disparities in school quality and standards nationwide -- reflect 29 percent and test scores just 30 percent. With the SAT under fire from several quarters, including a handful of elite colleges that have recently made scores optional, it's not surprising that the College Board wants to increase its ability to assess students. Complaints about the exam are well documented: It favors whites and males, and an overemphasis on scores has turned the admissions process into the ''educational equivalent of a nuclear arms race,'' as Richard Atkinson, former president of |
1551809_5 | The SAT III? | Maryland -- has applied for a $400,000 federal grant to help create a test based on Dr. Sedlacek's research that would ''more accurately assess university applicants'' than admission exams can do alone, says Raymond Ting, associate professor of counselor education at North Carolina State. Dr. Ting, who coordinated the grant application, says efforts to standardize psychological and personal measures are the new wave, especially as higher education's minority population grows. ''Students have to be considered more fully as individuals, not just test scores,'' he adds. Dr. Sedlacek finds it pointless to revisit traditional tests of academic readiness. ''We focus too much on how to improve what we already have, like the SAT,'' he says. ''But that's the wrong question. We don't know how to do the verbal or quantitative testing any better than we do.'' Oregon State University is using Dr. Sedlacek's measures to assess applicants' potential, to provide direction once the student is on campus, and in making financial aid decisions. The measures are also used by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering to select students for scholarships. Dundee Holt, the council's vice president for development and communications, says the council finds such measures a better ''indicator of success than the SAT for minority students'' and doesn't consider entrance exam scores. ''We've had enough students who've earned their doctorate with 900's on their SAT's to know that there are other things going on,'' Mr. Holt says. SO which student will make it through four years of college? According to a study by the Department of Education, the most significant precollege factor in whether a student graduates is the intensity of high school curriculum. Curriculum ''reflects 41 percent of the academic resources students bring to higher education,'' the report states. Class rank and grade point average -- less reliable benchmarks because of disparities in school quality and standards nationwide -- reflect 29 percent and test scores just 30 percent. With the SAT under fire from several quarters, including a handful of elite colleges that have recently made scores optional, it's not surprising that the College Board wants to increase its ability to assess students. Complaints about the exam are well documented: It favors whites and males, and an overemphasis on scores has turned the admissions process into the ''educational equivalent of a nuclear arms race,'' as Richard Atkinson, former president of |
1551893_0 | Tougher Security, More Delays | THE future level of terrorist threats is hard to predict, but two years after airport security personnel began ordering passengers to remove their shoes to check for explosives, more acute disruptions and security delays -- like the ones last month -- seem entirely possible. ''It's conceivable that the imagination of terrorists is limitless,'' said Dominique Bussereau, the French transport secretary, in Paris at the end of December, ''which means the measures must be stringent.'' He spoke at a moment of peak terrorism worries, but unusual measures continued this month when American officials backed most of the country off from an orange alert, or ''high,'' the second-highest in the five official stages of anxiety, to yellow (or ''elevated''), but kept airlines and airports at the higher level. The stringent airport procedures were in place around New Year's Day, at the same time as a scheduled implementation of tight new immigration procedures, combining to produce new headaches for air travelers. The Immigration and Naturalization Service began requiring visitors from most countries to submit to fingerprinting and a quick digital snapshot, on arrival at 115 international airports in this country. This step, in preparation for a year, took effect soon after several flights from France and Britain were canceled at the last minute, and one from Mexico was turned back in midair. For people whose airplanes flew more or less on time, lines at passenger screening points were longer, and for international arrivals, there was an added step of giving fingerprints, although American officials said that this did not add much to processing times. Fighter planes escorted some jetliners, airport police searched some cars approaching terminals, and various other special procedures took effect. France, which had never used armed air marshals, agreed to add them temporarily. It took a little more time, as well as negotiations with the pilots, in Britain. But Sweden and Portugal, among others, said they would not add marshals, and would cancel flights if necessary. The effect on air travel and the airline industry of all the security changes -- both the ones in the last few weeks and those added since Sept. 11 -- is unclear. That is because those effects are mixed in with other factors that have an impact on air travel, notably a nosedive in corporate profits that has cut travel budgets, and consumer nervousness. But Robert W. Poole Jr., director of transportation studies at |
1551993_0 | PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL | |
1551839_2 | The Lab Animal | put into practice -- the already strong, seeking to get stronger still. Sweeney gets their e-mail messages. One came from a high-school football coach in western Pennsylvania not long after Sweeney first presented his findings at a meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology. ''This coach wanted me to treat his whole team,'' he said. ''I told him it was not available for humans, and it may not be safe, and if I helped him we would all go to jail. I can only assume he didn't understand how investigational this is. Or maybe he wasn't winning, and his job was on the line.'' Other calls and e-mail messages have come from weight lifters and bodybuilders. This kind of thing happens often after researchers publish in even the most arcane medical and scientific journals. A whole subculture of athletes and the coaches and chemists who are in the business of improving their performances is eager for the latest medical advances. Sweeney knows that what he is doing works. The remaining question, the one that will require years of further research to answer, is how safe his methods are. But many athletes don't care about that. They want an edge now. They want money and acclaim. They want a payoff for their years of sweat and sacrifice, at whatever the cost. ''This was serious science, not sports science,'' Dr. Gary Wadler, a United States representative to the World Anti-Doping Agency, said when I spoke to him about the Penn experiments. ''As soon as it gets into any legitimate publication, bango, these people get ahold of it and want to know how they can abuse it.'' Sweeney's research will probably be appropriated before it is ever put to its intended medical purpose. Someone will use it to build a better sprinter or shot-putter. There is a murky, ''Casablanca''-like quality to sport at the moment. We are in a time of flux. No one is entirely clean. No one is entirely dirty. The rules are ambiguous. Everyone, and everything, is a little suspect. Months before the great slugger Barry Bonds was summoned before a grand jury in December to answer questions about his association with the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, known as Balco, which has been at the center of a spreading drug scandal after the discovery of a new ''designer steroid,'' tetrahydrogestrinone (THG), a veteran American sprinter named Kelli White ran |
1550272_0 | New System For Air Security Moves Forward | Stymied by the domestic airlines in trying to test a massive new computer system meant to identify people who are risks to civil aviation, the government is thinking of using data collected by European airlines instead, an official said on Sunday night. The agency responsible for the new system, the Transportation Security Adminstration, wants to test the system, the Computerized Assisted Passenger PreScreening System, which would evaluate information on everyone seeking to board a domestic flight. The government is moving ahead with the system despite objections from privacy experts and uncooperative airlines, and hopes to have it in place by this summer. Plans to begin the program this year were reported Sunday in The Washington Post. Last year, the agency asked for an airline to volunteer information on its passengers for use in testing. Jet Blue agreed last summer to provide data for testing but backed out after complaints about its decision. The airline industry officials suggested that the government should order the airlines to comply. In December, however, the Department of Homeland Security struck an agreement with the European Union on what passenger information would have to be submitted by airlines flying to the United States from Europe. The information is transmitted shortly after take-off. A spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, Nico Melendez, said on Sunday that the agreement permitted his agency to use that data for testing the prescreening system. Last year, the government proposed the new system, which would replace an older version that uses less information. The new system would call for airlines to provide each passenger's name, home address, phone number and date of birth. Under this proposal, which was disclosed last year, a contractor for the Transportation Security Administration would take the passenger data and compare it to commercial databases. The contractor would then give each passenger a score, similar to a credit score for a loan, that would estimate the relative security risk. |
1547320_3 | Bringing the Historical Confucius to Life; A Show in Paris Traces the Origins of the Sage, Who Has Influenced Countless Millions for 2,500 Years | between the 12th and 7th centuries B.C., all of which underline the sophistication of the society into which Confucius was born. And so no less than those who worship ancestors in China today, Confucius had good reason to be in awe of his own ancestors and to show determination to preserve their rituals and knowledge. To illustrate the arts, or disciplines, that sustained Confucius' philosophy, the exhibition offers two carillons, one comprising eight slices of stone, the other nine bronze bells, to represent music; a bronze bow and an archer's protective ring to represent archery; a stunning ancient bronze horse and cart, the horse's head standing six feet from the ground, to represent charioteering; and a terra-cotta ink container in the form of a turtle to represent calligraphy. One of Confucius' principal legacies was the notion of the enlightened civil servant, a concept that centuries later would spawn the system of all-powerful mandarins. On display are two sandstone statues of sixth-century dignitaries; ceramic figures of civil servants; a large silk-screen portrait of ''the Venerable Qi Jiguang,'' a celebrated 16th-century military strategist; and ceremonial robes of descendants of Confucius (all on loan from the Provincial Museum of Shandong in Jinan). Connecting this past to a more modern era, the Guimet presents photographs taken by French expeditions in 1907 and 1914 at the temple and tomb of Confucius at Chufu. But while Confucianism has a strong following in South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Vietnam as well as in China and Taiwan, it has had its ups and downs in its homeland, not least early in the 20th century when it was blamed for China's backwardness, and during the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960's and early 1970's when it again came under attack. Since 1989, however, it has been embraced afresh by Beijing as an authentically Chinese answer to Western political culture. Writing in this show's catalog, Danielle Elisseeff, a China scholar at France's School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, said that part of Confucius' appeal lies in the multiple interpretations of his thoughts and life. Just as some say he personified the goodness of human nature and the value of teaching, she noted, others believe he served to justify strong rules and law. Yet if he remains ''an incomparable figure of reference,'' she said, it is because ''for so long he has nourished the hopes of so many people.'' |
1547416_4 | FLIGHT SENT BACK ON TERROR FEAR, U.S. OFFICIALS SAY | and directed it to a remote site, a security official involved in the operation said. Intelligence developed by American officials indicated that the route of the flight might be a target of terrorists, and at least one name on the passenger list appeared to match a name on a terror watch list, the security official said. Nothing suspicious turned up in a screening of luggage on the plane, but some passengers were searched and interviewed late Wednesday night, and officials said it was unclear whether the flight represented a threat. ''We're out here trying to deter and disrupt attacks,'' the official said, ''and that's not always immediately going to produce a guy in handcuffs.'' In five or six flights coming to the United States from England, Mexico and elsewhere, officials said, there were concerns about lapses in security in the city of origin, intelligence about possible terrorist activity, and sometimes both. Officials said several suspect flights landed at the Los Angeles International Airport and another at Dulles, but they declined to provide details on the routes. In each case, officials said, security officials met the planes and did ''reverse screenings'' like the one in Dulles, interviewing passengers and searching them for explosives, weapons and other contraband. Before the alert level was raised to orange, or high, such screenings for flights that had already landed were rare, a security official said. ''Clearly we're in a situation where this is happening much more frequently than in earlier periods,'' the official said. In another instance several days ago, a flight headed for the United States from Latin America was grounded on the runway for several hours after United States officials told the air carrier they were not satisfied that passengers had been adequately screened. David O'Connor, director of the United States operations for the International Air Transport Association, a trade group that represents most international carriers, said one critical challenge facing the United States in seeking to strengthen air security was that safety standards vary so widely around the world. ''Some airports and airlines are very secure,'' he said. ''The British, for example, have been concerned about terrorist attacks long before 9/11, and they screen passengers and baggage extensively. And in Germany, the same.'' But he added, ''when you're talking about developing nations in Latin America and elsewhere, many haven't until recently initiated any real screening procedures, and that's where you have problems.'' |
1547346_2 | Radio Begins to Catch the Eyes as Well as the Ears of Listeners | cars. The technology is standard equipment on all Lexus and BMW models, and either standard or an option on many Ford, Chrysler and Toyota cars with high-end sound systems. General Motors estimates that at least half of the cars it ships to dealers have R.D.S. radios. Even some models of table radios and stereo tuners are incorporating R.D.S. displays. R.D.S. is most commonly used to display station and song names, and some stations are beginning to deliver weather reports, stock quotes and sports scores as well. In Europe the technology is widely used to transmit traffic information, enabling drivers to avoid road hazards. The potential for R.D.S. simply to generate revenue may be its most tempting use for broadcasters. Allen Hartle, president of a company in Bellevue, Wash., called the Radio Experience, is working with Entercom and other broadcasters to equip stations with R.D.S. After a decade of struggling to convince industry executives and station managers of the value of pairing audio with visual information on the radio, he said, he has been buoyed by renewed interest in R.D.S., which some see as a new channel for advertisers. ''I would not be surprised if truly enterprising individual radio stations found a way of capitalizing upon this to add value to what they already are doing for their customers,'' Mr. Hartle said. DMarc Networks of Newport Beach, Calif., which provides R.D.S. content to a dozen stations, including five Clear Channel stations in the Los Angeles area, has started selling ''radio text'' advertisements to music and film companies, including Warner Brothers and Sony Pictures, and to several mortgage lending firms. Of course, text that appears on a car radio may also present a safety hazard if drivers shift their attention from the road for too long, said David Strayer, a professor of psychology at the University of Utah who studies driver distraction. ''A lot of new in-vehicle technologies have the potential to be more distracting because they are more cognitively engaging,'' Dr. Strayer said. ''If people do look at this as they might for a G.P.S. system, then you get a really big interference, and the longer your eyes drift, the greater the distraction.'' Although the technology is catching the eye of more listeners, it remains a novelty. It took Dennis Litschi a year to discover that his BMW 530i could scroll R.D.S. text. Mr. Litschi, 58, who lives in Los Alamitos, |
1553237_3 | Track Tries To Retain Its Ideals | face. I've never looked at track and field that way. I don't look at track meets and wonder who is on steroids and who is not. I look at who finishes where; I look at effort. While I certainly don't approve of performance-enhancing drugs, I won't allow an athlete's recklessness -- if someone wants to destroy his body -- to destroy the greater values of competition. There is an element of skulduggery in every profession: the politician who goes to any extent to win a race; the business executive who goes to any extent to turn a personal profit; the athlete who goes to any extent to win a gold medal. I'm not sure we expect much in the way of ethics out of highly commercialized sports like football, basketball, baseball, hockey, boxing. There has been cheating in sports since antiquity. Heavy fines were imposed for cheating. Statues of Zeus, paid for by fines, were set up along a wall leading to the entrance of the Olympic Stadium. According to the Greek geographer and chronicler Pausanias, there were 16 of these statues, 6 of which were erected from fines levied on Athens when Kallipos, an Athenian, bribed his opponents in the pentathlon. There is always someone who comes up with a shortcut to circumvent a safeguard that was designed to counteract an earlier shortcut. Masback has a theory. ''What I say about track and field is that 90 percent have never even thought about cheating,'' he said. ''I think 10 percent have thought about it, but 7 of that 10 percent have been scared off by what we already do with drug testing; 2 to 3 percent are thinking about, 'Can I game the system somehow?' ''To me that's the problem: it's 2 to 3 percent.'' Track and field, because of its ancient roots, should be more painstakingly scrutinized than the highly commercialized sports. Masback agrees. ''If track and field wants to say it is at the pinnacle of Olympic sports, then we should be held to the highest standard,'' he said. ''I would say we have been. We've paid a terrible price because we started drug testing when no one else was.'' Despite the blemishes, there is still a difference between the high-profile team sports and track and field. The difference is an Olympic ideal. Increasingly in sports, that's all we have to cling to. Sports of The Times |
1553163_1 | India's Lofty Ambitions in Space Meet Earthly Realities | costs have not meant catastrophic launching failures. Only 6 of India's 37 satellite launchings have failed. This month the national newsmagazine The Week ran a grandiloquent cover story that captured the country's infatuation with its space program and its self-image as an emerging power. ''Every space power is trying to develop launch vehicles and spacecraft to colonize the moon,'' the article declared. ''India, too, is racing ahead.'' Less than a week after China became the third country to put man in space last October, India launched a satellite into orbit and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee declared India a world leader in ''applying space technologies to development.'' In Bangalore, the headquarters of the space effort, offices brim with optimism reminiscent of NASA during its golden age in the 1960's, as Indian engineers breathlessly describe how they use space technology to improve the lives of tens of millions of average Indians. Satellites reclaim farmland, they say, bring medical care to remote villages, predict natural disasters and help planners control the country's explosive urban growth. ''Our program is entirely oriented toward applications for the national development,'' said Madhavan Nair, chairman of the Indian program, formally named the Indian Space Research Organization. ''Water management, satellite television, phone links, telemedicine.'' One of the clearest examples of how the program benefits average Indians is in the village of Majhgawan Karan, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Using satellite imagery, technicians have helped 175 villagers reclaim 40 acres of barren land in an area long haunted by hunger. Alok Mathur, a project manager at the Remote Sensing Application Center of Uttar Pradesh, said farmland could be reclaimed by simply pouring gypsum on it. He said the gypsum set off a chemical reaction in the soil, which had too much sodium in it. Barren farmland is transformed into rich farmland, and the lives of subsistence farmers are changed. Mata Prasad, a young Dalit, or untouchable, one of India's outcastes, stood beside his tiny but verdant one-acre plot of wheat and rice. He was pleased. For years the land was barren, he said, and his family's primary concern was getting enough to eat. Not any more. ''Earlier, I used to worry about food,'' Mr. Prasad said. ''Now I worry about the education of my children.'' Forty miles to the northeast lies another example of the space program's benefits. Doctors in the basement of the main public hospital |
