SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2008

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times

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Gender, Back on Stage

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The issues of gender and family emerged as a test and a distraction after Senator John McCain chose Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Palin’s Entrance in the Race Complicates the Issue for Women This article is by Kate Zernike, Jodi Kantor, Rachel L. Swarns and Jackie Calmes.

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ENATOR JOHN McCain’s choice of Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate has unleashed gender as a campaign issue again, just when Democrats thought they had it under control. Ms. Palin was presented as a magnet for female voters, the epitome of everymom appeal. “It turns out the women of America aren’t finished yet!” she said as Mr. McCain introduced her to America as the vice-presidential nominee on August 29. “We can shatter that glass ceiling!” she proclaimed.

WORLD TRENDS

Roger Cohen: his new column.

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With five children, including an infant with Down syndrome and, as America learned on September 1, a pregnant 17-yearold, Ms. Palin has set off a fierce argument about motherhood, gender and whether the disclosure about her daughter would continue to dominate Mr. McCain’s campaign. Republican delegates have rallied around her, saying it would not threaten her hopes of being Mr. McCain’s running mate. “This puts the issue back on center stage,” said Debbie Walsh, the director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “There are going to be some really fascinating conversations that are going to come up around gender, in some ways that nobody

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Crows remember faces of friends and foes.

expected.” What’s a woman to do? Or at least, a woman who so badly wanted to see a woman in the White House? Democrats, who make up the party that has long claimed the bigger pool of up-and-coming women in poublic life, were quick to dismiss Ms. Palin, who is 44, as not experienced enough to be a heartbeat from the presidency. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s supporters will never back her, they insisted, because she is against abortion rights. Not. So. Fast. That view underestimated, or at least underappreciated, Continued on Page 3

ARTS & STYLES

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Contemporary art finds a home in traditional India.

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Down in the Doldrums and Missing the Good Old Days Money, the saying goes, cannot buy happiness, although it can help chase the blues away. These days, not having enough of it helps explain a sour mood that is spreading across the world. As the global economy falters — weighed down by the mortgage crisis in the United States and Europe, inflation in Asia, and high commodity prices everywhere — people have less money, but the sense of foreboding seems to go beyond mere economic concerns. China and India have been the engines of affluence, but now they are slipping. China’s growth rate will fall from 11 percent to around 9 percent, economists say, a blistering pace almost anywhere else, but not fast enough for China to absorb

representative in Vietnam. “I the millions of workers moving LENS think people are pessimistic,” into the cities in search of work. she told Mr. Mydans. “You In India it is double-digit inflasense a tougher environment, a tion that is darkening the mood, more restricted environment.” mostly due to sharp rises in food Steve Erlanger of The and fuel prices. Times’s Paris bureau reported Suddenly, the good old days that the French, too, are in are being missed. In Vietnam, as a bad mood as they return in India, inflation is causing the from their August vacations. discomfort, affecting spirits both Though this period, called “rentrée,” is literally and figuratively. Rising prices the season for new films, operas, plays for offerings to burn for dead ancestors and books, not many people appear to are frustrating the Vietnamese, who be looking forward to it. until now have seen only the upside “The French have the blues,” Alix of market cycles, Seth Mydans of The Girod de l’Ain, a columnist at Elle magaTimes recently wrote. zine, told him. The mood is tense these days, said In Italy, the “malessere,” or malaise, Kim N. B. Ninh, the Asia Foundation’s

has lasted months. Ian Fisher’s article from Rome late last year described a “collective funk — economic, social and political.” Public opinion surveys showed that Italians were the least happy people in Europe. “It’s a country that has lost a little of its will for the future,” said Walter Veltroni, the center-left mayor of Rome. “There is more fear than hope.” “Hope” and “change” are two of the messages underlying Senator Barack Obama’s success so far in his United States presidential campaign. In keeping with the worldwide sense of gloom, nearly 80 percent of Americans tell pollsters that America is “going in the wrong direction.”

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“Obama got one thing right,” James Stanford, a retired steelworker from Pennsylvania, told Michael Powell in a recent article. “We are bitter here.” Mr. Stanford, who has seen his pension disappear, was referring to Mr. Obama’s description of rural Americans as clinging to their guns and religion out of bitterness. Nobody wants to stay pessimistic, feel the blues, suffer from a malaise or end up bitter, so change sounds attractive. And eventually, of course, it is inevitable. But hastening it is not so simple. As Beppe Severnigni, a columnist for Corriere della Sera, told Mr. Fisher: “The malaise is: ‘I can see all that. But there is nothing I can do to change it.’ ”

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2008 o p i n i o n & C o M M e n ta Ry niCholas d. kRistoF

editorials of the times

Where’s The Prosperity? There is so little good economic news these days that we were cheered August 26 after the Census Bureau reported that in 2007 the income of the typical American household rose for the third year in a row. We weren’t cheered for long. A closer look confirms what Americans already know: most families reaped none of the benefits of the previous six years of solid economic growth. Median household income last year was still 0.6 percent less than it was in 2000, when the last economic expansion peaked. Households led by someone 65 or under made an average of $56,545 last year — 3.4 percent less than in 2000. The census offers the same mirage when it comes to health insurance. While the overall number of uninsured dropped — from 47 million in 2006 to 45.7 million last year — that still left the number of uninsured Americans 7.2 million higher than in 2000. The improvements were entirely attributable to an increase in the number of people enrolled in Medicaid and other public programs. What makes the news particularly bleak is that last year was probably the best year of the economic expansion that started at the end of 2001. Surveying the wreckage since then, it appears all but certain that this year’s census data will be worse.

The report has other grim news. The number of people living under the poverty line rose by 5.7 million since 2000, to 12.5 percent of the population. And the number of impoverished children increased to 18 percent. There are multiple reasons why Americans are working harder and not getting ahead, including a weak labor movement, globalization, technological change and a slowdown in educational attainment. Except for a few years in the late 1990s, wages and benefits have grown more slowly than the nation’s income for nearly 30 years. Under the Bush administration, workers’ share of national income has fallen with a vengeance, to its lowest point since the 1960s. The Bush expansion may be the first in recorded history in which poverty rose and typical American families never regained the level of income they had attained at the end of the prior one. What is clear is that economic growth alone will not be enough for most American families. The benefits must be shared more broadly. This means more progressive taxation, increasing access to affordable health care, investing more in public education. President Bush was too busy cutting taxes on top earners to think about any of these priorities. The next president must do much better.

Tortured, But Not Silenced An early test of the next president’s moral courage will come as he decides how to engage two Sudanese people named Bashir. One is President Omar al-Bashir, who faces indictment for genocide by the International Criminal Court. The other is Dr. Halima Bashir, a young Darfuri woman whom the Sudanese authorities have tried to silence by beatings and gang rape. This month, Halima’s extraordinary memoir will be published in the United States, at considerable risk to herself. She writes in “Tears of the Desert” of growing up in a placid village in rural Darfur, of her wonder at seeing white people for the first time, of her brilliant performance in school. Eventually Halima became a doctor, just as the genocide against black African tribes like her own began in 2003. Halima soon found herself treating heartbreaking cases, like that of a 6-year-old boy who suffered horrendous burns when the statesponsored janjaweed militia threw him into a burning hut. One day she gave an interview in which she delicately hinted that the Darfur reality was more complicated than the Sudanese government version. The authorities detained her, threatened her, warned her to keep silent and transferred her to a remote clinic where there were no journalists around to interview her. Then the janjaweed attacked a girls’ school near Halima’s new clinic and raped dozens of the girls, aged 7 to 13. The first patient Halima tended to was 8 years old. Her face was bashed in and her insides torn apart. The girl was emitting a haunting sound: “a keening, empty wail kept coming from somewhere deep within her throat — over and over again,” she recalls in the book.