1553172_0 | Study Links Some Hair Dyes to Kind of Cancer | Scientists have found more evidence for a possible link between non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and long-term use of dark hair dye. A study of more than 1,300 women in Connecticut shows that those who began coloring their hair before 1980 increased their chance of developing the disease by 40 percent. And among those who used permanent rather than nonpermanent dyes, who chose dark colors -- browns, reds and black -- and who dyed their hair frequently (eight times a year or more) for at least 25 years, the risk doubled, said Dr. Tongzhang Zheng, a Yale epidemiologist who led the study. The results are published in the current issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology. ''For those who used light colors, there was no such increase in risk,'' Dr. Zheng noted. Nor was there significantly increased risk among women who used nonpermanent dyes. The difference between permanent and nonpermanent dyes is that permanent ones are mixed with an oxidizing agent. In that process, new chemicals are created, some of which may be carcinogenic, Dr. Zheng said. Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is a form of cancer that begins in the body's lymph system. The average American woman has a 1-in-57 chance of developing the disease in her lifetime, according to the American Cancer Society. For a man, the chance is 1 in 48. Suspicions that hair dyes might increase cancer risk have been around since the 1970's, said Dr. Eugenia Calle, the cancer society's director of analytic epidemiology, but studies over the years have found no connection between the dyes and most forms of cancer. The Yale researchers and the National Cancer Institute are now looking into whether there are any genetic influences that might make certain women more likely to develop lymphoma after exposure to dye. Because all the studies done so far, including the latest one, have been observational rather than clinical, their findings do not provide evidence that hair dye causes lymphoma, said Gerald McEwen, vice president for science at the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association, a trade group in Washington. ''There's no smoking gun here,'' Mr. McEwen said, ''no causal relationship.'' In this study, the researchers found no increase in cancer risk among women who started dying their hair after 1980, no matter how frequently they did so or what color they used. In the late 1970's, hair dye makers stopped using certain coal-tar ingredients that had been found to cause |
1554547_4 | Phones, Too, Get TV Time | argue that Americans multitask in the car quite enough already. Will Sprint customers listen to news, sports or music on their cellphones in the car instead of turning on the radio -- but glance down now and then for a glimpse of the video? Still, when it comes to cultural change, the TV cellphone can't hold a candle to the impact of the camcorder cellphone, which Sprint now offers in the form of the Sanyo VM4500. With only two button presses, you can begin recording an actual movie with sound. Each video clip can be up to 15 seconds long; the phone can hold 10 of them at a time. Of course, you may never reach that limit, because the real joy comes from sending them from the phone to the Web, to someone's e-mail box or to another cellphone. All of these options are listed on a single, simple menu, although video clips take some time to send -- maybe 30 seconds -- and a similar interval to receive on the other end. When you send a video by e-mail, your recipient gets a text message that says, ''You have received a video from: 9334888115@messaging.sprintpcs.com'' (the digits represent your phone number, of course). When you click Play Video, your browser opens a Web page containing the actual movie. The result is not an Imax film by any means -- in fact, its resolution is 96 by 128 pixels, and the audio and video sometimes drift out of sync. But the color is terrific, the motion is smooth, and the VM4500's speaker is loud enough to make the soundtrack audible even over life's dull ambient roar. (You can examine a sample video at www.nytimes.com/circuits.) A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a video must be worth at least 50 pictures. Sprint isn't the first company to offer video mail; T-Mobile's Nokia 3650, for example, creates 10-second clips with sound. The Nokia, though, is a larger computer-phone, not a sleek black flip phone like Sprint's. Both Sprint and T-Mobile offer surprisingly reasonable flat fees. Sprint charges $15 a month (on top of your voice plan) for unlimited Internet access, TV, picture sending, and video sending. T-Mobile charges $5 per month for unlimited picture and video sending and offers an à la carte plan: 25 cents per video. (T-Mobile Internet access is a separate $5 fee.) Like it or not, |
1550014_2 | The Neediest Cases; Amid Struggles, a Mother Makes Room in Her Home | from their own hopes and dreams. ''I just want all these kids to be successful,'' she said. A lot of the hope that Ms. Ramirez has centers on the education of her children. She attends PTA meetings and has found books and materials for them at local school board conferences. She boasts of her son Wilfredo's accomplishments. ''He was never late, never sick,'' she said. ''They honored him when he graduated from elementary school. They gave me a bouquet of flowers.'' Victoria gets physical and occupational therapy every day at a city program for disabled children at Public School 138 in Manhattan. But there is never a shortage of challenges to meet. Anthony, in particular, has had a difficult beginning in life. He was found to have attention deficit disorder when he was 5 and stayed at Bellevue until he was 7. ''He's had a personality that people don't understand,'' Ms. Ramirez said of Anthony. ''He was 5 years old and I took him to an appointment, and they found him to be suicidal.'' Doctors have given Anthony Zoloft, lithium and Ritalin, but Ms. Ramirez said she thought that the best medication for him was the two years he had spent at the Astor Home for Children, a residential facility in Rhinebeck, N.Y. There he was taken off his medication and received counseling. He has since returned to live with his mother. ''He's doing much better,'' she said, pointing to a display case in the living room filled with his basketball trophies. Then there are basic financial needs. In January, for example, the boys needed new beds when the wooden undersides cracked under their weight. Anthony's doctor at Bellevue referred her to the New Alternatives for Children in 2000, a beneficiary agency of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, one of seven charities supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. Her caseworker at New Alternatives, Stephanie O'Brien, secured $775 of Neediest Cases money to help buy new beds. The state Office of Mental Health's Intensive Case Management Program, which counsels Anthony, also provided $250 for the beds. ''It was a very big help,'' she said. ''Victor sleeps on top, Anthony on the bottom, and Wilfredo is on the small bed.'' HOW TO HELP Checks payable to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund should be sent to 4 Chase Metrotech Center, 7th Floor East, Lockbox 5193, Brooklyn, N.Y. |
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1549717_2 | The Shushing of the Symphony | hearing loss, stemming both from the player's own instrument and from those of others, is a real one among classical musicians worldwide. Hearing loss may manifest itself as a decreased ability to perceive high frequencies or slight changes in pitch. It may also extend to tinnitus, a buzzing or ringing in the ear. But as pervasive as hearing loss may be, it's rarely discussed. Performers are reluctant to mention it, or any other work-related ailment, for fear of losing their standing in the field or their employability. ''What is beyond dispute is that musicians suffer more damage than age-matched, unselected, controls, and brass and woodwind suffer significantly more than the strings,'' Alison Wright Reid, an occupational safety expert, wrote in ''A Sound Ear,'' a widely cited study published in 1999 for the Association of British Orchestras. ''Because of the tiny sample sizes, it is difficult to be sure of the percussion, but those players with hearing damage are typically worse than the brass.'' The problem has grown over the centuries, as composers seeking to expand their expressive possibilities have pushed for ever greater contrast in dynamics; whereas a simple ''piano'' or ''forte'' would suffice for Bach, when he bothered to use dynamic markings at all, Tchaikovsky progressed to the likes of pppppp (pianissississississimo, but who's counting?) and ffff in his ''Pathétique'' Symphony. And instruments have been modernized and fitted out to carry better in larger halls. Whether composers or instrument makers led the way at any particular moment, the direction in classical music has been the same as that in rock and musical theater: louder. It is difficult to impose legislative rigor in an area in which artistic impulses collide with scientific pseudo-certainties and psychological and emotional imponderables. Consider another statement from ''A Sound Ear'': ''It does, indeed, appear that pleasing noise causes less hearing damage than random noise, so musicians may be at less risk than is supposed. However, the studies also show that music which is disliked, or just plain boring, causes more harm than random noise. Furthermore, the nice/nasty risk modification is related to levels of stress in the listener.'' But one aspect of the problem is clear: Although any instrument can endanger the hearing of the person who plays it, percussion and brass instruments and an interloper from the woodwinds, the piccolo, inflict the most damage on other musicians. Susan Welty, who has played French horn |
1549680_1 | My So-Called Blog | And you keep on checking your e-mail.'' M. is an unusually Zen teenage boy -- dreamy and ruminative about his personal relationships. But his obsessive online habits are hardly exceptional; he is one of a generation of compulsive self-chroniclers, a fleet of juvenile Marcel Prousts gone wild. When he meets new friends in real life, M. offers them access to his online world. ''That's how you introduce yourself,'' he said. ''It's like, here's my cellphone number, my e-mail, my screen name, oh, and -- here's my LiveJournal. Personally, I'd go to that person's LJ before I'd call them or e-mail them or contact them on AIM'' -- AOL Instant Messenger -- ''because I would know them better that way.'' Only five years ago, mounting an online journal or its close cousin, the blog, required at least a modicum of technical know-how. But today, using sites like LiveJournal or Blogger or Xanga, users can sign up for a free account, and with little computer knowledge design a site within minutes. According to figures released last October by Perseus Development Corporation, a company that designs software for online surveys, there are expected to be 10 million blogs by the end of 2004. In the news media, the blog explosion has been portrayed as a transformation of the industry, a thousand minipundits blooming. But the vast majority of bloggers are teens and young adults. Ninety percent of those with blogs are between 13 and 29 years old; a full 51 percent are between 13 and 19, according to Perseus. Many teen blogs are short-lived experiments. But for a significant number, they become a way of life, a daily record of a community's private thoughts -- a kind of invisible high school that floats above the daily life of teenagers. Back in the 1980's, when I attended high school, reading someone's diary would have been the ultimate intrusion. But communication was rudimentary back then. There were no cellphones, or answering machines; there was no ''texting,'' no MP3's or JPEG's, no digital cameras or file-sharing software; there was no World Wide Web -- none of the private-ish, public-ish, superimmediate forums kids today take for granted. If this new technology has provided a million ways to stay in touch, it has also acted as both an amplifier and a distortion device for human intimacy. The new forms of communication are madly contradictory: anonymous, but traceable; instantaneous, |
1549656_3 | Pacific Overtures | was often inflexible in pursuing stolen goods if they were expedition property rather than personal property -- a distinction lost on Polynesians and sailors alike, who were amused by his ruthless pursuit of a stolen goat across one island. The introduction of European livestock, brought with infinite pains halfway round the world, was one of the prime objectives of the third voyage, and Cook's sense of obligation to ensure that breeding pairs reached their intended destinations brooked no opposition. Single goats cannot breed. It was the theft of such a piece of expedition property, one of the ships' boats, that led to the series of chaotic confrontations in which Cook was killed at Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii. Most commentators have regarded this as an almost inevitable climax to what they see as a deterioration in Cook's conduct during the third voyage, especially an increase in the severity of punishments. This is presented either (as Beaglehole does) as a symptom of mental fatigue, after a decade spent mostly in the Pacific with the sole responsibility of command, or (as the more hostile Gananath Obeyesekere does in ''The Apotheosis of Captain Cook,'' 1992) as a descent into irrationality and savagery. Thomas dissents from the assumptions underlying both interpretations, pointing out that Cook's growing distance from his crew (which he links to the pressures arising from Cook's ambiguous social position) can be dated to the middle of the admired second voyage, not the third, while fewer indigenous people were killed on the third voyage before Cook's death than in either of the two earlier ones. There is something poignant in Cook's consistent attempts to do the right thing, whether it was his refusal to partake of the frequently offered sexual hospitality, his efforts to prevent his men from spreading venereal disease, his scrupulous sharing of fresh food among the whole crew or his refusal to punish the leader of a group of Maori that not only attacked and killed a party of his men but ate them (Cook thought it likely his men had provoked the incident). Even when the outcome was not as beneficent as he hoped, he always followed his own lights -- a mixture of his Quaker-influenced upbringing, Enlightenment rationality and the autodidact's passion for acquiring knowledge. One of the most oddly moving passages shows Cook not only observing but becoming caught up in an island ceremony. Desperate to know |
1549886_4 | Taiwan Close to Reaching a Lofty Goal | and might not collapse at all under similar circumstances. The World Trade Center's structure relied on many slender columns in each floor. Taipei 101 has an immense frame with eight pillars of steel and reinforced concrete, each measuring 11 feet by 8 feet at the base, rising inside the corners of the building. Even a passenger jet moving at full speed should not be able to break one of the pillars, Mr. Wang said, but if it did, the other pillars should be able to support the building. To anchor the building against earthquakes, builders drilled down through 200 feet of dirt and then 65 feet into the bedrock. Taipei lies in a bowl between mountains, and the soil is prone to shimmying like gelatin in an earthquake, but the bedrock moves less. For all the precautions, the construction has been dogged by problems. An earthquake in 2002 caused two cranes on Taipei 101 to fall, killing five workers. A small steel panel fell from the top on Nov. 21, bouncing down the side of the building and lightly grazing a passer-by on the street. On the roof now, the winds are surprisingly strong even on a clear day, as the building is higher than the surrounding hills. For stability during typhoons and other high winds, the building has a 727-ton solid steel ball hanging from eight cables inside the 89th floor. Not much larger than a minivan, the ball is designed to act as a pendulum, offsetting up to 40 percent of the swaying in the tower's top floors. Such balls, known as tuned mass dampers, are common in buildings over 70 floors, but are usually in mechanical rooms where visitors do not see them. Already installed, the ball in Taipei 101 will be painted gold and will be the centerpiece of a bar and restaurant, so that patrons can watch it move. The ball is designed to swing back and forth up to five feet during a severe typhoon. Bumpers will prevent it from swinging any farther and striking barflies. Mr. Wang said that even though the building was designed to withstand storms seen only once in a century, few people would be around to see the ball swing violently, given corporate and government policies of dismissing workers when a typhoon approaches. ''In the case of a real strong typhoon,'' he said, ''I would recommend people go home.'' |
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1549842_1 | An Austrian Advantage | I washed dishes. But by my sophomore year, I went to work for the Harvard Student Agencies, a student-run enterprise that, among other things, publishes the ''Let's Go'' travel guide series. In the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, I became the editor for the Austria and Czechoslovakia editions. While this was happening, I was an organic chemistry major and managed a C+ average. I realized that I wanted to do something I could be good at. So I switched to business, and after graduation I applied to the Harvard Business School. I had thought about law school, but during my senior year, I took a constitutional law course from Paul Freund. He was a brilliant man and his course was supposed to be fascinating. I literally fell asleep in the first lecture. That, plus the fact that I did poorly on the law boards, helped me decide against law school. At the Harvard Business School, I really felt I had gained the ability to resolve difficult issues. But I also felt that I wasn't in the mainstream with my fellow students. During job-hunting season, for example, everybody shaved their beards for interviews. I thought, ''This is crazy.'' So I grew a beard. My kids later found a picture of me then and hung it up, calling it the ''chairman of the board'' picture. One of the people who most influenced me was Ben Shapiro, a marketing professor at the business school. He used to rant and rave and pound his fist: ''It's all about the customers!'' And he was right. He was also right that, at that time, retailing was devoid of really talented people; he urged me to go in that direction. I interviewed at Jewel Companies in Chicago and thought it had a wonderful management philosophy. Teamwork was the most important aspect of managing the company. I spent a decade at Jewel, and my mother was incredibly offended that her son was trimming lettuce while learning how to help run the operation. She hadn't spent all that money sending me to Harvard so that I'd end up in the produce section. On the Fourth of July weekend in 1985, my printer ribbon ran out, and I couldn't find a single place to buy a replacement. I envisioned a Toys ''R'' Us or Home Depot for office supplies. That's how Staples was born. EXECUTIVE LIFE: THE BOSS |
1554823_2 | Gay Couples Seek Unions In God's Eyes | at was a marriage of two women. I think that more and more rabbis are officiating, certainly in the Reform and Reconstructionist movements.'' Even some members of the clergy who do not have the permission of their denominations -- including Catholic priests -- say they are quietly officiating at ceremonies in defiance of their church leaders. One Catholic priest, who has violated his church's ban, said: ''We can bless a dog, we can bless a boat, we can bless a car, but we can't say a prayer over two people who love each other and want to spend their lives together. You don't have to call it marriage; you can call it a deep and abiding friendship, but you can't bless it.'' Although denominations that do permit these rituals formally refer to them as holy unions, same-sex blessings, covenants or commitment ceremonies, more and more of the couples and members of the clergy are simply calling them marriages. The services are often nearly identical to the marriage rites traditionally used for heterosexual couples. ''In most cases, we use the same vows and prayers, the same scriptural references,'' Ms. Fitzgerald said. ''The only thing we change is that we say 'partners' instead of 'husband and wife.' '' Dolores M. Trzcinski, 49, and Marie T. Auger, 46, say they fulfilled a long-held dream when they walked down the aisle last year at the United Congregational Church in Worcester. They have lived together for more than 25 years. ''We never really cared about the state,'' said Ms. Trzcinski, a medical assistant in a doctor's office. ''We didn't care about the health insurance. It was God's blessing that we wanted.'' It is a perennial complaint among members of the clergy that many straight couples regard the chapel as little more than a stage set for a picture-perfect wedding. In contrast, many of the gay couples who are heading for the altar are regular worshipers who say in interviews that religion is central to their lives. They represent an often-overlooked slice of gay America: the monogamous homebodies more likely to have met their mates at Bible study than at a bar. ''Our relationship is faith-based,'' said Mr. Bernhard, an actor and producer who immigrated to the United States from Indonesia as a teenager. ''We truly believe, and that's what keeps us fairly strong. We do our prayers and our Bible readings together, and depend a |
1554904_0 | World Briefing | Asia: Taiwan: Rebuke To Chirac | Taiwan said it was suspending high-level government exchanges with France to protest President Jacques Chirac's criticism of the island's planned referendum on missile defense. Mr. Chirac made the comments while serving as host to the Chinese president, Hu Jintao. Craig S. Smith (NYT) |
1549042_3 | Interruption of Effort to Down Drug Planes Is Disclosed | Amazon River despite his own wounds from the attack. After that incident, the C.I.A. came under heavy fire for its handling of the program, and the agency's director, George J. Tenet, made it clear to the White House that his agency no longer wanted any part of it. The State Department agreed to take it over, and hired an outside contractor to manage it on a day-to-day basis. So far, the air interdiction program has resumed only in Colombia, although the Bush administration is still considering whether it should be restarted in Peru as well, officials said. Brazil is also considering whether to start its own air interdiction program, but the Bush administration is not planning to provide support for that effort, State Department officials said. In the past, American officials have defended the air interdiction program, saying that it has had a major impact on cocaine trade patterns in Latin America. Before the missionary plane was shot down, the Peruvian Air Force, working with United States surveillance aircraft, shot down, grounded or strafed at least 30 aircraft suspected of ferrying drugs. Under that threat, pilots demanded huge fees to fly drugs, or refused to fly at all. The price of raw coca began to plummet in Peru because it became harder to transport to Colombia for processing into cocaine, prompting farmers to switch to other crops and drug traffickers to seek out alternative routes and forms of transportation. American officials believe traffickers rely more on river boats than aircraft to move raw coca now, and depend much less on aircraft that are vulnerable to air interdiction efforts. ''There basically is not much moving by air now,'' said one former intelligence official familiar with the air interdiction program. Under the new State Department program, Americans in Key West, working for the Joint Interagency Task Force-South, help the Colombians track and monitor suspected drug flights, particularly along the Colombian-Peruvian border. When a suspected flight is detected, a surveillance plane, with a Colombian crew and an American observer, is sent in to intercept. The Colombian air force can then send in a military jet to interdict and shoot down the suspect plane or force it down. Mr. Charles said that since the September incident, he believes that the Colombians understood that the United States could not tolerate mistakes in this high-risk program. ''They need to be really thoughtful, this has to be |
1549097_0 | World Business Briefing | Asia: Malaysia: Dam To Be Completed | The prime minister, Abdullah Badawi, said his government would continue to build a $2.4 billion hydroelectric dam in the Borneo rain forest. Some analysts had predicted Mr. Abdullah, who took over from Mahathir Mohamad in October, would shelve the dam after he scrapped a $3.8 billion rail project, citing budget constraints. But Mr. Abdullah said the dam was too far along not to complete. Originally planned as a much larger project, the dam was shelved in 1997 with the outbreak of the Asian financial crisis, but not before displacing local tribes. Mr. Mahathir revived a scaled-down version in 2001. Wayne Arnold (NYT) |
1587641_2 | States' End Run Dilutes Burden For Special Ed | changes Maryland is proposing in relabeling special ed students would not only obscure some numbers, but would likely increase the scores for special ed, since the children remaining in that category would largely be white students from affluent families who generally do better on tests. But even they may not be counted. Maryland is also proposing to exclude any group that makes up less than 15 percent of the student population at the district and state levels, a threshold that would largely eliminate both disabled children and those learning English from the federal law's accountability system. The state estimates that under the proposed rules, marginal schools would shrink to 26 percent, from 36 percent, and only 9 school districts, rather than all 24, would fall short . Other states are making different statistical moves, but all would ease the rigor of the federal law, which says that schools must break down test scores for every subgroup above a certain size -- by race, poverty, ethnicity, disability and English-learners -- and that each group must make adequate progress on annual tests. Under the federal law, states choose the minimum size necessary to produce a statistically reliable gauge of school quality. Most commonly, states want to raise the minimum group size for including children who are either disabled or deficient in English in school accountability profiles. In Missouri, for example, there must be 30 children in a given subgroup for a school to be held responsible for their performance, unless they are disabled or have limited English. Then there must be 50. Raymond J. Simon, the federal Education Department assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, said states were right to wrest the maximum flexibility from the law. State officials maintain that there are sound statistical reasons for their requests. The range of disabilities among special ed students makes the group's membership highly variable, they say, and so a larger number of test-takers is needed to produce statistically reliable results. Such steps have been approved in Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Wisconsin, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., and five more states have requests pending. About 26 states are also using a statistical device known as a confidence interval, a cushion for error based on the size of the sample, and 7 more have asked to follow suit. The effect of using a 99 percent confidence interval is significant, if seemingly technical: For a class |
1587677_3 | Spreading the Pope's Message Of Sexuality and a Willing Spirit | workshops for the clergy and other programs. Led by laypeople, dozens of groups have sprung up around the country to study the pope's views. This month, about 50 people will meet in Maine to train as group facilitators in a retreat sponsored by Women Affirming Life, a national anti-abortion group. Mr. West, who sells his books and tapes on the theology, said his speaking engagements started rising in 2000, and he made 40 appearances last year. In March, the Diocese of Bridgeport, Conn., held a two-day conference on the theology that was attended by about 1,000 couples and endorsed by Bishop William E. Lori as an ''eye-opening'' meeting. In Cheyenne, Wyo., Bishop David Ricken says he plans to write a pastoral letter for his diocese this summer to explain the theology's concepts. Many of those who learn of the theology say the pope's message makes sense. Ben Fratto, 25, an engineer in Birmingham, N.J., and a youth church leader who attended one of Mr. West's lectures, said that treating the body more respectfully seemed a better way to achieve a fulfilling love relationship than succumbing to temptations, like having sex with his girlfriend of seven months before the two are ready to commit to marriage. ''It's a choice,'' he said. ''I do want to have a successful marriage and follow the truth. Otherwise I'd end up like everyone else: unhappy with their jobs, unhappy with their situation and living for Friday.'' Another Catholic trying to apply church doctrine to her personal life, Concetta Pilsner, 43, of the Bronx, says she charts her temperature daily under ''natural family planning,'' a method that tracks a woman's fertility cycle and falls under the principles of theology of the body. Mrs. Pilsner and her husband, John, 40, have been trying for four years to have a baby, but will not consider any artificial means like in vitro fertilization, which is banned by the church. ''I'm not a cafeteria Catholic,'' Mrs. Pilsner said. ''If I've done everything I possibly can within the church's guidelines and I don't conceive, that's God's will for me.'' She said that her religion made her feel ''complete and fully grounded in my identity'' and that by following ''God's ways,'' she is doing what is best for her. But other Catholics have found it more difficult to conform in their sexual practices. At a theology of the body seminar held for |
1592175_0 | Undermining the U.N. | To the Editor: ''U.S. Is Accused of Trying to Isolate U.N. Population Unit'' (news article, June 21) reflects an administration elevating antiabortion politics over American national interests and undermining its own larger objectives. Republicans and others have urged United Nations reform, particularly the need to overcome fragmentation among the agency's programs. In response, Secretary General Kofi Annan undertook a major reform initiative, which was my assignment to carry out. A critical part of that reform was to insist that agencies like the United Nations Children's Fund, the United Nations Development Program and the targeted United Nations Population Fund integrate their work, especially in the countries in which the United Nations works. The administration's actions to undermine the population fund run counter to our interest in having others see us as committed to their success. This objective takes on urgency in the world in which we find ourselves. JAMES GUSTAVE SPETH New Haven, June 21, 2004 The writer was administrator of the United Nations Development Program, 1993-99. |
1592277_0 | World Briefing | Europe: Northern Ireland: A New Deadline | After meeting in London with Northern Ireland's main political parties, Prime Ministers Tony Blair of Britain and Bertie Ahern of Ireland set a deadline of September for restarting the province's stalled local government, which was suspended in 2002 by British authorities for the fourth time in four years amid allegations of continued activity by the Irish Republican Army. Mr. Ahern said the groups involved must resolve issues like guerrilla disarmament and police reform through renewed negotiations this summer. Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political wing, said the governments had accepted a time limit demanded by Unionist parties, which want stronger links between Ulster and Britain. Brian Lavery (NYT) |
1589345_3 | High-speed Internet access makes it easy to leaf through catalogs online (and you don't have to lick your mouse). | catalogs have also helped ease the strain on customer service representatives when a new catalog ships, Mr. Hayes said. J.Jill sends an e-mail message with a link to the online catalog before it mails the paper catalog, he said, and the early shoppers ''lower the peak demand a little for us, which makes us more efficient'' in serving those who respond only to the mailed catalogs. Increased efficiency and sales from the online catalog come as J.Jill's overall revenue picture is improving. Last quarter, the company reported total sales of $100 million, compared with $82 million in the same period last year. Much of that growth was from J.Jill's expansion in retail stores, which will total 150 by year's end. But Web sales are growing as well -- and are accounting for an increasing share of the company's mail-order business. Roughly 40 percent of J.Jill's mail-order sales in the first quarter come via the Web, compared with 34.5 percent a year ago. ''We keep thinking it'll level off, but then it doesn't,'' Mr. Hayes said. Given the versatility of virtual catalogs and the growing tendency of catalog recipients to buy online, one might expect catalog companies to reduce their reliance on paper catalogs, which can cost $1 or more each to produce. But many companies remain convinced of the paper catalog's power as an advertising vehicle -- so much so that many businesses that started out as Internet-only companies now mail catalogs, too. And, of course, they offer virtual versions. Urban Outfitters, an apparel chain that started a Web site in 2000, began mailing a catalog last year, and in March offered a virtual catalog on its Web site. According to Jenn Schimpf, director of operations and business development for the company's mail-order and Internet unit, the feature has already paid for itself. While they may be profitable, online catalogs will not soon replace the conventional mode of e-commerce display, executives said. Dayna Bateman, director of Internet marketing for the upscale gift retailer Hammacher Schlemmer, said her Web site's virtual catalog was ''fun to browse, but an e-commerce site has to give people more points of access to products.'' Each photo spread may display a half-dozen or so products, and the catalog will show only a fraction of a company's overall selection, Ms. Bateman said. ''You can get greater density of products using a grid display,'' she added. ''And that's |
1590486_0 | It's a Dirty Job, But They Do It, Secretly, in Iraq | It was an engineering success on the order of stringing the first cables for the Brooklyn Bridge or coaxing the first glimmer of starlight through some giant telescope to unravel the structure of the universe. But when it occurred late last month, the achievement remained cloaked in absolute secrecy, marked only by a quiet celebration among participants who may remain forever unknown to history. Raw sewage was treated in Baghdad. The stream of treated water that eventually found its way into the Tigris River was hardly more than a trickle, roughly 20 million gallons a day from a city that produces raw sewage at something like 10 times that rate or more. But the accomplishment is all but epoch-making in a city where the sewage plants are in such disrepair that for the last 10 to 15 years, every drop of that muck was poured untreated into the river, fouling everything from boat landings to drinking water systems downstream. Successes like this one were just what Congress envisioned when it appropriated billions of dollars to rebuild Iraq, hoping the improvements would convince Iraqis of America's good will. But for what those in charge of the work, the United States Agency for International Development and its major contractor, Bechtel, curity reasons, the sewage breakthrough remained secret. A reporter from The New York Times agreed not to give the location of the plant in exchange for receiving a general description of the work from the engineers involved. The reporter also agreed not to use the names of the engineers and to print no photographs of their faces. A.I.D. and Bechtel say the breakthrough occurred in a dangerous part of Baghdad where any publicity could make the project a target for saboteurs, who struck again on Wednesday, killing a senior Oil Ministry official and damaging another oil pipeline. That argument and the bizarre concept of a secret sewage project have generated frustration among some of the engineers, who say secrecy defeats the original purpose of the work. This is the first sewage treatment in Baghdad in 15 years but ''we can't get the word out,'' said one American government engineer on the project. To the suggestion that publicity could lead to bombings and the like, the engineer said, ''Well, guess what -- we're getting bombed anyway.'' Just three days before, he said, terrorists had lobbed a concussion grenade at a car carrying an |
1590550_0 | Towers' Wind-Force Design Questioned | Engineers who designed the World Trade Center may have significantly underestimated the force of the winds that the twin towers needed to withstand in the worst of possible storms, federal investigators said yesterday, an oversight that could have led to weaker-than-needed exterior steel columns. That design decision, although inconsequential for three decades, perhaps shortened the time that tenants and rescue workers had to evacuate the towers before they collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001. The finding, which the engineers dispute and that investigators acknowledge needs more study and may turn out to be unfounded, was among dozens of interim conclusions released yesterday as a two-year study on the collapse of the twin towers neared a conclusion. The report, released yesterday by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colo., includes detailed photographs that identify, for the first time, the exact spots where the exterior steel columns gave way. These critical zones were around the 81st floor in the south tower, near the offices of Fuji Bank, and near the 96th floor of the north tower, where Marsh & McLennan was based. For 7 to 10 minutes before the towers fell, the photographs show exterior columns bowing inward, almost like pieces of cooked spaghetti, a sign that they are about to give way. Even so, the institute investigators have not pinpointed why the two towers collapsed after they were able to withstand the initial impacts by the Boeing 767 planes. But two primary theories have been identified. As the fires ignited by the planes burned out of control, the exterior steel columns in the towers, designed primarily to resist wind, might have given way. Alternatively, the innovative lightweight floors that connected the exterior of the towers to their cores might have sagged, pulling the exterior columns inward and starting the collapse, the interim report says, adding that it might have been a combination of both factors. The investigators also released yesterday, for the first time, an estimate that put the number of people in the towers at the time of the attack at about 17,000, about a third of their capacity given the early-morning hour. For that reason, the report said, at least in part, almost all the tenants below the floors of impact were able to flee before the towers fell. Those who died -- 1,560 in the north tower and 599 in the south tower -- were with |
1589126_0 | Jobs and Education | To the Editor: Re ''Study Finds Senior Exams Are Too Basic'' (news article, June 10): Businesses should do what colleges have done for decades: use admissions tests and criteria in addition to high school degree and grade point average. Employers need to assess whether students will succeed in the jobs they are being hired for. If businesses got behind a ''job eligibility testing service'' and marketed its importance directly to prospective employees, businesses and employees could get what they need. The test prep and education industry would fill the education gap. Although this would not solve the deficiencies of our public schools, it would help two populations the public schools are failing: people who want jobs, and employers who want to hire them. DENISE NITTERHOUSE Chicago, June 10, 2004 The writer is an associate professor in the College of Commerce at DePaul University. |
1589171_0 | Short on Priests, U.S. Catholics Outsource Prayers to Indian Clergy | With Roman Catholic clergy in short supply in the United States, Indian priests are picking up some of their work, saying Mass for special intentions, in a sacred if unusual version of outsourcing. American, as well as Canadian and European churches, are sending Mass intentions, or requests for services like those to remember deceased relatives and thanksgiving prayers, to clergy in India. About 2 percent of India's more than one billion people are Christians, most of them Catholics. In Kerala, a state on the southwestern coast with one of the largest concentrations of Christians in India, churches often receive intentions from overseas. The Masses are conducted in Malayalam, the native language. The intention -- often a prayer for the repose of the soul of a deceased relative, or for a sick family member, thanksgiving for a favor received, or a prayer offering for a newborn -- is announced at Mass. The requests are mostly routed to Kerala's churches through the Vatican, the bishops or through religious bodies. Rarely, prayer requests come directly to individual priests. While most requests are made via mail or personally through traveling clergymen, a significant number arrive via e-mail, a sign that technology is expediting this practice. In Kerala's churches, memorial and thanksgiving prayers conducted for local residents are said for a donation of 40 rupees (90 cents), whereas a prayer request from the United States typically comes with $5, the Indian priests say. Bishop Sebastian Adayanthrath, the auxiliary bishop of the Ernakulam-Angamaly diocese in Cochin, a port town in Kerala, said his diocese received an average of 350 Mass intentions a month from overseas. Most were passed to needy priests. In Kerala, where priests earn $45 a month, the money is a welcome supplement, Bishop Adayanthrath said. But critics of the phenomenon said they were shocked that religious services were being sent offshore, or outsourced, a word normally used for clerical and other office jobs that migrate to countries with lower wages. In London, Amicus, the labor union that represents 1.2 million British workers, called on the government and workers to treat outsourcing as a serious issue. In a news release, David Fleming, national secretary for finance of Amicus said the assignment of prayers ''shows that no aspect of life in the West is sacred.'' ''The very fabric of the nation is changing,'' he said. ''We need to have a long, hard think about what |
1589188_21 | By a Back Door to the U.S.: A Migrant's Grim Sea Voyage | said. He said he had been navigating migrant boats since the maritime exodus began booming when the economy plummeted at the end of the 1990's. He had been arrested six years ago aboard a migrant boat, and fined $3,000, and his navigator's license had been taken for life. He got a false license without any trouble, and went back to work. On this trip alone, he said, he would earn $8,000. He said he had already built a nice house for his children, and sent them to private schools. ''I do not want to be a millionaire and have a new car every year,'' Captain Segura said. ''I want a good life. I want to give opportunities to my children, and I am doing that.'' Then he spotted the flickering red light in the distance. He jumped from the cockpit and ordered all the passengers below deck, no exceptions. From Passengers to Hostages Everything changed after that. Tension filled the last days of the journey. The captain snapped at the crew when he caught them giving favors to sick, frail passengers. He pushed them close to mutiny when he ordered that women could no longer sleep in the crewmen's bunks. One of the crew, the middle-aged navigator, Chapulete, quit his post. ''I do not like the way you treat the passengers,'' he told Captain Segura. ''From now on, I am one of them.'' It seemed clear that the crew's kindnesses were only partly genuine, and mostly a ploy for solidarity. Like the captain, they were also haunted by the red light. If they were caught, the migrants would be the key to their freedom. The plan was simple: if the authorities boarded the fugitive vessel, the migrants would claim that the crew abandoned them at sea. The crew would blend in and stay silent. If everyone stuck to the story, the crew would be sent back to Ecuador with the rest of the migrants. Few migrants, however, seemed willing to give cover to Captain Segura, so disliked had he become. ''If we are caught,'' Chapulete sneered at him, ''every migrant is going to tell the police that you are the captain of the boat. Because of you, we will all go to jail.'' Two days later, the captain let it be known that they were close to their destination, and the tension eased off. César Escandón, a guide from the |
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1589048_1 | Socrates' New Disciple | discussions, discover a philosophy of life and to cultivate a social conscience. ''I had this sort of hypothesis that there are all these people in America who are dying to get together and engage with one another, really lock hearts and minds -- and they just needed a catalyst,'' Mr. Phillips said in a recent phone interview. ''I have to tell you, even my most sympathetic friends told me it wouldn't work, and I thought, what the hell, I'm going to at least give it a try. And it did work. It worked way beyond my wildest dreams.'' Mr. Phillips has been so successful that he has been called the ''Johnny Appleseed of philosophy'' by Public Radio International. But more than that, he is more a modern-day disciple of Socrates, and has taken to heart the philosopher's belief that ''the unexamined life is not worth living.'' The groups tackle weighty issues of morality and ethics, using Socratic reasoning. The movement places Mr. Phillips squarely among the growing number of thinkers who believe that a philosophical take on life can cure what ails the common man. Mr. Phillips has written three books: ''Six Questions of Socrates, a Modern-Day Journey of Discovery through World Philosophy'' (W.W. Norton & Company) and a children's book, ''The Philosophers' Club'' (Ten Speed Press) and ''Socrates Café: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy'' (W.W. Norton & Company), joining the ranks of Alain de Botton, the best selling British philosopher who doles out tenets as if they are chicken soup for the soul. Socrates Cafés emphasize an intellectual discourse over soothing the spirit, but the movement here picked up pace after Sept. 11, 2001 -- since the terror attacks, more than 75 Socrates Cafés have been formed, adding fuel to the belief that philosophical inquiry fills a void. While the movement has spread far and wide, groups continue to meet in New Jersey communities, including Teaneck, Little Falls, Kinnelon and, of course, Montclair, where Mr. Phillips will return in late June. Mr. Phillips suspects that the groups fill a need, because ''people are looking to connect, and they're looking to understand, not simply themselves, but they're trying to build bridges, to bridge the chasm that exists between humans.'' Mr. Phillips, who grew up in Newport News, Va., is a lifelong fan of Socrates. His first exposure to Socrates came at 12, when he read his mother's copy of Plato's |