Sudan’s government dispatches rapists the way other governments dispatch the police, the better to terrorize black African tribes and break their spirit. What sometimes isn’t noted is that many young Darfuri girls undergo an extreme form of genital cutting called infibulation, in which the vagina is stitched closed until marriage; that makes such rapes of schoolgirls particularly violent and bloody, increasing the risk of AIDS transmission. Halima found herself treating the girls with tears streaming down her own face. All she had to offer the girls for their pain was half a pill each of acetaminophen: “At no stage in my years of study had I been

A witness to brutality in Darfur becomes a victim and a messenger. taught how to deal with 8-year-old victims of gang rape in a rural clinic without enough sutures to go around.” Soon afterward, two United Nations officials showed up at the clinic to gather information about the attack. Halima told them the truth. A few days later, the secret police kidnapped her. “You speak to the foreigners!” one man screamed at her. They told her that she had talked of rape but knew nothing about it — yet. For days they beat her, gang-raped her, cut her with knives, burned her with cigarettes, mocked her with racial epithets. One told her, “Now you know what rape is, you black dog.”

Upon her release, a shattered Halima fled back to her native village, but it was soon attacked and burned — and her beloved father killed. Halima still doesn’t know what happened to her mother or brothers. Eventually she made her way to Britain, where she is seeking asylum, and even there Sudanese agents are trying to track her whereabouts. It is difficult to verify some of Halima’s story, and she has modified her own name and some place names to protect family members from retribution. But what can be checked out does check out and suggests no exaggeration. For example, Halima says in her book that she does not know how many girls were raped at the school but that 40 were brought to the clinic. I’ve found independent accounts of the same attack that describe as many as 110 girls and teachers raped and dozens more kidnapped; the United Nations also has photos of the school after the attack. I asked Halima if she regrets telling the United Nations officials about the rape of the schoolgirls, considering what it cost her. She sighed and said no. “What happened to me happened to so many other Darfur women,” she said. “If I didn’t tell, all the other people don’t get the chance — and I have the chance. I am a well-educated woman, so I can speak up and send a message to the world.” Halima’s bravery contrasts with the world’s fecklessness and failures on Darfur. She is applying for a travel document and a visa to come to the United States to talk about her book, but it seems unlikely that they will arrive in time for its release. I hope President Bush accelerates the process and invites her to the White House, to show the world which of the two Bashirs America stands behind.

intelligence/roger cohen

Madonna Crosses the Line One of the hallmarks of the global digital age is that anyone with a computer can participate in the political debate. That can be wonderful. Or it can be appalling, like the new video Madonna is showing on her tour. It shows a montage of genocide (a Nazi death camp, Asian and African killing fields) and faces of evil and oppression (Adolf Hitler, Ayatollah Khomeini, Robert Mugabe). Then it cuts to Mike Huckabee, who ran for the Republican nomination, and Senator John McCain, who just became the official Republican nominee for president. This year’s presidential campaign has already been marked by far too much negative advertising. It was outrageous when Mr. McCain’s campaign juxtaposed his Democratic opponent, Senator Barack Obama, with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears as part of its effort to denigrate him as a person. Madonna’s video is immeasurably worse. If she thought she was

helping Mr. Obama by juxtaposing his image with that of Gandhi and Bono, she was wrong. Tucker Bounds, a McCain spokesman, was exactly right when he called the video “outrageous” and “unacceptable.” Mr. Obama’s team also swiftly denounced it. But it was a distressing sign of how low the political debate has gotten this year that neither side could resist using the moment to hurl more mud. “It clearly shows that when it comes to supporting Barack Obama, his fellow worldwide celebrities refuse to consider any smear or attack off limits,” added Mr. Bounds. An Obama spokesman, Tommy Vietor, could not resist his own gratuitous jab. “We hope that John McCain will offer a similar condemnation as his allies increasingly practice sleazy Swift boat tactics,” he said. At least the song Madonna performs in the video was aptly named: “Get Stupid.”

Ideology in a World Made Anew London When Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in 1968, nobody asked what the implication was for the Soviet stock market. There was none. Things are different today: the Russian market has plunged since the country’s little Georgian war. That’s one illustration of how interconnected we’ve become. Post-Communist Russia’s grown rich on everything you can dig or pump out the ground, but it still needs foreign direct investment to develop a service and manufacturing sector. It also needs the rule of law to become a modern state. Walls are down and won’t return, which is why all the talk of a new cold war is wrong. But the unipolar, American-dominated world that followed the cold war is dead as well. The rise of China, India and now Russia has ended that heady nanosecond of American ascendancy. What is less clear is the meaning of these new powers’ rise in ideological terms. Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev, Russia’s ruling duo, have devoted countless words to attacking the United States and NATO. Until Georgia, they were big on the rule of law and the United Nations as

: aide a la leCtuRe Pour aider à la lecture de l’anglais et familiariser nos lecteurs avec certaines expressions américaines, Le Monde publie ci-dessous la traduction de quelques mots et idiomes contenus dans les articles de ce supplément. Par Dominique Chevallier, agrégée d’anglais. lexique Dans l’article “Technology: A Partner or a Master”, page 6: RaptuRe: ravissement Bliss: félicité to Revel: prendre le plus grand plaisir à, se complaire to stRoll: flâner Dans l’article “Masked Researchers Discover Crows Never Forget a Face”, page 6: CRow: corbeau Raven: Corneille Magpie: pie waRy: méfiant, circonspect to haMpeR: gêner, entraver gait: démarche to don: enfiler (un vêtement) to sCold: gronder, réprimander Foe: ennemi

BRethRen: frères

Dans l’article “When the Architect Doubles as Psychologist”, page 7: unsCathed: indemne asundeR: en pieces, en mille morceaux BindeR: dossier Messiness: désordre MillwoRk: travail du bois de décoration BluepRint: projet, plan Dans l’article “Sustainable Landscapes that aim to Seduce”, page 7: sustainaBle: durable to Balk: hésiter, regimber Flagstone: dale CoBBle: pavé dRought: sécheresse

the sole “legitimate” sanction for force: so much for that. Beyond the stark message that Russia’s back, it’s hard to discern what, if anything, Moscow stands for. With India, there is a similar difficulty. As the world’s largest democracy, it might, with Japan, stand in an Asian vanguard of democracy-promotion, alongside the United States But unlike Americans, Indians don’t regard democracy in idealistic terms. Democracy is what they’ve got rather than what they’re bound to promote. They like it O.K., but don’t see it as inherently superior to other ways of organizing society. You don’t hear Indians shouting about dictatorial Burma, their neighbor. China does have an international buzzword: harmony. Roughly, it means the prizing of peace, development and trade with no strings attached — the “strings” being American preoccupations like democracy and freedom. In practice, it means doing business in places like Sudan and prizing stability as the country rises. Sometimes I try to imagine a world where the “quartet” trying to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was made up of

expRessions Dans l’article “Upscale Hitchhikers Join Private Jet Set”, page 5: MooCheR: mot argot qui désigne une personne qui “tape” les autres et se fait plaindre; un genre de pique-assiette; mot rendu mondialement célèbre comme titre de la chanson “Minnie the Moocher” (1931) de Cab Calloway, où invente le scat , ces syllables qui ne veulent rien dire et que le public répète en choeur; ainsi le fameux “Hi De Hi De Hi De Hi”, qu’il reprend, entre autres, dans le film “les Blues Brothers”. Dans l’article “Coen Brothers’ World is Morbid and Funny”, page 8: lothaRio: mot passé dans la langue commune désignant un séducteur, trompeur et dissolu, un Don Juan; il s’agit, à l’origine, d’un personnage de la pièce “The Fair Penitent” de l’anglais Nicholas Rowe (1703).