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1588862_5 | The Fidelity Fix | spreading any public-health message. Some researchers have attributed Uganda's H.I.V.-prevention success to increased sexual abstinence among teenage girls, but statistics suggest that partner reduction, especially on the part of men, was far more important. During the early 1990's, Uganda's teenage-pregnancy rates, which even today are among the highest in the world, barely changed at all. If abstinence among teenage girls had increased significantly, it would be expected that teenage pregnancy rates would have fallen. When I asked epidemiologists about this, they explained that abstinence among unmarried teenage girls did increase significantly in the early 1990's, yet marriage rates for that group also increased at the same time. Thus, the proportion of all teenage girls who were sexually active changed little, but more girls were in committed relationships -- and this could explain why fewer of them became H.I.V.-positive even though roughly the same number became pregnant. Although condoms and abstinence do prevent H.I.V. infection, these seem not to have been the methods most Ugandans chose to protect themselves from the virus, at least during the early 1990's, when H.I.V. rates were falling most rapidly. Even in urban areas, condoms weren't widely available until around 1993. Since the mid-1990's, condom use in Uganda has soared, and this has almost certainly helped keep H.I.V.-infection rates relatively low; about 5 percent of sexually active adults carry the virus. Condoms have also helped prevent the spread of H.I.V. among prostitutes and gay men the world over. But increased faithfulness seems to have been crucial to the precipitous decline of H.I.V. rates in Uganda. Partner reduction has been an important factor in H.I.V. prevention elsewhere as well. In Thailand, H.I.V.-infection rates declined steeply during the 1990's. While condom use increased significantly, visits by men to sex workers also fell by 60 percent. Among gays in America, H.I.V. rates fell steeply during the 1980's. Part of this decline was attributable to the increased use of condoms, but partner reduction was very important too. In Zambia and northern Tanzania, where churches promoted faithfulness, H.I.V. rates also declined. Meanwhile, in such countries as Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe, condoms have been emphasized as the main method of prevention, and H.I.V. rates have remained high. In all three countries, condoms are used more frequently than in Uganda when H.I.V. rates were falling rapidly in the early 1990's, and teenage sexual debut is later. The problem is not that condoms |
1588862_22 | The Fidelity Fix | reduction. He sent back a response but did not answer that question. I also asked Michel Carael, a sociologist and former team leader in prevention at the agency, about the silence on this topic. He denied that the U.N. AIDS program, which was established in the mid-1990's, played down fidelity, but when I read through the agency's documents about H.I.V. prevention produced over the past several years, I found almost no mention of either partner reduction or faithfulness. There are obviously limits to a government's power to change sexual behavior, and Uganda may have been a special case. Whites never settled there in large numbers, never threw large numbers of poor blacks off their land and never subjected people to the particularly degrading conditions of migrant labor endured by people throughout southern Africa. The climate is rainy and the soil fertile, and although this is changing, many Ugandans still make their living on small farms. As a result, Ugandans are more likely to live near their families and know their neighbors, and this probably enabled a more compassionate, open response to AIDS and a more rapid acceptance of the idea that trust and mutual fidelity were possible. The far more brutal history of southern Africa had the opposite effect. It weakened people's sense of trust and undermined relationships between men and women. Many experts contend that sexual-behavior change in Africa is complicated because women's fear of abusive partners inhibits private discussions of sex, condom use and H.I.V. But in Uganda, gender relations seem to have improved during the Zero Grazing campaign; reports of desertions and divorces declined, and one recent study suggests that domestic battery there, though frequent, is half as common as in South Africa. Similarly, in the wake of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, gay men came to relate to one another differently, placing far more emphasis on friendship and commitment than before. Hopeful changes may be under way in South Africa today. Promiscuity may be declining, according to Stoneburner and Low-Beer, and gender relations in general may be improving. When Jewkes first began her research 10 years ago, between 20 and 30 percent of young women in surveys claimed that their first sexual experience was the result of either rape or, more commonly, forced sex by a boyfriend. Today, she and other researchers find the frequency of forced first sexual intercourse is far lower, reported |
1591221_0 | U.S. Is Accused of Trying to Isolate U.N. Population Unit | The Bush administration, which cut off its share of financing two years ago to the United Nations agency handling population control, is seeking to isolate the agency from groups that work with it in China and elsewhere, United Nations officials and diplomats say. Pressed by opponents of abortion, the administration withdrew its support from a major international conference on health issues this month and has privately warned other groups, like Unicef, that address health issues that their financing could be jeopardized if they insist on working with the agency, the United Nations Population Fund. The administration also has indicated that it hopes to persuade the United Nations' Latin American caucus to back away from a common position on population and development that was adopted in Santiago, -Chile, in March on the grounds that the document's discussion of reproductive rights could be interpreted as promoting abortion. The actions are part of an administration effort to ensure that international agencies and private groups do not promote abortions overseas. In its first days in office, the Bush administration reintroduced the Reagan-era that critics call the ''global gag rule,'' which denies money to groups that even discuss abortion as an option, except in cases that threaten life or involve rape or incest. The Population Fund, known as Unfpa, has long been a favorite target of abortion opponents in Congress and in religious-based organizations, who contend that it assists in coercive abortions in China. The critics prevented American financing of the fund for most of the last two decades, and they have now set their sights on curbing its operations with other United Nations agencies. The administration's position has frustrated some United Nations officials and family planning advocates, who have complained that advances in education and awareness on reproductive issues are being undermined by the United States, where abortion is legal. Those critics, most of whom spoke anonymously because the United States government is the leading contributor to their agencies, charged that the administration was pandering to conservative supporters, and said that doing so placed the United States in alliance with tradition-bound Islamic countries and the Holy See. Last year, the State Department cut financing to Marie Stopes International, a British charity involved in AIDS programs, because it worked with the Population Fund in China. In a letter to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Friday, four Democratic members of Congress demanded a legal |
1586843_0 | World Briefing | Americas: Canada: Two-Step On Gay Unions | The Anglican Church of Canada sidestepped a decision on whether to approve same-sex unions when church leaders at a national meeting opted instead to defer one for three years while passing a conciliatory resolution that affirmed the ''integrity and sanctity'' of gay relationships. Individual bishops and dioceses may still bless same-sex unions without approval of the church's governing body, the General Synod. Colin Campbell (NYT) |
1592002_1 | AOL to Buy Advertising.com, an Online Direct Marketer | ad they display. The major antispyware software programs look for and remove Advertising.com's cookies, as well as those from other ad networks, on the ground that they lead to an invasion of privacy. And the company's e-mail marketing operation is listed by the Spamhaus Project, a leading organization that fights junk e-mail, as a source of spam for products like ''Hair-Gro formula.'' Another part of Advertising.com runs affiliate programs for advertisers that want independent Web sites and owners of e-mail marketing firms to sell their products in return for a commission. Advertising.com has rules that prevent its affiliates from sending unsolicited e-mail, or spam. But these rules are not always followed, and e-mail offers through Advertising.com have been identified in databases of known spam. Indeed, last year Advertising.com represented Leading Edge Marketing, the maker of Vig-RX, a brand of penis-enlargement pills that has been widely promoted in spam. The company no longer does business with Leading Edge. On Wednesday, an engineer who worked for AOL was arrested and charged with selling e-mail addresses of 92 million AOL members to spammers who promoted a different brand of penis-enlargement pills. Jonathan F. Miller, the chief executive of America Online, defended the practices of Advertising.com. ''I don't believe they are spammers,'' he said. ''And if anything happened in the past, they are not going to be spammers under our ownership.'' Mr. Miller added that Advertising.com would conform to America Online's privacy policies with regard to what data is collected through cookies and other means. (The flagship America Online service has strict limits on how it can use information on its users' behavior. AOL's other divisions, like the Netscape.com Web site, have somewhat looser privacy policies.) Mr. Miller said that much of the value of Advertising.com was how well it could sell advertising on the more far-flung corners of AOL's network. America Online, like Yahoo and MSN from Microsoft, is seeing a rebound in advertising by major marketers like movie studios and auto companies. These companies buy online advertising the same way they purchase broadcast and print ads: paying a set fee per 1,000 people who see the ad. Advertising.com also offers growth in a lower tier of marketing: direct-marketing companies that buy advertising by paying a fixed fee every time a user clicks on the ad to go to a Web site, or a fee every time someone actually buys the product advertised. |
1592021_0 | Movement on North Korea, Finally | North Korea's nuclear arms program has been the biggest unconventional weapons threat to the United States since the day President Bush took office. But it took three years of posturing, in which North Korea probably processed enough plutonium to make several bombs, before the Bush administration took real action. It has now put some specific proposals on the table that could lead to a satisfactory solution. Yesterday, North Korean negotiators, as if on autopilot, were still warning of a possible nuclear test. But Kim Jong Il, the country's unpredictable dictator, has not yet decided how to respond to the American proposal. Rejecting it would be a mistake. North Korea can ensure a safer and more prosperous future for itself by coming to terms with Washington than it can by barricading itself behind a nuclear firewall while its economy disintegrates. The Bush administration is at last offering Mr. Kim specific inducements to give up the nuclear weapons programs that he believes are his best shield against the kind of pre-emptive war Washington launched against Iraq. The administration has also dropped its insistence that North Korea complete full nuclear disarmament before any rewards are delivered. North Korea has feared that once it fully disarmed, Washington would no longer feel pressed to complete its side of the bargain. But the new American proposal envisions a sensible two-stage process, which would start with the North acknowledging all its nuclear weapons programs and agreeing to give them up within three months. South Korea and other countries could start delivering badly needed fuel oil, and North Korea's security would be guaranteed during the disarmament period. If North Korea met the deadline, it would open the way to a broader and more permanent set of rewards, including its removal from Washington's list of states sponsoring terrorism, the elimination of some sanctions, improved diplomatic relations with the United States and greatly increased international economic assistance. The Bush administration put forth this proposal because it had to. A military solution to the North Korean nuclear issue was never a credible option, and it is much less so after the disastrous Iraq operation. Had the administration refused to shift course and give North Korea specific inducements, Japan, South Korea and China might have started giving the North the aid and assurances it wanted without any nuclear quid pro quo. That would have left the White House vulnerable to campaign charges |
1592049_0 | Iran and North Korea Reignite Fears on Atomic Programs | Iran and North Korea made separate announcements on Thursday that spurred concern that they are headed to confrontations with the United States over their nuclear programs. European nations said they had received a diplomatic note from Iran saying it would resume manufacturing equipment for its nuclear centrifuges, but not resuming uranium enrichment. ''They've sent letters saying we haven't lived up to our commitments to normalize relations,'' said a spokesman for Britain, which received the note, along with France and Germany. ''Among Europeans and the U.S., there will be deep disappointment,'' he added. ''There is no good reason for it. Europe will be urging them to reverse this decision.'' The note was interpreted by American officials in Washington as a sign that Tehran had chosen to defy the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose board passed a resolution last Friday sharply critical of Iran's efforts to hide important segments of its program from the agency's inspectors. It is not clear, in any case, that Iran has ever halted all its centrifuge production. In Beijing, North Korean negotiators told their American counterparts that the North Korean Army was threatening to test a nuclear weapon. According to American officials who reviewed notes from their counterparts at the Beijing talks, the North Koreans did not reject outright a new proposal by the Bush administration that would tie nuclear dismantling to carefully calibrated aid from American allies. One official said: ''They seem to be waiting for instructions from Kim Jong Il,'' the North Korean leader. ''So this may have been a real threat. But it was probably a stalling action.'' The talks, which include China, Japan, Russia and South Korea, are widely expected to run at least through Friday. North Korea has made such threats at least once before, in a previous round of talks. American and Asian officials say China has warned North Korea that a nuclear test could turn its neighbors against it. At the same time, such a test would remove any doubt that North Korea has nuclear ability. The Iranian note was sent to Britain, France and Germany, the three nations that intervened in the fall to try to defuse a confrontation with the I.A.E.A. over inspections. Iran said it was no longer committed to a promise to halt work on the centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium, either for commercial power production or because Europe had failed to close the |
1590184_2 | Variety, the spice of life, has measurable value. But it's not easy to determine. | varieties were. Consumers do not generally care what country a commodity like crude oil comes from, for example. They care much more about varieties of wine, automobiles or cheese, and they value some varieties more than others. Access to French wine is more important to most people than access to Japanese or Australian wine. ''The nasty mathematics,'' Professor Weinstein says about the paper, ''is all about trying to make adjustments for the fact that qualities of varieties may vary across countries.'' Economists generally use the term ''variety'' to mean the least aggregated version of a good in their data, but not necessarily a specific brand, much less an individual item. To a consumer, of course, variety has increased even more than the economists' data indicate -- not all red wine from France is the same. As a result, the paper's calculations probably understate the gains from increasing variety. The calculations took about four days, using four computers. Ten years ago, the economists estimate, the same calculations, also using four computers, would have taken more than four months. Little wonder that nobody has done this calculation before. Once the economists determined how much variety mattered for each good, they looked at how much variety had increased. From 1972 to 2001, the number of varieties increased from 74,667 (7,731 goods, from an average of 9.7 countries) to 259,215 (16,390 goods, from an average of 15.8 countries). Using this information, they calculated a price index that measured how much each variety increase was worth to consumers. The conventional import price index, they estimate, overstates the price of imports by about 1.2 percent a year, because it does not take the higher value of variety into account. Interestingly, the greatest gains took place not in the 1990's but from 1972 to 1988, a period when conventional measures show a relatively stagnant standard of living. During this period, major exporters, notably South Korea and China, liberalized their economies. ''Those countries flooded the U.S. market with a lot of varieties that we really liked,'' Professor Weinstein says. Americans are not the only consumers who are better off. In an article published in The American Economic Review in May, the economists use less detailed data to estimate the worldwide benefits of variety growth. ''Countries like China, Mexico, the former U.S.S.R., and Singapore have welfare gains that are double digits -- three to five times larger than those |
1590015_0 | Clinical Trial Of Growth Drug Shows Promise | Research that the biotechnology giant Genentech began more than a decade ago could be on the verge of a major payoff -- but not necessarily for Genentech. A newly public biotechnology company, Tercica, which uses technology and patents it bought from Genentech, announced favorable results yesterday from a clinical trial of a human-growth drug for abnormally short children. The company said that patients given the drug through twice-a-day injections had, on average, grown about an inch more a year than they would have without the treatment. Tercica plans to use the data early next year to seek Food and Drug Administration approval to sell the drug, rhIGF-1, in this country. If approved, rhIGF-1 would be the first new drug for the treatment of abnormal shortness in more than 30 years. Worldwide, there is an estimated $1.6 billion annual market for treating approximately 30,000 short-stature children with conventional genetically engineered human growth hormone. Some scientists say the number of children who could benefit from rhIGF-1 is roughly comparable, although no one is certain. Tercica's drug is meant for children who do not respond favorably to conventional growth hormone treatment. Growth hormone therapy costs about $20,000 a year, and while pricing has not been set for rhIGF-1, it is expected to be similar. Investors in the company, which went public in March at $9 a share, have been anticipating the favorable results from the latest trial. Yesterday, after the trial data were presented at a medical conference in New Orleans, the shares closed at $9.96, up 7 cents. The drug derives its name from a naturally occurring human protein called Insulin-Like Growth Factor 1, or IGF-1. Some children of short stature are thought to be deficient in this protein, which makes their bodies unable to respond normally to growth hormones -- whether their own or supplemental ones. ''What Tercica is banking on, is that many of the children who are short have some degree of IGF-1 deficiency that reflects some degree of growth hormone insensitivity,'' said Ron G. Rosenfeld, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford University as well as Oregon Health and Science University, who has conducted studies with other forms of genetically engineered IGF-1 but has no connection to Tercica. The potential population for use of Tercica's drug ''is actually greater than that for growth hormone,'' Dr. Rosenfeld said. Whether rhIGF-1 turns out to be a billion-dollar drug or a niche |
1590113_3 | Sad Adieu to College, And to Good Old .edu | use the e-mail address often while others never do. Still, for most graduates, hanging on is not an option. ''It's a pain, but so is not having your parents do your laundry,'' said Robert P. Hopkins, an associate professor of computer science at Cooper Union who is in charge of e-mail addresses. Students must ''grow up and cut the ties,'' said Professor Hopkins, who waits at least six months before purging old addresses. Still, his actions suggest that he is hardly unsympathetic. ''I have had kids over the years who have these legacy e-mail addresses,'' he said. ''If they make a big issue of it, I don't have the heart to remove them.'' One who did make an issue of it was Kenny Feldhamer, who graduated four years ago. ''They took away my key to the computer lab,'' Mr. Feldhamer said. ''They took away everything. I wanted to feel I still had some connection to the institution.'' To his surprise, the emotional attachment has lessened. His Cooper in-box started filling with spam. And ''everything relevant to my life'' started going to his new e-mail address at medical school. ''I don't really use the Cooper one any more,'' he said. Certainly, those bombarded by spam are relieved to start fresh. Some never liked their addresses, often because it was something odd that was assigned to them or something juvenile that they chose and outgrew. Lisa Friedman, who just graduated from Princeton, said she was eager to relinquish her address because she was tethered to ''lfriedma,'' which she said was ''really annoying.'' That missing final 'n' meant that the e-mail address was hard to pronounce and hard for people to catch on the phone. She often got e-mail meant for a classmate with a similar name. She plans to sign up for a free service, choosing a name that is less confusing and more neutral. ''I don't like when I am on the phone giving my e-mail address to someone random and them commenting about me going to Princeton,'' said Ms. Friedman, who has a technology consulting job lined up. ''That's not something they need to know.'' And she is not worried about losing touch with friends. ''For the most part, anyone I would want to talk to I would give them my contact information,'' she said. ''I am not that old that I know many people who have faded into oblivion.'' |
1590128_4 | Turning The Tables On E-Mail Swindlers | enforcement agency not making use of them. They are on the front lines, and they have information that is very valuable.'' In March, Mr. Visser established www.419legal.org as a clearinghouse for information about advance-fee fraud and as a launching pad for attacking fraud artists. (Mr. Visser said his government's approval process for creating an official site would have taken months.) Since March, he said, the fraud baiters have provided information that has led to seven arrests in South Africa and the seizure of property used by West African expatriates to conduct fraud. Last month, he said, they provided information that led to the closing of a fake South African embassy in Amsterdam that fraud artists had established to lend credence to their operations. One Saudi victim had lost $100,000 to that group, Mr. Visser said. He added that when the fraud baiters provide reliable information about fraud in unrelated countries, he relays the tips through Interpol. Mr. Visser estimated that such schemes reap more than $100 million a year worldwide. Fraud baiters say that most victims lose around $3,000, but some far more. Arrest and prosecution are difficult because of the international nature of the operations. But in January, the Dutch national police arrested 52 suspected con men in Amsterdam, most of them West African. Internet fraud baiters claim to have provided information that helped lead to those arrests. And with the geography-erasing power of the Internet, it is not just major national police forces who are working with the fraud baiters. For instance, Karl J. Dailey, the sheriff of Dawes County, Neb., has also joined the effort. ''It went from snail mail to faxes to e-mails,'' Sheriff Dailey said in a telephone interview from his office in Chadron, Neb., referring to the initial pitches sent by con artists to people in his county. After local residents started asking him about the schemes, he said, he got involved with the fraud baiters at Artists Against 419 (www.aa419.org) and even helped take down a fake bank Web site. Now, he uses his local radio show to help warn people about advance-fee fraud. Sheriff Dailey pointed out that the legality of activities like cracking into e-mail accounts and shutting down Web sites, even patently fraudulent ones, might be dubious at best. But he echoed Mr. Visser in lauding the baiters. ''It's one of these areas that's gray,'' Sheriff Dailey said, ''but I |
1590187_2 | Waste and Fraud Besiege U.S. Program to Link Poor Schools to Internet | everything they recommend.'' ''You couldn't invent a way to throw money down the drain that would work any better than this,'' he added. The Universal Service Administrative Company, a nonprofit government corporation overseen by the communications commission and known to school administrators as USAC (pronounced YOU- sack), is in charge of the E-rate program, which has many enthusiastic backers. ''Every mammoth government program has problems,'' said Gregg Downey, editor of eSchool News, a paper that covers educational technology. ''The sloth, the waste and the cases of outright fraud shouldn't be a reason to get rid of a program that's doing a lot of good. This is a program that helps schools serve students better through technology.'' Michael Balmoris, a spokesman for the communications commission, said that E-rate was not ''waste- and fraud-free'' but that abuses were not ''endemic.'' Narda M. Jones, an acting chief in the F.C.C. division that oversees the program, said it was designed to give schools ''maximum flexibility'' to build technology systems that suited their needs. ''But as the system has grown, we've seen that that design has given people an opportunity to push at the margins of the program,'' Ms. Jones said. In the last year, she said, the commission has adopted rules that ''significantly tighten'' the wiggle room for abuse. One such rule bars people found guilty of crimes from participation, she said. But Thomas D. Bennett, an assistant inspector general at the commission, remains concerned about oversight. He pointed to evaluations of 122 E-rate beneficiaries carried out or overseen by F.C.C. and USAC auditors in the last year or so. The auditors characterized 62 beneficiaries as ''compliant'' with E-rate rules, 21 as ''generally compliant,'' and 39 -- nearly a third of the total -- as ''not compliant,'' Mr. Bennett said. ''That doesn't give us much comfort that beneficiaries are complying with our rules,'' he said. In the case of the $1 million server, installed for the Endeavour Elementary School in Cocoa, Fla., Mr. Bennett's auditors are midway through an examination of documents relating to the Brevard County school district's purchase of it. He declined to characterize the interim findings. Lee A. Berry, the Brevard district's deputy superintendent, defended the purchase. ''We violated no rules,'' Mr. Berry said. ''Was that server appropriate for that school? In our mind it was. It allowed each teacher and child to have a Web site.'' In El Paso, school |
1588288_2 | The earning power of women has really increased, right? Take a closer look. | not work at all for four or more years . By contrast, only one man in 27 was out of work so much. Thus, a snapshot of the median income of two-worker families in any given year exaggerates the financial advantage to the family of the working spouse. Some combination of social mores, necessity and, arguably, parental instinct drives spouses, typically wives, to stay home and tend to the family. Married women with children usually work less than unmarried women. But hours alone do not account for the discrepancy in pay over time. The economists' analysis turns up continuing evidence of gender segregation. A far higher proportion of females have had jobs that pay at the bottom of the income scale, and fewer of them climb to jobs of higher quality. Even when they are well educated, women predominantly take different kinds of jobs from those men do -- jobs that usually pay less. For example, Ms. Hartmann and Mr. Rose divided jobs into three categories: elite, good and less-skilled. Among the relatively elite professional jobs, women were mostly teachers, nurses and social workers. Men were mostly business executives and scientists. The middle level for women included secretarial positions, but for men it was typically well-paid blue-collar jobs. In each tier, the researchers find, salaries are higher for the male-dominated categories than for the female categories, even though the educational requirements are similar. Ms. Hartmann and Mr. Rose argue, most disturbingly, that these tendencies are self-reinforcing. Because wives usually earn less, they are more likely to give up their jobs to do child care. Women also often take low-paying temporary or part-time jobs that provide few benefits so they can be home for the family. This in turn creates a labor pool that business can consistently exploit, encouraging companies to orient their operations to use such low-paid workers rather than create better jobs. And many researchers have found that there is a statistical bias against women in the work force because employers assume there is a probability that they will drop out for family reasons. This often leads to underinvestment in women's careers and a tendency to hire them for dead-end jobs. There are encouraging trends. Women are increasingly better educated. Government policies against discrimination have had success. And a service economy reduces the advantage men once had doing heavy labor in a manufacturing economy. Yet problems persist. They amount |
1588227_1 | Intriguing the Physicists, Radio Buff Shrinks an Antenna | as normally required. He has spoken to other ham operators in over 80 countries on the 160-meter band through his relatively new, self-supported backyard tower, which is one-third of the conventional minimum size. Mr. Vincent said his improvements were not just applicable to ham radio towers. They could be used to either further shrink the tiny antennas in cellphones, he said, or boost their efficiency. Small yet efficient antennas have long been a goal for radio researchers, said R. Dean Straw, the senior assistant technical editor for the American Radio Relay League, an association of amateur operators. ''The holy grail is an antenna the size of a grain of salt that produces big signals,'' he said. Generally the size of antennas increases with the wavelength of the frequencies they are transmitting or receiving. While there are several formulas for determining optimum height, the height of most antennas is one-quarter to one-half the wavelength. At 140 feet, for instance, Mr. Vincent's ham tower would have been slightly higher than one-quarter of the wavelength of 160 meters, which is equal to 525 feet. Smaller antennas can be used, but with a trade-off. ''When you get below a quarter-wavelength, efficiency drops off dramatically,'' Mr. Vincent said. Before arriving at the university in the early 1990's in a still-unfulfilled quest to complete his undergraduate degree, Mr. Vincent spent about 30 years in radio-related engineering jobs, mostly with a radar division of Raytheon. But his tinkering with antennas dates back to when he obtained his first amateur radio license at the age of 14. ''I've always had a natural understanding of radio -- maybe it's from a prior life,'' Mr. Vincent said. ''But in those early days I could not fathom how an antenna worked.'' The relationship between antenna height and efficiency was so well established that he initially kept his antenna-shrinking work a secret. Mr. Vincent also acknowledged that he had relatively little idea of what might work when he began the project. ''When I started out to do this it was 10 percent theory and 90 percent black magic,'' he said. After reviewing much of the literature, Mr. Vincent started designing antennas with special simulation software on a personal computer. From the most promising of those virtual designs, he ran tests using antennas that were about 18 inches high and fashioned from copper-covered Plexiglas rods. One model seemed particularly successful until it lost |
1591329_0 | Iran Seizes 3 British Navy Boats and Detains 8 Sailors in a Territorial Dispute on Iraqi Border | Iran seized three small British Royal Navy boats and arrested all eight sailors on board on Monday, its Foreign Ministry announced, saying the boats had entered Iranian waters without permission. The British Ministry of Defense confirmed that the Iranian government had seized the boats and detained the sailors after they entered Iranian waters. The navy was delivering the three boats to the Iraqi Riverine Patrol Service when the sailors from the navy training team were stopped on the Shatt al Arab, a stretch of water that marks the southern boundary between Iran and Iraq. The British military controls areas in southern Iraq around the city of Basra. The British government emphasized that the boats were ''very small,'' a spokesman said, and were not outfitted with weapons, although the military personnel on board were armed. British military officials said the boats were two Boston Whalers and a British Army combat supply boat. The Ministry of Defense said it lost contact with the boats on Monday morning. The sailors on board were assigned to train Iraqis to use the boats, a navy spokesman said. British forces routinely patrol the Shatt al Arab, which is often used as a smuggling route for Iraqi contraband oil and as an entry point for militants, so the sailors' presence on the river was not unusual. As the only water route into the Persian Gulf, the Shatt al Arab is strategically valued by both Iraq and Iran and has long been a source of conflict between the countries. Tension over navigational rights to the river, which is about one mile across, was one reason that the two countries went to war in 1980. The arrests come during a time of strained relations between Iran and Britain, mostly over the war in Iraq and Iran's nuclear capacity. The British Embassy in Tehran has faced a series of demonstrations over accusations that British troops abused Iraqi prisoners and desecrated Iraqi holy Shiite cities. Britain also recently sponsored with France and Germany a resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency condemning Iran's lack of cooperation with nuclear arms inspectors. Still, British officials sought to play down the boat incident as relatively minor. Hamid Reza Asefi, a spokesman for Iran's foreign minister, said the sailors were being questioned by the Iranian Navy and had admitted that they entered Iranian territory. ''The crews are under investigation in order to clarify the issue,'' |
1591436_3 | Brazil's Spreading Exports Worry Minnesota Farmers | but generally without the involvement of state agricultural officials. ''Some of us are absolutely paranoid that Brazil will put us out of business,'' said Gene Hugoson, Minnesota's agriculture commissioner and the owner of a 650-acre soybean farm. ''Others choose to ignore it. ''My function is to get opinion somewhere in the middle,'' said Mr. Hugoson, who joined more than 20 officials on a tour of soybean-growing areas in Brazil in January. Their worries have been sharpened by dispatches from Brazil that have appeared in local papers. A series in March in The Star Tribune of Minneapolis, the state's largest newspaper, said that Minnesota and other areas in the Midwest were on the cusp of losing their status as the world's breadbasket to frontier regions of western Brazil. A series later in The Chicago Tribune carried headlines that included ''Brazil Threatens U.S. Soybean Dominance; Midwest Farmers Scramble to Adjust.'' Cargill, which has its headquarters in a 63-room replica of a French chateau outside Minneapolis, has steadily expanded its operations in Brazil, a country it entered nearly four decades ago and is now one of its largest sources of revenue outside the United States. Cargill accounts for about a quarter of sugar exports from Brazil, and has become a leader there in soybean crushing, orange juice and cocoa production, as well as the trading of commodity contracts in São Paulo, Brazil's financial center. But it is Cargill's foray into ethanol exports that has really touched a nerve in Minnesota. Though Brazil is the world's largest ethanol producer, its exports to the United States have been restricted by a 54-cent-a-gallon tariff intended to shield domestic corn growers from relatively cheap imports. Yet with regulations for cleaner-burning gasoline taking effect this year in some states, the demand for ethanol -- which is considered less polluting than other fuel additives -- is soaring. Ethanol production in the United States is expected to reach a record five billion gallons next year, up from about three billion this year, according to some estimates. Seeking to meet the demand, Cargill devised a plan, which is still under consideration, to build a dehydration factory in El Salvador that would convert Brazilian ethanol for use in American automobiles. The attraction of El Salvador is its inclusion in the Caribbean Basin Initiative, a program dating from the 1980's, that allows 7 percent of the ethanol used in the United States each |
1591436_4 | Brazil's Spreading Exports Worry Minnesota Farmers | exports from Brazil, and has become a leader there in soybean crushing, orange juice and cocoa production, as well as the trading of commodity contracts in São Paulo, Brazil's financial center. But it is Cargill's foray into ethanol exports that has really touched a nerve in Minnesota. Though Brazil is the world's largest ethanol producer, its exports to the United States have been restricted by a 54-cent-a-gallon tariff intended to shield domestic corn growers from relatively cheap imports. Yet with regulations for cleaner-burning gasoline taking effect this year in some states, the demand for ethanol -- which is considered less polluting than other fuel additives -- is soaring. Ethanol production in the United States is expected to reach a record five billion gallons next year, up from about three billion this year, according to some estimates. Seeking to meet the demand, Cargill devised a plan, which is still under consideration, to build a dehydration factory in El Salvador that would convert Brazilian ethanol for use in American automobiles. The attraction of El Salvador is its inclusion in the Caribbean Basin Initiative, a program dating from the 1980's, that allows 7 percent of the ethanol used in the United States each year to be exempt from import duties if delivered from certain Central American or Caribbean countries. If Cargill goes ahead with the project, it could import as much as 230 million gallons of Brazilian ethanol, filling the entire 7 percent allowance. ''We're a significant investor in U.S. corn production, but we also recognize what is happening in Brazil,'' said Dan Dye, president of Cargill AgHorizons, a unit that advises farmers, including those producing corn for ethanol in the United States, on how to market their crops. ''Brazil has abundant resources and a lot of open land. Those are the economic realities.'' Some Minnesota farmers regard such statements from the state's most powerful company and the expansion of Brazil's agricultural frontier as a very bad omen. Brazil is said to be clearing an area equivalent to the state of Maryland for new farms each year, and its trade diplomats have successfully pressed a series of complaints against American and European farm protection policies at the World Trade Organization. [In the latest case, the W.T.O. ruled on Friday that United States cotton subsidies violated international trade rules.] ''Brazil is an enormous long-term concern,'' said Seth Naeve, a soybean agronomist at the University |
1592934_0 | A Reason to Switch? | It's no surprise that Internet users are fed up with spam in their inboxes and pop-up ads in their Web browsers. A study by Gartner suggests that many people are willing to switch Internet service providers to find a solution. While there is a variety of software for diverting spam, Lydia Leong, a principal analyst at Gartner and author of a recent study on consumers' views, said that most subscribers believe that the service providers should be responsible for curbing the problem. ''It's because, historically, some I.S.P.'s began to take the first antispam measures as a defensive measure,'' Ms. Leong said. Even though many people would be willing to switch providers, the situation does not appear to offer many business opportunities. ''A lot of users aren't willing to pay anything extra,'' Ms. Leong said. In any case, switching I.S.P.'s may not help. ''Users will sometimes switch and think they're getting better spam protection,'' she said. ''Spammers have just not found their new e-mail addresses yet.'' IAN AUSTEN MOST WANTED: DRILLING DOWN/SPAM PROTECTION |
1592869_1 | A Second Opinion | adding, ''But even the relatively advantaged position of elderly persons in the United States is slipping. The U.S. relative position for life expectancy in the oldest age group was better in the 1980's than in the 1990's.'' The article was published in the summer of 2000. At the time Japan ranked highest among developed countries in terms of health, and the United States ranked among the lowest. Last week I talked with Dr. Starfield, an internationally respected physician, professor and researcher, and asked whether the situation had improved over the last four years. ''It's getting worse,'' she said, noting, ''We've done a lot more studies in terms of the international comparisons. We've done them a million different ways. The findings are so robust that I think they're probably incontrovertible.'' The U.S. has the most expensive health care system on the planet, but millions of Americans without access to care die from illnesses that could have been successfully treated if diagnosed in time. Poor people line up at emergency rooms for care that should be provided in a doctor's office or clinic. Each year tens of thousands of men, women and children die from medical errors and many more are maimed. But when you look for leadership on these issues, you find yourself staring into the void. If you want to get physicians' representatives excited, ask them about tort reform, not patient care. Elected officials give lip service to health care issues, but at the end of the campaign day their allegiance goes to the highest bidders, and they are never the people who put patients first. To get a sense of just how backward we're becoming on these matters, consider that in places like Texas, Florida and Mississippi the politicians are dreaming up new ways to remove the protective cloak of health coverage from children, the elderly and the poor. Texas and Florida have been pulling the plug on coverage for low-income kids. And Mississippi recently approved the deepest cut in Medicaid eligibility for senior citizens and the disabled that has ever been approved anywhere in the U.S. Even the affluent are finding it more difficult to obtain access to care. For patients with insurance the route to treatment is often a confusing maze of gatekeepers and maddening regulations. The costs of insurance are shifting from employers to employees, and important health decisions are increasingly being made by bureaucrats and |
1587990_3 | Sinatra's Hometown Has a New Latin Flavor | where it awaits the ministrations of Maria Guarnaschelli, the celebrated food-book editor, as well as a title. Publication is tentatively set for next spring. ''I have been to every country in Latin America, not once but several times,'' she told me and my wife, Betsey, over dinner at Cucharamama. ''I've been up in the Andes, down in Patagonia, and in the Orinoco Delta, where all they eat is dried fish. This is not an armchair enterprise for me.'' So why Hoboken? Why not Manhattan? Ms. Presilla does not miss life in the big city. ''I have a satisfying life here,'' she said. ''I have neighbors here, and lots of friends, and I like the intimacy of the whole experience.'' She fled Cuba in 1970 on a ''freedom flight,'' landing in Miami and beginning to scratch out a higher education at Miami Dade Community College and at Florida International University. After a year or so there, she married her sweetheart from Cuba, Alejandro Presilla, and several months later followed him to the University of Valladolid in Spain, where she absorbed Spanish history while he studied medicine. From there they went to New York, where her husband served his medical internship. She, meantime, started work on master's and doctoral degrees at New York University under Norman Cantor, ultimately writing a dissertation on the politics of death and salvation in the 13th century. An admirer of Fernand Braudel and the Annales school of history, Professor Cantor impressed on Ms. Presilla, she said, ''the importance of ordinary lives, not just great men and great events'' in the understanding of the past. She took that to mean what people ate and how they cooked it, among many other things, so she stepped up the pace of her journeys to South America. She also cooked at the Ballroom in New York, an early upmarket tapas bar, under its young chef, Felipe Rojas-Lombardi. Eventually, she and her husband came to New Jersey, where he set up his practice, though not in heavily Hispanic Union City, which is sometimes said to have the largest Cuban population outside the island. They settled in Weehawken, closer to the Hudson River, and in 2000, Ms. Presilla and her business partner, Clara Chaumont, also a Cuban-American, opened Zafra (the word means ''sugar-cane harvest'' in Cuba) on Willow Avenue in nearby Hoboken. For most of the 20th century, Hoboken was a gritty town, |