RÉFÉRenCes Dans l’article “Sustainable Landscapes That Aim to Seduce”, page 7: alBeMaRle County: comté de Virginie, qui

China, India, the United States and Russia. What would Asia bring to the quest? The region has shown a remarkable ability to subsume past conflict to present needs, witness the Vietnamese embrace of America. That’s what the Middle East requires. Yet there’s scarcely a think tank in New Delhi devoted to the issue. The fact is the United States remains the world’s most restlessly ideological country. Even those who dislike it tend to look to it still for inspiration because of its capacity for reinvention. It’s interesting that, at a moment of compromised United States ideals, a politician, Barack Obama, has emerged who presents a transformed image of America. He’s the man from everywhere and nowhere: hence the global fascination he provokes. I suspect that interest is linked to a sense that he might articulate a new ideological framework for an uneasy world whose emerging powers have proved more vigorous in saying what they don’t like than what they do. Send comments to [email protected].

compte environ 100 000 habitants et dont la capitale est Charlottesville. Il est surtout connu pour être le lieu de naissance de Thomas Jefferson (3ème Président des Etats-Unis et père de la Déclaration d’Indépendance), et celui dans lequel il construira sa résidence bienaimée, Monticello, ainsi que l’Université de Virginie. Le comté est bordé, à l’Est, par cette portion des Appalaches nommée les Blue Ridge Mountains, dans lesquelles se situe le parc national de Shenandoah. Dans l’article “Upscale Hitchhikers Join Private Jet Set”, page 5: CaRMel, CaliFoRnia: petite ville de Californie, située sur la route des missions (de San Diego à San Francisco), à 500km au Nord de Los Angeles et à 200km au sud de San Francisco. Cette petite ville (4000 habitants) connue pour sa mission construite par les Indiens convertis par le franciscain Juan Crespi, qui l’ établit en 1770 (elle a survécu tant bien que mal jusqu’au début du 19ème siècle, où les Indiens ont fini par mourir de malnutrition et d’épuisement), l’est aussi pour ses artistes résidents et ses magnifiques villas donnant sur le Pacifique. Clint Eastwood en a été le maire (Républicain) de 1986 à 1988.

● ● ● ● the new yoRk tiMes is puBlished weekly in the Following newspapeRs: ClaRín, aRgentina deR standaRd, austRia la segunda, Chile el espeCtadoR, ColoMBia listin diaRio, doMiniCan RepuBliC ● el univeRso, eCuadoR ● le Monde, FRanCe ● sÜddeutsChe zeitung, geRMany ● pRensa liBRe, guateMala ● the asian age, india ● la RepuBBliCa, italy ● asahi shiMBun, ● ● ● ● ● ● ● sunday nation, kenya koha ditoRe, kosovo ReFoRMa gRoup, MexiCo vijesti, MontenegRo la pRensa, panaMa Manila Bulletin, philippines RzeCzpospolita, poland japan ● ● ● ● ● ● el país, spain the tiMes, south aFRiCa united daily news, taiwan the oBseRveR, united kingdoM the koRea tiMes, united states el naCional, venezuela politika, seRBia

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2008

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world trends

On Economic Growth, A Real Partisan Divide Many Americans know that there are economic policy differences between Democrats and Republicans. But few are aware of two important facts about the post-World War II era, both of which are brilliantly delineated in a new book, “Unequal Democracy,” by Larry M. Bartels, a professor alan of political science at s. Blinder Princeton University in New Jersey. Understanding them might help voters see what could be at stake, economically speaking, in November. I call the first fact the Great Partisan Growth Divide. Simply put, the United States economy has grown faster, on average, under Democratic presidents than under Republicans. The stark contrast between the booming Clinton years and the dreary Bush years is familiar because it is so recent. But while it is extreme, it is not atypical. Data for the whole period from 1948 to 2007, during which Republicans occupied the White House for 34 years and Democrats for 26, show average annual growth of real gross national product of 1.64 percent per capita under Republican presidents versus 2.78 percent under Democrats. Such a large historical gap in economic performance between the two parties is rather surprising, because presidents have limited leverage over the nation’s economy. Most economists will tell you that Federal Reserve policy and oil prices, to name just two influences, are far more powerful than fiscal policy. But statistical regularities, like facts, are stubborn things. You bet against them at your peril. The second big historical fact, which

ESSAY

Alan S. Blinder is a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. He has advised many Democratic politicians.

might be called the Great Partisan Inequality Divide, is the focus of Professor Bartels’s work. It is well known that income inequality in the United States has been on the rise for about 30 years now. But Professor Bartels unearths a stunning statistical regularity: Over the entire 60-year period, income inequality trended substantially upward under Republican presidents but slightly downward under Democrats, thus accounting for the widening income gaps over all. And the bad news for America’s poor is that Republicans have won five of the seven elections going back to 1980. The Great Partisan Inequality Divide is not limited to the poor. To get a more detailed look, Professor Bartels studied the postwar history of income gains at five different places in the income distribution. The 20th percentile is the income level at which 20 percent of all families have less income and 80 percent have more. It is thus a plausible dividing line between the poor and the nonpoor. The 95th percentile is the best dividing line between the rich and the nonrich that the data permitted Professor Bartels to study. (That dividing line, by the way, is around $180,000.) When Democrats were in the White House, lower-income families experienced slightly faster income growth than higher-income families — which means that incomes were equalizing. In stark contrast, there was much faster income growth for the affluent when Republicans were in the White House — thus widening the gap in income. The table also shows that families at the 95th percentile fared almost as well under Republican presidents as under Democrats (1.90 percent growth per year, versus 2.12 percent), giving them little stake, economically, in election outcomes. But the stakes were enormous for the less well-to-do. Families at the 20th percentile fared

DAVID G. KLEIN

much worse under Republicans than under Democrats (0.43 percent versus 2.64 percent). The sources of such large differences make for a slightly complicated story. In the early part of the period — say, the pre-Reagan years — the Great Partisan Growth Divide accounted for most of the Great Partisan Inequality divide, because the poor do relatively better in