1588025_3 | Hide-and-Seek Among the Coca Leaves | not impossible, to spray. Perhaps 25,000 acres of coca, nearly 10 percent of Colombia's crop, have been planted recently in state parks and in the vast Amazonian region once thought too remote for coca cultivation and cocaine trafficking. ''What we have is an enormous fragmentation,'' said Sandro Calvini, director of the United Nations Drug Control Program in Bogotá, which tracks spraying efforts and tries to prod coca farmers into farming legal crops. ''It's hard to detect, and it's obvious they are looking for areas that are hard to detect.'' In the past, growers have shown great skill in creating coca plants resistant to chemicals and adaptable to difficult climates. Now, drug experts say, they are busy developing new strains of coca, yielding more cocaine from fewer plants. ''They're going for varieties that will yield very quickly, lots of leaves per bush, more bushes per hectare, more alkaloids in the leaves,'' said Adam Isacson, who closely tracks counternarcotics efforts for the Washington-based Center for International Policy and in April met with small-town officials throughout two of Colombia's main coca-growing provinces. ''It's small, scattered, and people are getting better at growing in the shade.'' But that is not all. It also turns out that the adage about demand driving supply does not fully apply to the cocaine trade. While demand from occasional users has steadily dropped in the United States, it has picked up with a vengeance in other countries, like Brazil, now the No. 2 consumer. ''What's happening is they're adapting to the market, helping create demand,'' said a senior Congressional aide in Washington. New cocaine routes are traversing the heart of the Andes into Brazil, the flow heading into Brazilian cities or simply hopscotching to Europe, where cocaine consumption has shot up in recent years to as much as 200 metric tons, not far off the total consumed in the United States. In the slums of Rio de Janeiro, the crack trade has such a tight hold that military-style police patrols armed with assault rifles have been repelled by drug gangs. Multi-ton loads of cocaine are headed to Europe, and poor African countries are experiencing a boom in trafficking and drug use. Even this country, which for years has defiantly asserted it was Americans who were consuming Colombian cocaine, not Colombians, is experiencing a troubling, home-grown surge in consumption. ''The days when the vast majority of cocaine was bound for |
1588007_1 | In Mexico, Sugar vs. U.S. Corn Syrup | response, legislators and government officials say, to the United States' unwillingness to accept imports of the Mexican sugar that were displaced in Mexico by cheaper American corn syrup. ''The purpose was to level the playing field,'' said Carlos Blackaller, a legislator from the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party and president of the National Union of Cane Growers. The tax has halted corn syrup imports from the United States and has helped restore the five million-ton-a-year sugar industry, which supports up to three million Mexicans. ''If the U.S. wants to send fructose to Mexico, then it needs to give access to Mexican sugar,'' said Juan Cortina Gallardo, chief executive of Grupo Azucarero México, which owns and operates four mills. Behind the dispute is the determination of both Mexico and the United States, even under the North American Free Trade Agreement, to continue protecting their industries. Industry representatives from both countries have been looking for a compromise since October that would allow some corn syrup into Mexico and open the American market to surplus sugar. ''Thanks to the tax, they are sitting at the negotiating table,'' José O. Menchaca, president of the National Chamber of the Sugar and Alcohol Industries, Mexico's sugar industry association, said of American growers and refiners. ''Without the tax, they would not even answer the telephone.'' Under the deal, which would have to be approved by both governments, Mexico would scrap the tax, and the United States would withdraw the case it filed in March with the World Trade Organization. In addition, two American producers of corn syrup -- Corn Products International and Archer Daniels Midland -- would stop any litigation against the Mexican government. The next round of talks is planned for June 22 in New York. Both sides are looking ahead to 2008, when Nafta envisions free trade in all sweeteners, an event American sugar producers want to head off in advance. ''Chaos would stem from that,'' said Jack Roney, director of economics and policy analysis for the American Sugar Alliance, the main industry group. In a truly free market, Mexico's soft drink bottlers would import two million tons of corn syrup, he said, displacing that amount of sugar, which Mexico could then sell to the United States. Mexico would rather sell its surplus sugar to the United States, where the guaranteed price is as much as three times the world market price. ''That would collapse the |
1586440_3 | This Is Not a Traditional Groundbreaking | plan with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Tishman Construction Corporation and Voorsanger & Associates Architects. ''What exists there now is not sufficient to support the Freedom Tower,'' Ms. Chang said. Almost the entire floor slab from Level B4 will be saved because it happens to double as the ceiling over the PATH tracks. And the Port Authority has agreed to salvage at least three elements to convey something of the scope of destruction on Sept. 11, 2001. All come from the B2 level, just below the concourse. One is Column J4/12, the bottom of which is almost unscathed and the top of which is deathly black, as is the ceiling above it, a part of which will be salvaged. Another is Column J3/10, on which paint was blistered by heat into a marbleized pattern that would almost be beautiful if the circumstances of its creation were not so awful. The third piece to be salvaged is part of a smoke-stained wall on which the words ''Yellow Parking B2,'' in Helvetica type, are still plainly visible. PRESERVATIONISTS wonder what else might be worth saving or recording. ''Our position is not one of preserving the ruins of 6 World Trade Center in place,'' said Anthony Gardner of the Coalition of 9/11 Families, whose brother, Harvey Joseph Gardner III, died in the attack. ''We're saying proper evaluations should be done and that they should take the time necessary.'' ''It's unfortunate,'' Mr. Gardner said, ''that it's being driven by the need for a July 4 photo opportunity.'' Last week, the Lower Manhattan Emergency Preservation Fund, which includes the World Monuments Fund, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the New York Landmarks Conservancy, urged further evaluation and documentation of the site. They suggested Tito Dupret, a Belgian photographer whose wraparound images of endangered architectural monuments seem to place the viewer within a sphere that can be rotated in any direction. (A digital exhibition can be seen at www.wmf.org/wht.html.) Ms. Chang said the development corporation intended to explore that possibility. She also said the Port Authority had agreed to consider salvaging other objects as demolition proceeded, if it were ''possible or meaningful'' to do so. Of course, in this setting, even a blue or red garage column is freighted with meaning, particularly if it has been blackened by smoke or blistered by heat. And especially if it has survived. BLOCKS |
1586519_3 | Despite Threats of Violence, Workers Struggle to Finish Projects in Iraq | of everything but their concrete shells after the invasion last year. Officials of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, which is financing the project and arranged the helicopter trip, are diplomatic enough not to blame local Iraqis for the looting. But Ms. Bock explains delicately that the base saved some money by buying back the old fire escapes. ''It was cheaper than ordering it new,'' she said. The situation could have been volatile, but Wes Walker, the Corps of Engineers' resident engineer, arranged meetings with local sheiks and was careful to learn the social customs of the region. ''Sometimes I joke, 'Wes, you are from Amara,' '' said Abdullah A. Aljiburi, an engineer from Hilla -- both are major cities south of Baghdad -- who operates one of 17 Iraqi subcontractors on the project. As this project nears completion, Mr. Walker denies that the destruction of the bridge carries any particular significance, but Mr. Aljiburi concedes that at least a few of his own workers were frightened away by the dangers of working with Americans. Across another hundred miles of desert to the south, at Nasiriya, the problem was much more severe during the height of the insurgency in April. As few as 10 percent of the Iraqi workers showed up at a project to upgrade a major power plant, and Iraqi contractors received death threats. ''We've had threats -- a mob scene,'' said Col. Thomas L. Koning, an engineer who is commander of Iraq's southern district for the Corps of Engineers. ''They threatened to march on the plant.'' But that scene died down, and Iraqi subcontractors were able to find more workers and get the project moving again. Now Ahmed Kadhum Muhsin, a diver who has been working to clear debris from deep in the bowels of the plant's cooling system, says he has no concerns about what other Iraqis think about his job. His biggest fear now, Mr. Muhsin said, is that he can barely see anything when he is near the bottom of the murky cooling reservoirs, which are fed by the placid Euphrates River, running directly past the plant. THE REACH OF WAR: RECONSTRUCTION Correction: June 4, 2004, Friday An article yesterday about the American reconstruction of a looted Iraqi army base in the southeast city of Numaniya misstated the surname of the Army Corps of Engineers resident manager. He is Wes Watson, not Walker. |
1586025_3 | Abstinence-Only: Does It Work? | youngsters to wait until marriage to initiate sexual activity and that said nothing about the usefulness of contraception. Although authorization for the law expired in 2002, Congress has continued to provide interim financing for it and has allocated more money to myriad community organizations that teach abstinence-only. Over half a billion tax dollars have been spent on abstinence-only education since 1996 . In this fiscal year, the government is spending $140 million on this approach, and President Bush is asking for $273 million for fiscal 2005. Advocates of abstinence-only education often say it has resulted in a decline in teenage pregnancy and childbirth, pointing to the fact that the rate of teenage pregnancies (births plus abortions) is at its lowest level in 30 years. But that rate peaked eight years before abstinence-only education came to the fore and has been declining steadily ever since. And children born to teenage girls still account for 11.5 percent of all births in the United States. From 1991 to 2001, the proportion of American teenagers who had had sex decreased, according to a 2002 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During the same period, condom use among sexually active teenagers increased by 19 percent for boys and 35 percent for girls, the study found. According to research by the Guttmacher Institute, 25 percent of a decline in teenage pregnancies between 1988 and 1995 resulted from a drop in the proportion of youngsters who had ever had sex, but 75 percent of the decline was due to improved contraceptive use among those who were sexually active. Still, the rate of teenage pregnancy in this country remains much higher than in most other developed countries. It is double the rates in England, Wales and Canada; about four times the rates in Sweden and France; and eight times the rate in Japan. Compared with their peers in some other countries, sexually active teenagers in the United States are also less likely to use contraceptives, and when they do, they are less likely to use the most effective forms of birth control, according to data gathered by the Guttmacher Institute. Moreover, the rates of S.T.D.'s among American teenagers is much higher than in other developed countries. In the last decade, there were approximately 800,000 to 900,000 adolescent pregnancies a year, two-thirds of them resulting in births, and three million new cases of S.T.D.'s among adolescents. |
1586058_1 | Contemplating the Crowded Skies of the Summer | or jokes concerning the security process may result in your arrest.'' Who decides what is inappropriate? I sure hoped it wasn't somebody like the surly sumo-wrestler-size security guard who had snarled at me at the New Orleans airport a few hours earlier for presenting my boarding pass upside-down. Still, I will resist the impulse here to make jokes, but I'll hazard a few remarks, hopefully appropriate, on security and on the general outlook for air travel this summer. First, let us assume that the current state of airport security, purely from the safety standpoint, is adequate. (That is not an assumption necessarily shared by some security experts, who have been saying for years that while airport screeners studiously pat down octogenarians in wheelchairs, vast areas of airport infrastructures remain vulnerable). But security, at least from the standpoint of crowd management, is one area where business and leisure travelers alike will get a feel for the ability of our air transport system to respond acceptably to back-to-normal traffic this summer. Summer traffic always includes large numbers of people who are not experienced fliers, but even frequent business travelers often approach checkpoints uneasily, as they scramble to remove laptops from cases, shoes from feet and coins from pockets while keeping track of boarding passes and photo ID's. Sporadic delays of an hour or more have already been reported at some airports. To move things along, the Transportation Security Administration has begun deploying some screeners to assist passengers unfamiliar with the process. One chronic problem in checkpoint delays is that some otherwise law-abiding knuckleheads do not realize that there are certain things you cannot carry through a checkpoint without causing delay -- like (duh) a handgun. A spokesman, Mark Hatfield, said the security agency still routinely confiscated handguns from people who evidently forget they had tucked them away in a carry-on bag. Among the contraband most often flagged at checkpoints, ''the top three are scissors, knives and Mace,'' Mr. Hatfield said. Unfortunately, there is still no reliable way for the public to monitor airport security delays. ''Passengers, airlines and airports need accurate information concerning all aspects of their travel experience. It is time for detailed airport-specific data to be collected and reported, similar to the process used by the airlines'' to report flight delays, Kenneth M. Mead, inspector general of the Department of Transportation, recently told a Senate committee. Such a system might |
1586069_2 | The Price of Rice Soars, and Haiti's Hunger Deepens | increased in Haiti,'' he said to reporters before leaving Jamaica and arriving Monday in South Africa, which offered him refuge. Mr. Aristide, who says he is still Haiti's elected leader, received a head of state's welcome in Johannesburg from President Thabo Mbeki. But Haitian businessmen say Mr. Aristide's government kept the price of rice down through corruption. One leading importer said an Aristide crony received a near exclusive concession on rice imports and evaded customs duties. That evasion allowed the rice concessionaire to cut about $3 a bag off the market price, pass some of the savings on to the market and pocket the rest. ''It was kind of a monopoly'' under Mr. Aristide, said Danielle St.-Lot, the new minister of commerce. Haiti used to grow its own rice. But its agriculture has collapsed in the past two decades, crushed by poverty, environmental destruction and foreign imports. While rice production crashed, demand soared: Haiti's population has grown to eight million from five million in 20 years. ''The deterioration of the economy, years of bad governance without any policy for agriculture, and the day-to-day problems of life we now see reflected in the price of rice,'' Ms. St.-Lot said. Eighty percent of the rice imported by Haiti comes from the United States, chiefly Arkansas, Louisiana and California -- more than 300,000 tons in 2003. American rice is the most expensive in the world, Ms. St.-Lot said. ''The problem is serious,'' she said. ''The price on the international market is growing every day.'' American and global stocks of rice are down, driving prices up, in some part because of American military and foreign policies. ''The American government has been buying a lot of rice for Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq,'' said Jean-Michel Cherubin, a leading Haitian importer of rice, sugar and beans. International aid agencies, like the United Nations World Food Program and Catholic Relief Services, which receive United States government support, do what they can to ease Haiti's hunger. The United Nations sought $35 million in emergency funds for Haiti from foreign governments in March; it remains $26 million shy of the goal. Things were bad before the flood, and now at least 75,000 survivors of the deluge face a food emergency that will last for many months. Haiti -- its ports in particular -- is a dangerous place to do business. That remains true despite the soon-to-depart American-led military force sent |
1588729_5 | Big Employers Join Forces in Effort to Negotiate Lower Drug Prices | is not real, it is not fair to the consumer'' who will be making choices and paying a growing share of the costs. ''We have a responsibility to show consumers the real cost of the drug and the real cost of the alternatives so they can make an informed choice with their doctor.'' The buyers' group is the latest and most far-reaching of several recent efforts to change the way employers pay for drugs. For example, Towers Perrin, a benefits consulting firm, has recruited ''numerous companies'' by promising to pass through to them 100 percent of rebates and other manufacturers' payments made to their pharmacy benefit manager, which is Medco, according to Rich Ostuw, a principal at Towers. ''Transparency means you know what the real price is,'' Mr. Ostuw said. ''The employer needs to understand what the true price is'' -- both the gross price and the net price without the rebate. On another tack in the push for transparency, Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr., a federal district judge in St. Louis, recently ordered Express Scripts, one of the largest benefit managers, to open its electronic and other records for inspection by lawyers who are suing the company. Stephen E. Littlejohn, a spokesman for Express Scripts, said the company would not comment on current litigation. Mr. Folley, at Caterpillar, said that by using prices established directly with the drug makers, ''consumers and providers can look to see what is the most cost-effective drug among many that are similar and identical in efficacy.'' ''We want to let the consumers and doctors have a good basis for deciding which drug to select,'' he said. But Patricia Wilson, an independent consultant who helps large companies with their drug plans, questioned the effectiveness ''of taking the 50 most costly drugs and thinking that you can negotiate a better price.'' Employers, she said, would have more success if they worked more closely -- not less -- with their pharmacy benefit managers. ''The question is, How do I keep pressure on the P.B.M.'s to get a better price?'' she said. And one benefits management executive, Kevin Nagle, said that negotiating payment rates for stores and mail-order pharmacies is also important in controlling drug costs. Mr. Nagle is president of Envision Pharmaceutical Service, a smaller benefits manager that says it has two million members. Negotiating contracts with drug companies, he said, is ''only one part of the equation.'' |
1590211_3 | Politics That Makes Peace With the Beauty of Objects | shopping cart equipped with radio broadcast hardware through the streets, inviting passers-by to program their own on-air shows. All of this will be archived on Exit Art's Web site, further dematerializing an exhibition composed of ephemera, gestures and pixels. And such a disembodied show is precisely what the curators -- Anne Ellegood and Michele Thursz, with Defne Ayas -- are after: one that as far as possible sidesteps the authority of the art institution, with its conventions of display and critical categories. Instead ''public.ex'' is dispersed into the everyday world, where art and life, silly and serious, seem to interact on the random, nonlinear model of the Internet, that most potent and exasperating of cultural resources. Positive and negative aspects of that resource are touched on in ''Social Capital: Forms of Interaction'' at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, a show that also emphasizes, though less radically than Exit Art's does, ideas and actions over objects. As defined by the curators -- Howie Chen, Leta Ming, Allison Moore and Nadia Perucic, 2003-04 fellows in the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program -- ''social capital'' is itself abstract, consisting of the virtual resources that all communities, whether highly specialized or loosely knit, provide for their members. A video by Renée Green documents how involvement in new digital and laptop music works as a social binder for practitioners and audiences and as a spur to collaborative activism. An installation by the New York collective 16 Beaver Group, in collaboration with the Canadian magazine Fuse, replicates a setting for one of the group's lunches, where speculative discussions on social questions are shared, via the Internet, with a wide circle of off-site participants, a kind of global lunch-bunch. Such electronic conferencing would, in its turn, make a natural study for the Sociable Media Group, which tracks patterns of conversational behavior on the Web: who talks to whom, with what frequency and so forth. Pinpointing digital communities-of-interest as they do could certainly be useful for mobilizing social power, though in the ethically volatile, intensively surveilled world of cyberspace, the nature of massed power is always hard to evaluate and impossible to control. A film derived from Andy Deck's ''Glyphiti'' Web site, www.artcontext.org /glyphiti/, directly alludes to the aggressive side of Internet collaboration. Mr. Deck created the site as a kind of crazy-quilt vehicle for multiple simultaneous graphic contributions but found that some |