Gender Comes to the Forefront Again ton, any woman would do. “It’s an insult,’’ said Jan Roller, a Clinton delegate from Cleveland. “You have the raw feelings of many Clinton supporters, and to be qualified for the job.” Judith France and her daughter Holly Franceparticularly the women among them. Lynn Hackney and Kim Hoover might perfectly Kremin have been torn about their choice for presiillustrate the emotions of those whom Ms. Palin dent ever since Ms. Clinton lost the Democratic counts as “not finished yet.” They had gathered 20 nomination to Mr. Obama. Now Mr. McCain has equally passionate Hillary supporters at their home made up their minds, but in different ways, by his in Washington to watch Mrs. Clinton’s speech at the surprise pick of Ms. Palin. “It made me like McCain a little more,” said JuDemocratic National Convention in Denver in late dith France, 62, of Thornville, Ohio. “I know people August. “The Kleenex was flowing,” said Ms. Hackney, will say she’s inexperienced. But she’s been a governor for 20 months. That’s more experience than who declared the speech “brilliant.” Two nights later, when 38 million Americans Obama has.” Ms. France-Kremin, 36, who lives nearby in Dubwatched Senator Barack Obama’s speech, the women watched a movie. No matter what Mrs. Clinton lin, an affluent suburb of Columbus, likewise has qualms about the seasoning of Mr. Obama, who urged, they cannot support him. “We just don’t think he has a message,” Ms. Hack- became a United States senator in 2005, after eight years as an Illinois state senator. But she also strongly favors abortion rights, and Ms. Palin does not. “That sealed my decision,” said Ms. France-Kremin, who added that she would no longer consider voting for the McCainPalin ticket. Mothers across the United States have also debated about whether there are enough hours in the day for Ms. Palin to take on the vice presidency, and whether she is right to try. This time the battle lines are drawn inside out, with social conservatives, usually staunch advocates for stay-at-home motherhood, mostly defending her, while some others, including plenty of working mothers, worry that she is taking on too much. JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES “How is this really going to work?’’ said Senator John McCain’s choice of Governor Sarah Karen Shopoff Rooff, an independent voter, Palin of Alaska as his running mate may appeal to personal trainer and mother of two in Aussome supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. tin, Texas. “I don’t care whether she’s the mother or the father; it’s a lot to handle,’’ she said. But Lori Viars, a mother of two and evangelical ney said. “We don’t think he’s good for women.” Her phone, she said, began “burning up” when Mr. Christian from Lebanon, Ohio, cheered the candiMcCain announced Ms. Palin as his choice. “The fact dacy as well as the decision of both Palin women to that he went out on a limb to pick a woman, I’m very keep their babies. “The whole family is pro-life, and impressed by that.” She said she was not sure she they put that into practice even when it’s not easy,’’ could vote for a Republican, and would likely stick to Ms. Viars said. The general election comes off a primary season her plan to write in Mrs. Clinton. But, she said, “It’s of division, if not anger. And the United States has opened my eyes to at least pay attention.” At the same time, Mr. McCain’s move is such a bla- been closely split in the last several elections. “This says again, you can’t take these women for tant bid for the women’s vote that it might backfire. It is likely that Clinton supporters backed their can- granted,” Ms. Walsh said. “There’s going to be a didate for her experience, not her gender. They may need to really reach out to them, to highlight the difference between John McCain and Barack Obama resent being reduced to the sum of their hormones. Some Clinton stalwarts took offense, saying they on the issues women care about.” For all the emotion of the last few weeks, she said felt as if Mr. McCain had decided that, for women disappointed that they could not vote for Mrs. Clin- the lesson is clear: “We matter.”

From Page 1

a high-growth economy. Beginning with the Reagan presidency, however, growth differences are smaller and tax and transfer policies have played a larger role. We know, for example, that Republicans have typically favored large tax cuts for upperincome groups while Democrats have opposed them. In addition, Democrats have been

more willing to raise the minimum wage, and Republicans have been more hostile toward unions. The two Great Partisan Divides combine to suggest that, if history is a guide, a Barack Obama victory in November would lead to faster economic growth with less inequality, while a John McCain victory would lead to slower economic growth with more inequality.

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2008 world trends

Collective Land Becomes a Hot Capitalist Property in Russia By ANDREW E. KRAMER

PODLESNEY, Russia —The fields around this little farming enclave are among the most fertile on earth. But like tens of millions of hectares of land in this country, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they literally went to seed. Now that may be changing. A decade after capitalism transformed Russian industry, an agricultural revolution is stirring the countryside, shaking up village life and sweeping aside the collective farms that resisted earlier reform efforts and remain the dominant form of agriculture. The change is being driven by soaring global food prices (the price of wheat alone rose 77 percent last year) and a new reform allowing foreigners to own agricultural land. Together, they have created a land rush in rural Russia. “Where else do you have such an abundance of land?” Samir Suleymanov, the World Bank’s director for Russia, asked. As a result, the business of buying and reforming collective farms is suddenly and improbably very profitable, attracting hedge fund managers, Russian oligarchs, Swedish portfolio investors and even a descendant of White Russian émigré nobility. Earlier reformers envisioned the collective farms eventually breaking up into family farms. But the new business model rests on a belief that Russia’s long, painful history of collectivization is destined to end in large corporate factory farms. These investments are also a gamble in a country accustomed to government control of business. Some officials have hinted at the prospect of a government takeover of the farming industry reminiscent of the Soviet era. And Russia’s minister of agriculture, Aleksey Gordeyev, speaks often of food in terms of national security. “Russia is very often perceived throughout the world as a major military power,” he told a food summit in Rome early in his tenure. “At the same time, and perhaps above and beyond anything else, Russia is a major agrarian power.” Russia occupies an unusual niche in the global food chain. Before the Russian Revolution and the subsequent forced collectivization of farming under Stalin, it was the largest grain exporting nation in the world.

A change in Russian law permits foreigners to own farmland, creating a rush to buy up large tracts in the countryside. An agricultural holding in Ryazan province run by Agro-Invest.

JAMES HILL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Today, roughly 7 percent of the planet’s arable land is either owned by the Russian state or by collective farms, but about a sixth of all that agricultural land — some 35 million hectares — lies fallow. By comparison, all of Britain has 6 million hectares of cultivatable land. Even excluding the slivers of land contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster or by industrial pollution, Russia also has millions of acres of untouched, pristine land that could be used for agriculture. Yields in Russia, however, are tiny. The average Russian grain yield is 1.85 tons a hectare — compared with 6.36 tons a hectare in the United States and 3 tons in Canada. (A hectare is about two and a half acres.) If Russia could regain its old title of leading grain exporter, it would significantly relieve strained world markets and reduce prices, Mr. Suleymanov said. It could also reduce malnutrition and starvation. What is more, a significant

expansion of farming capacity could add to Russia’s heft as a world power, much as its prowess in oil and natural gas aided its resurgence in recent years. “The great story of this land is how big it is,” said Kingsmill Bond, chief analyst at the Troika Dialog brokerage in Moscow. Troika is closely watching the transformation of the Russian countryside into an investment opportunity. “You can’t buy anything like it anywhere else in the world,” he said. Analysts say the new companies dedicated to breaking up and reforming collective farms hope to bring huge tracts of land into production — tracts that can take advantage of economies of scale. The last attempt at decollectivization, under the government of President Boris Yeltsin, failed in part because collective farms devolved into small holdings. Those who made the leap to become private farmers failed. The rest remained in the collective farms.

Shoppers Join To Buy Slices Of the Harvest

In Brazil and Argentina, Contrasting Farm Policies By ANDREW DOWNIE

By SUSAN SAULNY

CAMPTON TOWNSHIP, Illinois — In an environmentally conscious variation on the typical way of getting food to the table, growing numbers of people in the United States are skipping out on grocery stores and even farmers markets and instead going right to the source by buying shares of farms. On one of the farms, here about 56 kilometers west of Chicago, Steve Trisko was weeding beets the other day and cutting back a shade tree so baby tomatoes could get sunlight. Mr. Trisko is a retired computer consultant who owns shares in the Erehwon Farm. “We decided that it’s in our interest to have a small farm succeed, and have them be able to have a sustainable farm producing good food,” Mr. Trisko said. Part of a loose but growing network organized mostly on the Internet, Erehwon is part of what is known as community-supported agriculture. About 150 people have bought shares in Erehwon — in essence, hiring personal farmers. The concept was imported from Europe and Asia in the 1980s as an alternative to help combat the often prohibitive costs of small-scale farming. But until recently, it was slow to take root. There were fewer than 100 such farms in the early 1990s, but in the last several years the numbers have grown to close to 1,500, according to academic experts. “I think people are becoming more local-minded, and this fits right into that,” said Nichole D. Nazelrod, program coordinator at the Fulton Center for Sustainable Living at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, a national clearinghouse for community-supported farms. “People are seeing ways to come together and work together to make this successful.” The shareholders of Erehwon Farm Catrin Einhorn contributed reporting from Chicago.

Some trade and agriculture experts say there is still a danger that a country like today’s Russia, which jealously guards its natural resources, could one day renationalize farms or form a cartel that dictates to landowners. Clearly, that fear is not foremost in investors’ minds. Land prices have roughly doubled in the last two years, according to Troika. The average price a hectare was $570 in 2006 and is now $1,000, Mr. Bond said. One of the first investors to see value in the Russian countryside was Michel Orloff, a former director of the Carlyle Group’s Moscow office and the scion of a White Russian noble family. He said a visit to Argentina in 2004 inspired him. He saw large landowners making profits without government subsidies, and envisioned a similar model for Russia that would hark back to the noble estates of his family history, only lubricated by modern finance.

“In Moscow, they said I was crazy for going into agriculture,” Mr. Orloff recalled on a visit to one of his factory farms outside Podlesny — formerly the Sunrise of Communism collective farm. “Now, they all envy us.” His model rested on the idea that the collective farms should not be broken up into smaller plots but consolidated into larger factory farms, able to achieve economies of scale. (He calls the new corporate farms “clusters.”) Using John Deere tractors and Western-trained agronomists, he has nearly doubled yields. Last year, Black Earth Farming fields yielded 3.3 tons of wheat a hectare, and the company says it is on track this year to reap 4.4 tons a hectare. To be sure, this is Russia. Though many investors are piling in, their investments remain small relative to the size of the huge agricultural sector. Black Earth, Razgulai and Cherkizovo are large public companies involved in buying and reforming collective farms. While Westerners have invested in the companies, the businesses are all local, requiring a Russian connection, as most Russian commodity investment does. That requirement, as well as the possibility that Russia could become a bigger supplier of food, gives pause to some Europeans. They are concerned about Russia’s new assertiveness diplomatically and militarily. “We see an increasing number of entrepreneurs coming to us with business plans trying to convert this land,” Mr. Bond said. “Some will be successful, but most will not be able to do it.” This year, about 14 percent of Russia’s agricultural land had undergone this process of greater consolidation, according to an analysis by Vedemosti, the business newspaper. “In 10 or 15 years, Russia will be the leading force in world agriculture, just because of its mass,” Mr. Orloff said.

CARLOS JAVIER ORTIZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Community-sponsored farms are a growing trend in the U.S. Tim Fuller helps run Erehwon Farm, which sells fresh produce its members. have access to the land and a guaranteed percentage of the season’s harvest of fruit and vegetables for packages that range from about $300 to $900. Arrangements of fresh-cut blossoms twice a month can be included for an extra $120. Shareholders are not required to work the fields, but they can if they want, and many do. Mr. Trisko said his family knows that without his volunteer labor and agreement to share in the financial risk of raising crops, the small organic farm might not survive. “It’s very hard for them to make ends meet,” he said, “so I decided to go out and help. We harvest, water, pull weeds, whatever they need doing.” Under the sponsored system, farmers are paid an agreed-upon fee in advance of the growing season, making their survival less dependent on the vicissitudes of the market and the cooperation of the elements. The arrangement involves real farms and real farmers and is distinct from community gardens and other forms of urban farming, where vacant or public land is typically put to agricultural use by residents. The average share price is $500 to $800 a season across the United States, Ms. Nazelrod said, though communitysupported agriculture seems most popular on the coasts and around the Great Lakes region. The states with the most

farms, she said, include New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and California. “The C.S.A. provides a base that’s certain, and we get the money when we need to spend the money,” said Beth Propst, who farms the fields at Erehwon, using the abbreviation for community-supported agriculture. “Having the money upfront and guaranteed, that gets us through at least the beginning of the season.” At the Cattleana Ranch in Omro, Wisconsin, Thomas and Susan Wrchota offer grass-fed meat and organic produce to the community. They have 55 members, and a seven-month meat membership costs $715. Mr. Wrchota developed a taste for grass-fed beef while working for the Peace Corps in Costa Rica in the 1970s. When he returned home, he decided to raise animals himself, starting with just one cow. “We don’t do millions in revenue, but we make a living, which is rare,” he said. Here in Illinois, Erehwon, which is “nowhere” spelled backward, sold out of shares last year and had to turn people away. Tim Fuller, Ms. Propst’s longtime companion and business partner in running the farm, said: “People are coming to us. We do very little marketing except for explaining what we do. It’s amazing.”

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Luciano Alves planted beans, corn and grain on about 3,000 hectares of his farm in southern Brazil last year. This year he is planting 3,480 hectares. And he credits Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, with the increase. “The government is helping us finance the purchase of new machinery,” he said. “They reduced the interest rates we pay and have given us more time to pay off the loans. It’s vital.” Rising food prices mean many farmers around the world are reaping record profits. And South America’s agricultural powerhouses, Brazil and Argentina, are responding to the farming windfall in opposite ways. Mr. da Silva’s government has announced record farm credits to encourage farmers to produce more while export prices are high on world markets, a move that should improve Brazil’s economy. But Argentina, Brazil’s economic and political archrival, decided to share the agricultural wealth at home. Worried about inflation, the government of Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner increased export taxes on some crops, a move meant to keep down domestic food prices by encouraging farmers to sell more at home. “In our country the government is trying to get money to subsidize other sectors of the economy,” said Eduardo Cucagna, president of FN Semillas, an Argentine seed company, who objects to the policy. “I think Brazil is doing the opposite, adapting to what the world is offering now. They’re doing it right.” In the race to capitalize on the tight global food market, Brazil has a number of advantages over its southern neighbor. It is much bigger, with around 70 million hectares under cultivation, more than twice that of Argentina. It has a wider range of farm exports. And while Argentina is the world’s second biggest exporter of corn and the third biggest exporter of soybeans, Brazil is

the world’s first or second largest exporter of beef, soybeans, chicken, sugar and coffee. The government in Brasília wants it to stay that way. In July it announced a $49 billion credit line for farmers, up 12 percent from last year. Officials said farmers needed the credit to buy machinery, pay for seed and fertilizer, and increase productivity. “Our productivity can’t remain the same if people are going to eat more,” Mr. da Silva said, referring to the growing, increasingly affluent populations in China, India and Latin America. “We have to plant more.” In Argentina, the Kirchner administration tried to raise taxes on grain

Two South American approaches: food for consumption, or for sale. and soybean exports in line with rising world prices. The decision was intended to force Argentine farmers to sell their wares at home, creating a domestic glut that would keep prices down. But instead of reaping the benefits, the government reaped a whirlwind of protest. The sliding tariff raised the tax on soybeans, Argentina’s most important export, to almost 50 percent. It also infuriated farmers, who took to the highways in sometimes violent demonstrations. The Senate narrowly voted against the measure in July, and the tax rate is now fixed at 35 percent. While that wave of turmoil has subsided, farmers said suspicion and uncertainty remained. “The problem has not been solved, and it needs to be solved quickly,” said Sean Cameron, a grain farmer who is president of Aprotrigo, an farm industry organization.

le monde

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2008

5

b u s i n e s s t r av e l

Janet and Leonard Tallerine often invite friends to fly on their plane.