1590979_2 | More Air Travelers, And Fewer Screeners | them out again. At various airports, the security agency has taken steps like extending the belts that convey carry-on bags through the X-ray machine to avoid bottlenecks. At Newark Liberty International Airport, Smiths Detection, a supplier of X-ray machines, said it would begin an experiment that would allow bags that are not suspect to continue through the machine and back to their owners while the machine operator stops the belt to take a closer look at other bags. Denver and Newark are on the list of 25 ''target airports'' picked by the security agency for intensive monitoring this summer. The agency has a force of about 600 screeners whom it can move around as needed, Mr. Hatfield said. At George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, another target airport, waits have been reasonable, said Richard M. Vacar, the airport director. But Houston will open a new international terminal later this year, and as arriving international travelers emerge from customs and immigration, their bags must be screened again if they are connecting to other flights. Mr. Vacar said that he was not confident that the federal agency would adequately staff the new building because of the employment ceiling. The security agency monitors delays by handing a time-stamped card to the person at the end of a line, and then stamping it again when the person arrives with the card at the security checkpoint, a technique it learned from the Disney theme parks. Some aviation executives say they want the agency to provide a more formal definition of an acceptable wait, and to publish detailed information on wait times. Precise ''metrics,'' or numeric standards, on wait times would allow for equitable distribution of screeners among airports, and could create an argument for Congress to allocate more money for the agency, said Stephen D. Van Beek, executive vice president for policy at the North American branch of the Airports Council International, a trade group. It could also lead to the development of a formula for allocation, he said, that would allow airport managers the option to pay for screeners without fear that the federal agency would remove one of its screeners for each one the airport paid to add. A major change in the screening setup could come in November, when, by law, airports are allowed to opt out of the Federal screener program, and hire private contractors. Unlike private screeners before the terrorist |
1590669_0 | Used Autos: Depreciation Included | IN 1988, a journalist asked Roger B. Smith, the chairman of General Motors, what his company offered to compete with Chrysler's inexpensive K-cars. Mr. Smith, who would soon become best known as the elusive subject of Michael Moore's documentary ''Roger and Me,'' responded that G.M. indeed offered comparable value, directing potential customers to ''a two-year-old Buick.'' This was years before the advent of the ''certified preowned'' euphemism, when the ''used'' in used car was often short for ''used up.'' So Mr. Smith took it on the chin for sounding elitist, and G.M. seemed out of touch with a value-conscious public that was buying K-cars like lottery tickets. But two decades later, Mr. Smith's logic bears revisiting in considering the Chevrolet Aveo. Sure, it is a nice little package, and at $10,000 the price is right, but today's used car market offers a lot of options for that kind of money. Cars are built better today than ever before, and most can provide reliable transportation and enjoyment long after the new-car smells have worn off. The caveat is that used cars are still used, and buying one requires more due diligence than buying new. And you will certainly sacrifice something when it comes to the warranty, which is usually one of the biggest attractions of an inexpensive new car. But by buying used, the initial loss in value that comes with driving a new car off the dealer's lot for the first time can be avoided. That hit is particularly hard to absorb in a low-priced car, especially if you plan to keep it only a few years. Automotive Lease Guide, a company in Santa Barbara, Calif., that predicts the resale values on which lease payments are calculated, estimates that an Aveo sedan with an original sticker of $12,840 would have a retail value of just $4,320 after three years -- a decline of 66 percent. The other big advantage to buying used is that a buyer can get more car for the money, either a bigger model with a bigger engine, or a similar car with more costly optional features. At the $10,000 sticker price of a new, bare-bones Aveo, there are plenty of options. A quick search of the Certified Used Car database on Honda's Web site (hondacars.com) turned up one Accord and seven Civics within 50 miles of my home in Chicago, all less than five years old |
1590994_1 | For Graduates, the Freebies Disappear | had. ''This year, major corporations are recruiting many more first-year associates than in previous years,'' said Douglas Wagner, president of Benjamin James Real Estate. ''We do have a more stable economy, requiring a greater work force, which has finally worked its way down to the first-year research analysts, investment bankers and management consultants being invited to come to work.'' For young people who are willing to share, large apartments can work out to be cheaper than studios. ''If a studio in a new doorman building is $54 a square foot per year and the typical studio is 415 square feet, that works out to $1,870 a month,'' Mr. Wagner said. ''Generally you need $75,000 a year to qualify,'' he said, referring to the standard requirement that income be at least 40 times the monthly rent. ''But starting salaries are not all that high, so if you get two people, who between them earn $160,000, they qualify for a $4,000 two-bedroom in a doorman building. Then they often end up recruiting a third roommate who pitches a wall in the living room.'' Adding a wall is what Leah Zamkow, Marcy Saranik and Stacey Wiener, who graduated from Indiana University, planned to do when they moved into their two-bedroom unit on East 44th Street on June 10. Their goal had been to find three bedrooms in Murray Hill. ''Anything we liked was taken even before we saw it,'' Ms. Zamkow said. ''We finally saw a two-bedroom we liked and the broker suggested we add a wall to cut the living room in half. We thought it would be too small, but she showed us an identical apartment where that had been done and it looked fine.'' The rent was $3,675. ''For what we are getting, it is reasonable,'' she said. ''But this has not been fun at all. It's been like having two full-time jobs.'' Still, there is no shortage of people who want to make a clean break with dormitory living, and Sean Oakes, a sales associate with Halstead/Feathered Nest, said there are reasonably priced studios to be had for those willing to move fast. ''I have noticed backup application upon backup application for studios,'' he said. ''I have one client, a Boston College graduate, who liked a walk-up on East 34th Street. It was gone before we could even start the application. Then we saw another studio he liked on |
1590666_0 | PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL | |
1592391_5 | A MONUMENT'S MINDER | did. Several times when Piero Cardone has gone inside Raphael's tomb to change the light bulb, she's accompanied him to polish the glass. And she's been up on the roof, where the Tiber gulls roost and nest and you can see all the way to the Castelli Romani. She's even climbed up the huge lead-covered rings of the dome, which is wider than the dome of St. Peter's, all the way to the oculus. Every year during the Pentecost Mass, two or three firemen make this climb with huge sacks of rose petals, which they empty over the edge of the oculus to shower slowly, spectacularly down into the rotunda. The only aspect of the Pantheon in which Saveria isn't actively involved is its past. She leaves issues such as where the other great artists are buried (Raphael is not the only one spending eternity here) to the guides, who are genial, erudite, and conduct free tours. Whenever I've visited the Pantheon since Saveria first showed me around, one or another of the guides has pointed out something new (to me, at least). Last winter, for instance, Federico de Martino, a young art historian who has worked here for four years, told me that the Pantheon plays a leading role in the Henry James story ''The Last of the Valerii'' and is lavishly described, right down to the grasses growing up through the cracks in the rotunda floor, nourished by the rain. ''That was before they restored the floor, of course,'' he said. Something or other is always being restored here, it seems. At the moment, conservators are about to begin a total cleaning of the dome, which will proceed ''in slices, like a cake,'' as the personnel director, Piero Cardone, put it, so the building can remain open. Roman buildings famously tend to be shut for years while in restauro. But the Pantheon is unlike any other building. ''It is the one place,'' Federico said, ''that contains the whole story of Rome from the beginning up to now. We are all very lucky to work here.'' Under the dome The Pantheon, also known as Chiesa di Santa Maria ad Martyres, presides over the Piazza della Rotonda in the Historic Center of Rome. It is open from 8:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Monday to Saturday; from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday, and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on |
1592684_1 | Supporting a Bridge the Human Way, With a Crusade | model. So, Mrs. Van Etten, who felt that the bridge would never have been in danger if she had no called attention to it, began working an estimated three hours a day for the next three years learning about bridge preservation, lobbying politicians, raising money and explaining her campaign to reporters. That kind of single-mindedness is crucial, said Allan King Sloan, the great-great-grandson of the King Bridge Company's founder, who helps efforts like this across the country as a way to preserve his family's heritage. Even then, bridge enthusiasts may not succeed. In Rochester, a local photographer, Richard Margolis, has been trying to save another King creation, the Hojack Swing Bridge, which is much larger and crosses the Genesee River as part of an unused railroad track. Mr. Margolis agreed that the battle has become part job, part obsession. Although he has done much of what Mrs. Van Etten did, the Coast Guard gave a second warning last month that unless it was put to use, the 50-foot-high steel swinging bridge would have to come down. A local developer who wants to create a trolley system said he could incorporate the Hojack bridge in his plans, but they are still unfinanced. ''It's clear we don't have a success story yet,'' Mr. Margolis said. ''But I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't call it a lost cause.'' Saving a bridge is much like building one, Mr. Sloan said. Both require a great deal of support. ''There are examples of people all over the country, people who are trying to save these old bridges,'' he said. ''They need to yell and scream, get public officials to help them out and raise money.'' In Canton, N.Y., a group raised about $170,000 in grants and donations to save another bowstring bridge, one that crosses the Grasse River, which flows north into the Saint Lawrence River. Hearing of the unusually high amount raised, ''bridge nuts'' from around the country have been calling the project's organizer, Varick Chittenden, for advice. He credits community support and a theme larger than simply saving a bridge. ''Canton is a community with a real sense of history,'' Mr. Chittenden said. ''There was a lot of enthusiasm for the project, and we're going to use the bridge as part of a cultural heritage park.'' Still, the bridge preservation campaign has been going on since 1998 and reconstruction has yet to begin, though |
1592655_0 | Word for Word / A Fine Line; Defining Torture: Russian Roulette, Yes. Mind-Altering Drugs, Maybe. | OF all the memos released by the White House last week in response to the prison abuse scandal in Iraq, none have been more incendiary than the so-called torture memo, dated Aug. 1, 2002, and written by Jay S. Bybee, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. The department and the White House have distanced themselves from the document. But the memorandum's antiseptic discussion of the definition of torture is likely to continue to fuel the debate. Following are a few excerpts. KATE ZERNIKE The memo starts by explaining that some acts may be ''cruel, inhuman or degrading'' but not constitute torture under Section 2340, the federal law criminalizing torture. To rise to the level of torture, it argues, the acts must be of an extreme nature, specifically intended to inflict severe pain or suffering, mental or physical. But the statute is vague on the meaning of ''severe,'' so the authors try to construct one. In the absence of such a definition, we construe a statutory term in accordance with its ordinary and natural meaning. The dictionary defines severe as ''unsparing in exaction, punishment or censure'' or ''inflicting discomfort or pain hard to endure; sharp; afflictive; distressing; violent; extreme; as severe pain, anguish, torture'' ''extremely violent or grievous, severe pain'' ''of pain, suffering, loss, or the like: grievous, extreme'' and ''of circumstances hard to sustain or endure.'' Thus the adjective ''severe'' conveys that the pain or suffering must be of such a high level of intensity that the pain is difficult for the subject to endure. A good model, the memo suggests, can be found in statutes regulating what kind of emergency medical conditions qualify for payments of health benefits. Although these statutes address a substantially different subject from Section 2340, they are nonetheless helpful for understanding what constitutes severe pain. They treat severe pain as an indicator of ailments that are likely to result in permanent and serious physical damage in the absence of immediate medical treatment. Such damage must rise to the level of death, organ failure or the permanent impairment of a significant body function. These statutes suggest that ''severe pain'' as used in Section 2340, must rise to a similarly high level, the level that would ordinarily be associated with a sufficiently serious physical condition or injury such as death, organ failure or serious impairment of body |
1592406_2 | Test Program Is E-ZPass For Airline Screenings | if anything, if the program becomes permanent. Representative John L. Mica, the Florida Republican who is chairman of the House aviation subcommittee and who has been pushing for such a program, said in a telephone interview that he was very frustrated. ''They're wasting time, they're wasting money,'' he said of the Transportation Security Administration. ''The effort is not going to prove anything.'' At the Air Transport Association, the trade association of the major airlines, Doug Wills, a spokesman, was more optimistic. ''This is a trial run to get the bugs out,'' he said. ''It's too late to really do something about this summer,'' he said. But the pilot is ''a good start that can be developed and refined over time.'' His association hopes it will be extended to travelers who fly at least twice a month, he said. But Barry Steinhardt, an official at the American Civil Liberties Union who monitors the Transportation Security Administration, suggested that this was not a pilot for a broader program but a partial replacement for a much more ambitious effort that the agency has had trouble developing, called the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System 2, or Capps 2. It would run all passenger names through a computer check to select those that deserve closer scrutiny, and replace the existing Capps system, which relies on factors like paying cash for a ticket or booking one-way. Capps 2, Mr. Steinhardt said, is ''in great peril'' because of objections by privacy advocates. In fact, Capps 2, first proposed in the fall of 2002, has been repeatedly delayed. The pilot program appears to be a voluntary Capps 2, he said. But it may make security worse, he said, because ''the bad guys'' may try to get trusted traveler cards. And there is no assurance of what the government will do with the data it gathers, he said. ''There is a long history of mission creep in this country, with databases created for one purpose used for others,'' he said. And it would create a two-class travel system, with richer people, who can afford the cards, given better treatment, said Mr. Steinhardt, who spoke by telephone from La Guardia Airport, where he was waiting for a flight. He will not be volunteering, he said. About one in seven passengers goes through a secondary screening, so a registered traveler might substantially reduce the number of times he or she is |
1592488_0 | Scavenged and Shaped, Rubber Takes On New Life | ACCOMMODATING a variety of materials and forms, contemporary sculpture is a peculiarly liberal discipline. It wasn't always so, for until early last century sculpture was confined to making objects from wood or stone or by casting metal or plaster. Relishing sculpture's newfound diversity, Chakaia Booker, 51, a Brooklyn-based sculptor, recycles castoff rubber truck, tractor and car tires into expressive sculptures. Albeit obliquely, some of her creations address social and cultural issues, but most are just quirky, inventive forms. There is nothing that Ms. Booker cannot do with an old Firestone. Around two dozen of Ms. Booker's trademark tire sculptures are on display at Storm King Art Center here. Most of the sculptures on exhibit are in the museum, with a handful of the more monumental pieces scattered around the bucolic grounds. Devoid of anything scrappy or tossed off, the exhibition is a knockout. Although Ms. Booker's reputation has been percolating in the New York art world for some time, she first came to the attention of a larger public at the 2000 Whitney Biennial. Since then she has participated in various important exhibitions here and overseas and has been awarded a number of grants and prizes. Earlier this year, the Jersey City Museum honored her with a mid-career retrospective. The current exhibition consists mostly of new works. As you enter the museum, the first piece on exhibit is ''Square Peg'' (2003), consisting of hundreds of little tire wedges riveted to a wooden, semicircular frame shaped like a crescent moon. Hard, long and thorny, it looks like a giant centipede. Although Ms. Booker's material is prosaic, her forms are ravishing. ''Recess'' (2003), an installation shown recently at the Marlborough Gallery in Manhattan, consists of tightly bound balls and effusive, flowerlike objects made of ribbons of rubber tires. Ms. Booker is a blue-collar aestheticist. ''(Wench) (Wrench) II'' (2001) is another super-sensual work. With surgical deftness, Ms. Booker has cut and stitched slivers of tire onto a curvaceous, S-shaped form. The piece looks like a wrench, but it also resembles a female torso, with her hips swinging wildly as if dancing salsa. There is also a hint of rage here. This is a complex artwork. By contrast, ''Untitled'' (2004) induces genuine anxiety. Made for the exhibition, it consists of an imposing 11-foot-high, 34-foot-long steel armature covered with shards of steel-belted radials, each screwed to the frame. The steel thread from the radials creates |
1592344_1 | A Ledger of Broken Arms | State Boys Rebellion,'' Michael D'Antonio, the author of ''Fall From Grace: The Failed Crusade of the Christian Right'' and ''Atomic Harvest: Hanford and the Lethal Toll of America's Nuclear Arsenal,'' documents the Dickensian abuse daily endured by the boys at Fernald and its consequences. On his first day at Fernald, Freddie Boyce, a 7-year-old orphan, shy, slow to talk and the survivor of seven foster homes, was stripped by a social worker and dressed in stiff dungarees -- clothes that would mark him as a ''state boy,'' a child, that is, with no family connections. Alone on his cot that first night, Freddie cried: ''No one had told him exactly where he was, why he had been put there or how long he would stay. He imagined the place was a prison for boys, but he couldn't recall committing any crime that would have landed him in such a place.'' Freddie's imprisonment was not an isolated occurrence: D'Antonio details the ''extreme ideology, once presented as scientific fact, that persuaded great numbers of Americans that certain substandard children must be identified, hunted down and locked away'' -- that is, the creation of a category and threat, ''the moron as a public danger.'' Standardized tests provided a tool for those seeking to ''sort'' the population so as to accelerate natural selection. In an attempt ''to make sure every last moron was captured, many states, including Massachusetts, would establish traveling 'clinics' to administer I.Q. tests at public schools.'' By 1949, 150,000 Americans were institutionalized; of these, an estimated 12,000 were in fact ''of relatively normal intelligence.'' Conditions at schools like Fernald were appalling for those with Down syndrome, cerebral palsy and other true physical or mental conditions. Given little treatment or training, they were often straitjacketed or tied to chairs and left soaked in urine and feces. Their circumstances gradually improved as advocacy groups for the disabled and mentally ill were formed; but there was no one to advocate for Freddie and his friends, whose borderline intelligence scores were often simply a reflection of emotional problems stemming from years of neglect. At Fernald, the attendants reigned supreme, and physical abuse was commonplace: one lawyer described school records discovered years later as a ''ledger of broken arms.'' Sexual abuse of boys by attendants and older youths was also frequent. In an incident emblematic of the regime of terror, the boys were lined up one |
1592709_1 | AIDES SAY MEMO BACKED COERCION ALREADY IN USE | wide array of coercive interrogation methods in the campaign against terrorism without violating international treaties or the federal torture law. It did not specify any particular procedures but suggested there were few limits short of causing the death of a prisoner. The methods used on Mr. Zubaydah and other senior Qaeda operatives stirred controversy in government counterterrorism circles and concern over whether C.I.A. employees might be held liable for violating the federal torture law. While the memo appeared to give the C.I.A. wide latitude in adopting tactics to interrogate high-level Qaeda detainees, it is still unclear exactly what procedures were used or the extent to which the memo influenced the government's overall thinking about interrogations of other terror detainees captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The officials said the memo illustrated that the Bush administration, in the months after the September 2001 attacks, was urgently looking for ways to force senior Qaeda detainees to disclose whether they knew of any future terrorist attacks planned against the United States. The memo, which is dated Aug. 1, 2002, was a seminal legal document guiding the government's thinking on interrogation. It was disavowed earlier this week by senior legal advisers to the Bush administration who said the memo would be reviewed and revised because it created a false impression that torture could be legally defensible. In repudiating the memo in briefings this week, none of the senior Bush legal advisers whom the White House made available to reporters would discuss who had requested that the memo be prepared, why it had been prepared or how it was applied. On Friday, the Justice Department and C.I.A. would not discuss the origins of the memo, but in the past officials at those agencies have said that the interrogation techniques used on detainees were lawful and did not violate the torture statute, which generally forbids inflicting severe and prolonged pain. The memo was addressed to Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, and signed by Jay S. Bybee, then the head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. It said the document was an effort to define ''standards of conduct'' under international treaties and federal law. The memo concluded that a coercive procedure could not be considered torture unless it caused pain equivalent to that accompanying ''serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death.'' The Justice Department was asked to |