Upscale Hitchhikers Join Private Jet Set By GUY TREBAY

Back in the 1960s, when people more often traveled along roads than through the jet stream, they hitched free rides by sticking out a thumb at a highway onramp or hopping into a friend’s old car. Often enough the destination didn’t matter to a hitchhiker embarked on a personal adventure. What counted was the ride. Then air travel became cheap, hitching turned into something scary and the romance of the highway waned. But as one breed of hitchhiker vanished into folk legend, another kind has appeared. This new one isn’t hauling a backpack or wearing jeans with holes in the knees. With a pastel cashmere cardigan knotted casually around his or her neck, the new hitchhiker can be found in the lounges at places like Teterboro Airport just outside Manhattan in New Jersey or Aspen/Pitkin County Airport in Colorado. These people do not refer to themselves as hitchhikers, of course. The old aphorism that one does not marry for money, but rather mingles with the rich and marries for love, has useful applications when it comes to cadging rides on

private jets. “I don’t think it’s a calculated thing people do,” said Marjorie Gubelmann Raein, the socialite and cash register heiress, who admits to having gotten occasional rides from New York to Palm Beach, Florida. “There’s a misconception that this is some hobby some people have of going around constantly on people’s Gulfstreams.” In fact, Ms. Raein added, more often it is just a matter of friendly convenience. “It’s not like you’re some moocher,” she said. “You’re going somewhere and someone happens to have a plane.” As it turns out, the likelihood of this being the case is less great than it was even a year ago. A slumping economy and spikes in fuel prices have each made serious inroads on the recent boom in private aviation. Still, there are signs that those with their own jets won’t be flying commercially anytime soon. “The big trend is people upgrading to jumbo jets for private use,” said Douglas D. Gollan, the editor of Elite Traveler, the glossy journal that bills itself as the “private jet lifestyle magazine.” People who once cruised comfortably

in a 12-seat Gulfstream G450, Mr. Gollan said, now gaze covetously at a Boeing Business Jet, a 737 reconfigured to accommodate not 150 commercial passengers but 18 to 25 private ones. The planes serve not just as business shuttles but also as taxis for friends and acquaintances and the family dog. For example, Leonard Tallerine, the independent oil and gas producer, and his wife, Janet, routinely invite friends on their frequent “short hops” between their houses in Houston; East Hampton, New York; and New Orleans. “Our attitude is, ‘We’re going, there’s room, so come,’ ” Mr. Tallerine said. Earlier this summer, Diane Sustendal, a writer in New Orleans, got a call from Mr. Tallerine, who said he was flying to New York to meet with his investment bankers. He had space on his eight-seat Hawker 800 XP. Did she need a ride? By 10 a.m., Ms. Sustendal was “drinking hot coffee and having warm muffins” on Mr. Tallerine’s jet. By 3 p.m. she was in SoHo getting coiffed at Frédéric Fekkai. By 7:30 the next morning, she was back on the plane with Mr. Tallerine, who made apologies for the early departure.

ERIC KAYNE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

“I thought we should try to be back in time for lunch at Galatoire’s,” he said, referring to the legendary New Orleans restaurant. Given the costs of flying — the hundreds of thousands of dollars in fractional flight hours, the fuel surcharges and crew overtime, the equipment management fees and, in cases of full ownership, the $40 million or more required to buy a jet — it makes sense that hosts might expect their guests to keep them entertained. Mostly, though, hitchhikers attest that their hosts are “happy to invite friends to share in that wonderful experience,” said Dennis Basso, the well-known

New York furrier, who flew to Paris in a friend’s private aircraft not long ago. “The majority of the people I know are just helping each other out,” Mr. Basso said. “The way you or I would say, ‘You want a ride cross town in a taxi?’ the people I know might say, ‘Can I give you a ride, or can I get a ride with you on Friday?’ ” The ride is not across town, but from rich enclaves like Palm Beach to Aspen, or New York to Nantucket, or East Hampton to Carmel, California. “It’s like doing a friend a favor, you know?” Mr. Basso said. “Like, ‘Oh, do you have room for my housekeeper and a dog?’ ”

A Chic Place for Meeting, With Room for Sleeping By PERRY GARFINKEL

JEFF TOPPING FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Airlines overbook flights in an effort to fill up their planes, but they must compensate bumped passengers.

No Seat, but Getting a Richer Payoff From Airlines By MICHELINE MAYNARD and MICHELLE HIGGINS

The bad news for air travelers this fall is that they may be more likely to be bumped from overbooked flights after airlines shrink their fleets to cut unprofitable flights and inefficient planes. However, the good news is that airlines are required to offer richer rewards — twice the amount of money they used to pay — to passengers bumped from flights. The payoff can be even greater for people who know how to negotiate. In the first six months of the year, about 343,000 passengers out of a total of 282 million were denied seats on planes, according to the United States Department of Transportation. Most of those people volunteered to give up their seats in return for some form of compensation, like a voucher for a free flight. But the department’s statistics also show about 1.16 of every 10,000 passengers had their seats taken away because of overbooking — which may sound like a low rate, until your name is called at the airport. Clay Escobedo was beginning his vacation when he was told there were not enough seats for his family on a Horizon Air flight to Los Angeles, where they were to connect for a trip to a resort in Mexico. “I hear all kinds of nightmares,” said Mr. Escobedo, who works as a supervisor at the Reno/Tahoe International Airport in Nevada. “I didn’t think it could happen to me.” Back when most tickets were refundable or easy to change, and the airlines offered multiple daily flights to many cities, carriers used to overbook about 15 percent of their seats. Passengers who Kathryn Carlson contributed reporting.

The Odds Of Being Bumped • To avoid getting bumped, check in as early as possible. Many airlines allow customers to check in online, as much as 24 hours in advance. • Passengers with discount tickets are the most likely to be bumped. First- and business-class passengers, those paying full fare for coach tickets and elite frequent fliers tend to have the greatest protection. • Bumping rules do not apply to international flights headed to the United States; the regulations of the originating country take precedence. • If you want to increase your chances of getting bumped to cash in on the airline’s payout, fly during a busy time and show up late. If a flight is oversold, the last passengers to check in are often the first to be bumped, even if they arrive at the gate on time. • Find out whether the flight vouchers expire or have any blackout dates. And do not trade in your ticket until you have a confirmed seat on another flight.

missed their plane could simply catch a later flight. Rules are tighter now, and passengers with nonrefundable tickets can expect only a credit for an unused ticket, often minus a large fee, if they change their flight. That means they have more incen-

tive to show up. But airlines still overbook, regarding bumping as a necessary part of doing business, especially at a time of record fuel prices. Overbooking, after all, helps ensure that flights are as full as possible. Travelers can now receive up to $400 if they are involuntarily bumped and rebooked on another flight within two hours after their original domestic flight time and within four hours for international. They are eligible for up to $800 in cash if they are not rerouted by then. The final amount depends on the length of the flight and the price paid for the ticket. Even stricter rules apply in Europe, where compensation ranges from 125 euros (about $185) to 600 euros (about $888). Mr. Escobedo, traveling with his wife, daughter and two grandsons, was told there were only three seats for them for their Horizon Air flight to Los Angeles to connect for their vacation in Mazatlan, Mexico. “I stood my ground,” he said. “I kept telling the agent, ‘That plane better not pull away from the gate. You need to make another announcement.’ ” The agent complied, and asked for two volunteers so the Escobedos could travel together. The airline offered a free roundtrip ticket to anywhere that Alaska or its partner Horizon Air fly, and promised that volunteers could still reach Los Angeles via San Francisco that day. Stephen Schwartz, a graphic artist, put up his hand, as did Margaret Cockrell, a professional development educator. Her reason for volunteering? “This family deserves to go on their vacation,” she said. Mr. Schwartz said: “A round-trip ticket. Who could pass that up? Now, I can go anywhere I want.”

Allan Kassirer makes frequent business trips to Boston — eight in the last year — and has meeting after meeting in each one. His company is building a film studio in nearby Weymouth, Massachusetts, and “every meeting is delicate, critical and on the meter,” said Mr. Kassirer, a founding partner of the International Studio Group, based in Woodland Hills, California. So rather than book conference and meeting rooms or travel around town for business breakfasts, lunches and dinners, he schedules all his meetings at the Taj Boston hotel, in the same tworoom suite where he also sleeps. That is cheaper, he said, than paying for meeting space or taking taxis. The rate for a suite overlooking the Boston Public Garden is $849 at the Taj; a small meeting room at the hotel costs $350 for a day. Cost is not the only issue, he said. “For me the bottom line is this: My business is about developing relationships, and relationships lead to deals,” Mr. Kassirer said. “So I consider it well worth the money when people tell me that the upscale setting makes them more inclined to work with me than if we met in an impersonal and stuffy conference room.” He is not alone in his strategy, which reflects two growing trends in business travel. One is to find more ways to cut costs and save time. The other follows the European and Asian business ethos of building strong personal relationships first, closing deals later.

“The emphasis has shifted to cultivating customers one on one,” said Hal Etkin, chief executive of ME Productions, a corporate event-planning company based in Pembroke Park, Florida. “Where companies used to care about their top 500 clients, now they focus on their top 50.” Some hotels, including the Taj Boston, either give a suite as a standard upgrade for those who book meeting space or they waive the room rental if the guest guarantees a minimum food and beverage expenditure. “Hotels want to put heads in beds, and most suite meetings will run a food and beverage tab, so it’s a possible win-

Luxury hotel suites set the stage for building business relationships.

win for both the hotel and the business guest,” said Terri Hardin, editor in chief of MeetingNews, a magazine for professional meeting planners. Rea Francis stays in an apartment suite at the Athenaeum Hotel during business trips to London. She said she offered business clients English cheddars and breads, pickled onions and salamis, all from Fortnum & Mason, just down Piccadilly from the hotel. “I love to put the right mix of people in a room and let the networking begin,” said Ms. Francis, the head of RFMedia, a public relations firm in Sydney, Australia, with international clients in tourism, cuisine and the arts. “Somehow, as the hostess, I get the credit and, eventually, it comes back to me in new business.” Then, when all the guests are gone, “I don’t have to go anywhere,” she said. “I’m already at my hotel.” When Ronni Simon, a jewelry designer on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, held a show of her work in Manhattan, she booked the penthouse suite at the Alex Hotel on East 45th Street. “I knew the location alone would add cachet to my work and attract the right people,” said Ms. Simon, who owns the Simon Gallery in Vineyard Haven with her husband, the photographer Peter Simon. In addition to the guests she had invited, several retailers and fashion editors attended her spring show. Justifying the expense — the two-bedroom penthouse with wraparound balcony cost $2,500 for a night — she said a jeweler’s representative would charge about $2,000 a month for showroom space and take 15 to 20 percent of the sales. In one night at the Alex, Ms. Simon ROBERT WRIGHT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES said, she sold more than $2,000 in Ronni Simon, left, a jewelry jewelry. But, she said, the connecdesigner, met potential clients in the tions and impressions she made “were worth thousands more.” penthouse of a Manhattan hotel.

6

le monde

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2008 science & technology

Technology: A Partner Or a Master? SAN DIEGO — In Vernor Vinge’s version of Southern California in 2025, there is a school with the motto, “Trying hard not to become obsolete.” It may not sound inspiring, but to the many fans of Dr. Vinge, this is a most ambitious — and perhaps unattainable — goal for any member of our species. essay Dr. Vinge is a mathematician and computer scientist whose science fiction has won five Hugo Awards and earned good reviews even from engineers analyzing its technical plausibility. He can write space operas with the best of them, but he also suspects that intergalactic sagas could become as obsolete as their human heroes. The problem is a concept described in Dr. Vinge’s seminal essay in 1993, “The Coming Technological Singularity,” which predicted that computers would be so powerful by 2030 that a new form of superintelligence would emerge. Dr. Vinge compared that point in history to the singularity at the edge of a black hole: a boundary beyond which the old rules no longer applied, because posthuman intelligence and technology would be unknowable to us. The Singularity is often called “the rapture of the nerds,” but Dr. Vinge doesn’t anticipate immortal bliss. The computer scientist in him may revel in the technological marvels, but the novelist envisions catastrophes and worries about not-so-marvelous humans like Robert Gu, the protagonist of Dr. Vinge’s latest novel, “Rainbows End.” Robert is an English professor and famous poet who succumbs to Alzheimer’s, languishing in a nursing home until 2025, when the Singularity seems near and technology is working wonders. He recovers most of his mental faculties; his 75-year-old body is rejuvenated; even his wrinkles vanish. But he’s so lost in this new world that he has to go back to high school to learn basic survival skills. Thanks to special contact lenses, computers in your clothes and locational sensors scattered everywhere you go, you see a constant stream of text and virtual sights overlaying the real world. As you

REPLACEMENT SUBMERSIBLE

Hoist point

Thrusters

Arms

JOHN TIERNEY

Upgrading Alvin With the Alvin submarine due to retire after more than 40 years of service, engineers are working to build a stronger, larger personnel sphere for a replacement submersible. As an interim measure, the two-meter-wide, eight-centimeter-thick titanium sphere might first be fitted into a hybrid vehicle that incorporates part of Alvin’s body.