1592709_2 | AIDES SAY MEMO BACKED COERCION ALREADY IN USE | who said the memo would be reviewed and revised because it created a false impression that torture could be legally defensible. In repudiating the memo in briefings this week, none of the senior Bush legal advisers whom the White House made available to reporters would discuss who had requested that the memo be prepared, why it had been prepared or how it was applied. On Friday, the Justice Department and C.I.A. would not discuss the origins of the memo, but in the past officials at those agencies have said that the interrogation techniques used on detainees were lawful and did not violate the torture statute, which generally forbids inflicting severe and prolonged pain. The memo was addressed to Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, and signed by Jay S. Bybee, then the head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. It said the document was an effort to define ''standards of conduct'' under international treaties and federal law. The memo concluded that a coercive procedure could not be considered torture unless it caused pain equivalent to that accompanying ''serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death.'' The Justice Department was asked to prepare the memo about the time of Mr. Zubaydah's capture in April 2002, the officials said, in an effort to clarify the permissible limits of interrogation because of questions raised by the treatment of Mr. Zubaydah and a few other Qaeda operatives then in custody. It remains unclear what role Attorney General John Ashcroft played in the debate over interrogation techniques or in the preparation of the memo, but Justice Department officials said he did not review it before it was sent to the White House. Mr. Zubaydah, who managed Al Qaeda's worldwide recruiting system for Mr. bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan, was one of the first high-level detainees captured after the Sept. 11 attacks. The full extent of the tactics used during his interrogation are still not publicly known, but the methods provoked the concerns within the C.I.A. about possible violation of the federal torture law. That law makes it a crime for an American operating overseas under governmental authority to torture anyone under his control. The tactics also raised concerns at the F.B.I., where some agents knew of the techniques being used on Mr. Zubaydah. It is known that some Qaeda leaders were deprived of sleep and |
1592623_4 | Grab the Brass Ring, or Just Enjoy the Ride? | was ''just enough.'' She majored in Greek and Latin. In the turbulent 60's, Ms. Nash found herself equally fascinated by mythology, ancient history and current events. She had hoped to become a classics professor. ''The ancient Greek heroes had tragic flaws that brought them down, and so did Richard Nixon,'' Ms. Nash said -- quickly adding that the comparison ended when it came to the Greeks' nobility and divinity. ''I began to understand the fascination of power.'' MS. NASH went on to graduate work in classics at Harvard. In 1974, she married Thomas Beale, whom she had met in a Greek class. There were few jobs for classics professors when she got her doctorate in 1976. So she switched her specialty to government and business, which she called ''the two areas where contemporary issues of power and morality played out.'' In 1980, she joined the Harvard Business School faculty, and became fascinated by exploring the values, behaviors and views of success that characterized high achievers. ''I had this growing sense,'' she said, ''that the definition of success in business had grown too narrow, too based on money.'' In July 2001, she and Mr. Stevenson began the research that led to ''Just Enough.'' Two months later came the Sept. 11 attacks, and the interviews became far more poignant. ''People who had felt satisfied before suddenly were questioning why their work, their lives, didn't feel more meaningful,'' she recalled. So is it possible to be content, even in a world where the bar for ''best'' is raised daily? Ms. Nash says the answer is yes. Here are some of her recommendations for reaching that emotional nirvana: Recognize that superstardom often carries the baggage of lapsed ethics, alienated spouses or children, substance abuse and a lack of plain ordinary fun. Many people envied the lavish life that L. Dennis Kozlowski had as chief executive of Tyco International, but few envy his arrest and trial on charges of securities fraud and theft. Many people crave the accolades that John F. Welch Jr. got as chairman of General Electric, but few would want the publicity that accompanied his messy divorce and the reports that the company footed many of his personal post-retirement bills. ''Do you really want to be the total celebrity C.E.O., or just the parts about winning and wealth?'' Ms. Nash asks, in classic rhetorical fashion. If you cannot be a high achiever, |
1592462_1 | Still a Robust Role | point the developer wanted to move it to the east side of Greenwich Street -- but the new location distorted the overall plan's balance and blocked the symbolic alignment of the Freedom Tower's 1,776-foot spire with the torch of the Statue of Liberty. Symbols matter, certainly here. Balance matters. The move was rejected. The plan was preserved -- and the building has been designed in cooperation with our office at its present, right location. Consider the memorial. Its place in the southern quadrant is determined by the master plan; its design by a competition. I had suggested it reach down to bedrock, exposing the slurry wall. Indeed, in a very different and certainly elegant configuration, the memorial still reaches down to bedrock, the slurry wall is exposed and space is provided for artifacts and memories. The plan is intact and the process worked. Consider the cultural buildings. Their locations, at the heart of the plan at the most important intersection of Greenwich and Fulton Streets, again are defined by the plan. For the past four months my office has worked intently on a daily basis with the Development Corporation, along with the state and city and the competing institutions to explore a variety of configurations. We produced literally hundreds of drawings to help decision makers visualize the various possibilities and their impact on the rest of the site, the neighborhood and city. We were integral to the process and the choice that flowed from it. Consider the Wedge of Light, a grand public open space designed to illuminate the site at 8:46 a.m., when the first plane struck, and 10:28, when the second tower fell. The wedge has not disappeared. Rather, the extraordinary Path Terminal designed by Santiago Calatrava is axially positioned along the wedge -- allowing light to penetrate through its open roof to the platform and tracks below. The idea has been brilliantly embraced and articulated. We are continuously updating the master plan, which improves as we move forward. We are finalizing the Commercial Design Guidelines and we continue to work with the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and Port Authority and the architects and designers -- engaging their sensibilities, talent and creativity to fulfill society's solemn promise to the past and best hope for the future. DANIEL LIBESKIND Manhattan The writer, an architect, created the master plan for the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site. DANIEL LIBESKIND |
1592498_12 | No River Wide Enough | been an elite training ground for racers,'' Mr. Gilman said, ''but they never made the transition to recreational paddling. They stopped taking members 10 years ago and have no programs or activities anymore.'' Mr. Macknowski, 82, disputes that claim but declined to provide membership figures. While asserting that some offspring of original members would ensure the club's future, he did not provide contact information for any of them. At first, Mr. Macknowski said, his group welcomed the newer club to the boathouse. But he became alarmed when he came across e-mail correspondence asserting the rival club's determination to have ''complete administrative control of the club.'' The new group also claimed responsibility ''for the adjudication of all disputes involving the clubhouse.'' In another e-mail message, the new group's board states that the ''Yonkers Paddling and Rowing Club is the steward of the historical boats and memorabilia in the boathouse.'' Mr. Gilman said the term ''steward'' in no way implied ownership of the original club's photos, records and tarnished trophies -- merely a commitment to keep them in the public domain. Tempers have flared. Last month, for instance, some members of the paddling and rowing club called the police after Mr. Macknowski donated an old boat to a Canadian club. The weather-beaten wood boathouse was built in the 1930's on county land. Its fate became something of a cause célèbre last December, when the county decided to evict both the paddling and rowing club and the canoe club -- which Sal Carrera, director of real estate and economic development for the county, views as one and the same. The City of Yonkers had long planned to move the boathouse, Mr. Carrera said, but when firm proposals did not materialize, he and other county officials toured the site, discovered safety violations (including cans of flammable liquid stored on overhead shelves) and decided to shut the place down. As word of the eviction spread, the City of Yonkers and several environmental groups approached the county in defense of the Yonkers Paddling and Rowing Club. Since then, county officials and the paddling club have been negotiating an amicable settlement, both sides say. County inspectors are preparing a list of matters that require attention before the boathouse reopens, Mr. Carrera said. He first became aware of the boathouse, he explained, while doing an inventory of the county's lease agreements in the late 1990's. He discovered that |
1592673_1 | Hail Marys Not Needed: Vatican Mail Will Deliver | bureaucracy feeling aggravated. Tourists are in on this secret, as well as the Romans, because they flock to this orderly, sovereign religious state enclosed in roiling Rome to send their postcards with papal stamps from the seat of Catholicism. As a result, more mail is sent each year, per inhabitant, from the Vatican's 00120 postcode than from anywhere else in the world -- 7,200, compared with about 660 in the United States or 109 in Italy -- said Juliana Nel, a spokeswoman for the Universal Postal Union, a United Nations agency based in Berne, Switzerland. She called the Vatican's service ''probably one of the best postal systems in the world.'' Federico Santi, a construction company manager, is one of many Italians who wish Italy would use the Vatican postal system, in which his Aunt Andrea works, as a model to improve its own. The Italian system, ''could definitely be better,'' he said, by getting new equipment, hiring more workers and improving the morale of those already on the job. ''They have to change their methods,'' Mr. Santi, 24, said outside the post office on Via Monterone in Rome, adding that people are losing business because of the delays. ''The one thing I'd change is the people who work here,'' he said. ''They have no will to work.'' When asked about the Vatican's postal efficiency versus their own, officials at the Italian postal service shrugged off the comparison, saying the Vatican operation was too small to be taken seriously. Italy sent out 3.6 billion pieces of mail last year, while the Vatican dispatched about 6 million international mail items, mostly postcards, in 2002, the most recent statistics available. Italian officials released figures showing that their on-time delivery rates are rising. ''The Italian postal service has for some time been committed to the bettering of its services,'' Paolo Di Prima, the Italian postal services spokesman, said in an e-mail message. But the sorry state of the Italian postal system is legendary, so much so that some Italians can still be seen crossing themselves before tossing their mail into an Italian box. The legends tell of how in a postal strike some years ago, overstuffed post offices put their parcels on trains that simply wandered, full, up and down Italy. Instances of mail arriving a quarter-century late abound. Officials at the Vatican declined to speak about their mail system. But Rosy, a woman |
1592507_0 | PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL | |
1592649_0 | Ideas & Trends: Cellular Sociology; I Want to Be Alone. Please Call Me. | ONE of the many paradoxes of modern technology is that gadgets meant to connect us also end up isolating us. Consider the case of Lilia Belkova, a passenger earlier this month on a US Airways flight from Miami to Philadelphia. She refused repeated requests by flight attendants to turn off her cellphone so the plane could take off. Hanging up on her caller, she said, would be rude. Things got so out of hand that the plane had to return to the terminal, but not before Ms. Belkova, 38, had slapped a federal air marshal. She was handcuffed, taken from the plane and arrested on assault charges. She is now being prosecuted. Sociologically speaking, mobile phones pit the priorities of the ''in'' group -- those on the phone -- against those in the ''out'' group, or people in close proximity to the talkers. Ordinary phones, of course, created this dynamic more than a century ago. But mobile phones have extended this exclusivity to places where community used to be the norm -- on planes, for example, in conference rooms and in restaurants. Settings previously devoted to eye-to-eye contact and earnest talk are fast turning into venues for shutting out others. Ms. Belkova's case is exceptional, but experts say her actions show how deep the divisions between the ''in'' and ''out'' groups can go. She refused to end her phone call -- that is, her connection to the ''in'' group -- despite rational pleas from the ''out'' group: the flight attendants and the other passengers urging her to hang up. More troubling, it took only a small skip in logic for Ms. Belkova to claim that it was rude to hang up on her friend, even if a planeload of passengers thought otherwise. To academics, this is known as the actor-observer paradox, a theory backed up by studies showing that most Americans think that while other cellphone users are rude, they are not. ''When you see other people doing things, you think they are doing it for selfish reasons, but when you do it, you feel you are on morally high ground,'' said James E. Katz, the director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and the author of ''Connections: Social and Cultural Studies of the Telephone in American Life'' (Transaction Publishers, 1999). ''This suggests the elastic nature of people's ability to speak to their |
1589646_1 | Yahoo Expands E-Mail Storage, In Nod to Google | service, called Yahoo Mail Plus, with two gigabytes of storage for $19.99 a year. ''We are taking storage off the table as an issue,'' said Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo's vice president for communications products. Yahoo Mail Plus has a few other features Google does not offer; most significantly, it lets users download their mail into Microsoft Outlook or other software programs. Yahoo is also introducing several other e-mail features and improving the function that searches for text in messages, a feature that Google has made central to Gmail. Mr. Garlinghouse said that people might continue to choose Yahoo's e-mail service, in part because it was integrated into other Yahoo offerings like its address book, appointment calendar and photo sharing services. Yahoo and Hotmail, from Microsoft, are by far the leading e-mail services. A spokeswoman for Microsoft said the company was exploring higher storage limits but was not prepared to discuss details. Gmail is especially important for Google, which is trying to broaden its business beyond its successful Web search service. E-mail is not only popular; it requires users to identify themselves. Once they do, Google could pick advertisements for them based on their location or other attributes. A spokesman for Google declined to comment on Yahoo's new offering, citing rules related to its pending public stock offering. In the past, the company has said that it is exploring other features for Gmail. Despite the privacy questions, many users have eagerly anticipated Gmail, with initial test accounts being sold on eBay for as much as $60 each. The service is expected to be available to the public later this year. Yahoo says its terms of service do not allow it to use the text of e-mail messages to select which ads to show users. But Yahoo's e-mail and other services do consider users' demographic and behavioral information, including ZIP codes and what Yahoo services they use, in choosing ads. Mr. Garlinghouse would not say whether he thought Google's reliance on e-mail content did, in fact, violate a users' privacy. He said Yahoo wanted to be sensitive to privacy concerns, but he declined to say if the company would ever consider choosing ads on the basis of e-mail text. Such ads might be a significant source of revenue; already, marketers are willing to pay more for advertising matched to Web search queries. Google and Yahoo, which are paid each time a user clicks |
1589536_4 | I Sing the Body's Pattern Recognition Machine | for it takes shape in the left temporal lobe. It's not a wolf. It's a woman. The parietal lobe helps you focus on the woman. With the auditory association area, you decipher the sounds -- human greeting or vexed grackle? Young or old voice? Happy or worried? Meanwhile, in the brain's dreamy cities and counties, associations wake and endow the vision with meaning. The limbic system, that expressionist painter, daubs the perception with emotion. It's your mother. You recognize her hair and figure. Memory fills in her name, her upbeat personality, a phone call yesterday, her saying that she had several errands to run. Brain imaging would show activity in many different regions as you weave all the information together and think what feels like a single concept: Mom! But generalizing, even from concrete details, isn't always accurate. You were wrong. It's not your mother. The woman across the street only bears a resemblance to her. She's not waving to you, but to the person walking behind you. Generalizing works often enough to make do in a world where things disappear on their own, and we add and subtract things from our awareness on purpose. Generalize from one traumatic fact or locale to possible others? Easy as spotting the third tenor in a trio. A passion for pattern, piano and defeating Hitler led the actress Hedy Lamarr to invent the beginnings of cellphones, smart bombs and other tricks of wireless communication. Born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, the Austrian film star at 19 swam nude in the 1933 film ''Ecstasy,'' a delicious scandal that made her famous. She married a wealthy arms merchant, who socialized with Hitler and Mussolini, and she grew to hate the Nazis as well as her husband, whom she divorced. In time, she arrived in Hollywood, anglicized her name, and fell in love with the composer George Antheil. One day, listening to him play piano, she heard the notes in a new way, as changing patterns, and started thinking about an anti-jamming radio control that might work with torpedoes. The invention she and Antheil later patented used a pre-arranged group of constantly changing frequencies, like the notes of a song, which made messages hard to intercept or jam. These days her invention, known as spread spectrum, enables cellphones, wireless Internet access, and the military's satellite communications, which depend on elaborate patterns of frequencies that change by the |
1587353_1 | What Is Google's Secret Weapon? An Army of Ph.D.'s | research group, so all 1,900, effectively, are charged to ''boldly go where no one has gone before'' (its words). You have to like Google's chances. Employee motivation is tied to sundry conveniences and happy stomachs, or so it would seem. When Google filed its initial public offering plans in April, it enumerated employee benefits like those washing machines, free meals and doctor visits at company offices. It warned prospective investors to ''expect us to add benefits rather than pare them down over time.'' Moving in the opposite direction, Microsoft said last month that it was making some minor cuts in benefits, rankling employees, who are as aware as anyone of the $50 billion sitting in the corporate treasury. It's no contest: Google is going to win a battle of benefits, what with its on-site gym, on-site dentist and on-site celebrity chef who previously served the Grateful Dead. Yet none of that matters, really. What trumps all else is Google's willingness to organize the entire company around the insight that top talent likes to work with other top talent, tackling interesting problems of their own choice. It's the same reason that some computer science students complete a master's degree and then persevere for three to five more years for a doctorate. It entails deep original research for a dissertation, while subsisting on a meager fellowship that allows for a celebrity chef only like Colonel Sanders. Rajeev Motwani, a computer science professor at Stanford, says: ''Good Ph.D. students are extreme in their creativity and self-motivation. Master's students are equally smart but do not have the same drive to create something new.'' The master's takes you where others have been; the doctorate, where no one has gone before. Until recently, when computer science students completed their long Ph.D. training and stepped into daylight, they were treated warily by industry employers. American business has had to overcome its longtime suspicion of intellect. ''Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men,'' an article published in the 1920's in the American magazine, is a typical specimen of an earlier era. In modern times, computer scientists are hired, but a doctorate can still be viewed as the sign of a character defect, its holder best isolated in an aerie. Xerox famously put together a dream team of computer scientists in the 1970's, placed it on a hill in Palo Alto, Calif., and received, in short order, the modern easy-to-use |
1587169_0 | PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL |
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