Tail of existing Alvin submarine

Five overlapping fields of view HYBRID VEHICLE ADVANCED IMAGING AND VISUALIZATION LABORATORY, WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION

Sources: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Deep Submergence Science Committee

Workers drove a press onto hot titanium, transforming it into a cup, which will become part of the personnel sphere for a new submersible.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Forging a New Sphere to Explore the Dark Abyss By WILLIAM J. BROAD

CUDAHY, Wisconsin — The deep sea is legendary for inky darkness. William Beebe, the first person to eye the abyss, called it perpetual night. The darkness is matched by the intense pressure. Six kilometers down, it amounts to nearly 0.75 long tons per square centimeter. That is too much even for Alvin, the most famous of the world’s tiny submersibles, which can take a pilot and two scientists down to a maximum depth of 4.5 kilometers. But a new submersible is being built here, and even the process of construction seems a rebuke to the darkness. The work lighted up a cavernous factory with fireworks on a recent visit. Hot reds and oranges burst into showers of spark and flame as blistering metal began to yield to the demands of the submersible’s design. “Amazing,” Tom Furman, a senior engineer at Ladish Forging, said after a big press bore down on a three-meter disk of hot metal. The new vehicle is to replace Alvin, which was the first submersible to illuminate the rusting hulk of the Titanic and the first to carry scientists down to discover the bizarre ecosystems of tube worms and other strange creatures that thrive in icy darkness. The United States used to have several submersibles — tiny submarines that dive extraordinarily deep. Alvin is the only one left, and after more than four decades of probing the sea’s depths it is

to be retired. Its replacement, costing some $50 million, is to go deeper, move faster, stay down longer, cut the dark better, carry more scientific gear and maybe — just maybe — open a new era of exploration. Its architects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod in Massachusetts describe it as “the most capable deep-sea research vehicle in the world.” Alvin can transport a pilot and two scientists down 4.5 kilometers, providing

A new vehicle will be able to dive extraordinarily deep. access to 62 percent of the dark seabed. The new vehicle is expected to descend more than 6 kilometers, opening 99 percent of the ocean floor to inquiry. But the greater depth means that the vehicle’s personnel sphere and its many other systems will face added tons of crushing pressure. “Technologically, it’s quite challenging,” Robert S. Detrick Jr., a senior scientist and vice president for marine facilities and operations at Woods Hole, said of forging the new personnel sphere. “It’s

also something that hasn’t been done for a long time in the United States.” To better resist the sea’s pressure, the wall of the new personnel sphere is to be nearly eight centimeters thick, up from Alvin’s five centimeters. Deep explorers always use spheres to make crew compartments because that geometry best resists the force.. The completed crew cabin, two meters across, will be 30 centimeters wider than Alvin’s. Oceanographers say the new sphere will help open the sea’s depths. Its volume is 18 percent larger than Alvin’s, allowing twice as much room inside for racks of scientific equipment and a bit more space for passengers. Alvin has three thick windows and the new vehicle will have five, increasing the field of view and the chance for discovery and careful observation. “It’s going to be incredible,” said Cindy L. Van Dover, a professor of marine biology at Duke University who has spent hundreds of hours diving in Alvin. She noted that scientists would have two windows that look forward. By contrast, Alvin’s scientific viewports look off to the side, with only the pilot getting the central view. “Forward is cool,” she said. Dr. Detrick of Woods Hole called forging the new personnel sphere one of three big technical hurdles. The others, he said, are making the vehicle’s foam and its banks of batteries. The foam must be hard enough to resist the immense pressure yet buoyant enough to

counteract the vehicle’s great weight. And the batteries must be unusually sturdy and powerful. If successful, the new batteries will allow the vehicle to stay on the bottom for up to eight hours, compared with six for Alvin. Improvements in the vehicle’s propulsion system, including more powerful thrusters, will let it move faster. And the vehicle’s new lights and cameras will better pierce the darkness. Still, like its predecessor, the new vehicle, over all, is to be no larger than a small truck. The new personnel sphere might first be fitted onto Alvin’s body, giving the old submersible a life extension and a capability boost. Alvin would also get new batteries, new electronics, better lights, cameras and video systems. But the hybrid would be limited to Alvin’s maximum depth. The soonest the upgraded Alvin might hit the water is estimated to be 2011. And the full replacement, according to Woods Hole officials, might not materialize until 2015. Dr. Van Dover said one of the big payoffs would be the submersible’s ability to dive deep. “Depth is a big deal,” she said. “It’s hard to wax lyrical on the subject because we don’t know what’s there. So we can’t guarantee a discovery. Yet we know that every time we extend our ability to go somewhere, we discover new things about how the planet works, about how life on the planet is adapted.’’

Masked Researchers Discover Crows Never Forget a Face SANDY HUFFAKER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Dr. Vernor Vinge says computers and humans will work together. chat with a distant friend’s quite lifelike image strolling at your side, you can adjust the scenery to your mutual taste at the same time you’re each privately communicating with vast networks of humans and computers. “These people in ‘Rainbows End’ have the attention span of a butterfly,” Dr. Vinge said. “They’ll alight on a topic, use it in a particular way and then they’re on to something else.” It’s an unsettling vision, but Dr. Vinge classifies it as one of the least unpleasant scenarios for the future: intelligence amplification, or I.A., in which humans get steadily smarter by pooling their knowledge with one another and with computers. The alternative to I.A., he figures, could be the triumph of A.I. as artificial intelligence far surpasses the human variety. If that happens, Dr. Vinge says, the machines will not be content with working for their human masters. To avoid that scenario, Dr. Vinge has been urging his fellow humans to get smarter by collaborating with computers. At the conclusion of “Rainbows End,” there are signs that the Singularity has arrived in the form of a superintelligent human-computer network. “I think there’s a good possibility that humanity will itself participate in the Singularity,” he said. “But on the other hand, we could just be left behind.”

By MICHELLE NIJHUIS

Crows and their relatives — among them ravens, magpies and jays — are renowned for their intelligence and for their ability to flourish in human-dominated landscapes. That ability may have to do with cross-species social skills. In the Seattle area, where rapid suburban growth has attracted a thriving crow population, researchers have found that the birds can recognize individual human faces. John M. Marzluff, a wildlife biologist at the University of Washington, has studied crows and ravens for more than 20 years and has long wondered if the birds could identify individual researchers. Previously trapped birds seemed more wary of particular scientists, and often were harder to catch. “I thought, ‘Well, it’s an annoyance, but it’s not really hampering our work,’ ” Dr. Marzluff said. “But then I thought we should test it directly.’’ To test the birds’ recognition of faces separately from that of clothing, gait and other individual human characteristics, Dr. Marzluff and two students wore rubber masks. He designated a caveman mask as “dangerous” and a mask of Dick Cheney, the vice president of the United States, as “neutral.” Researchers in the dangerous mask then trapped and banded seven crows on the university’s campus in Seattle. In the months that followed, the researchers and volunteers donned the masks on campus, this time walking prescribed routes and not bothering crows.

The crows had not forgotten. They scolded people in the dangerous mask significantly more than they did before they were trapped, even when the mask was disguised with a hat or worn upside down. The neutral mask provoked little reaction. The effect has not only persisted, but also multiplied over the past two years. Wearing the dangerous mask on one recent walk through campus, Dr. Marzluff said, he was scolded by 47 of the 53 crows he encountered, many more than had experienced or witnessed the initial trapping. The researchers hypothesize that crows learn to recognize threatening humans from both parents and others in their flock. After their experiments on campus, Dr. Marzluff and his students tested the effect with more realistic masks. Using a half-dozen students as models, they enlisted a professional mask maker, then wore the new masks while trapping crows at several sites in and around Seattle. The researchers then gave a mix of neutral and dangerous masks to volunteer observers who, unaware of the masks’ histories, wore them at the trapping sites and recorded the crows’ responses. The reaction to one of the dangerous masks was “quite spectacular,” said one volunteer, Bill Pochmerski, a retired

KEITH BRUST; LEFT, PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEFF WALLS

John M. Marzluff, a biologist at the University of Washington, used masks and a hat to show that crows can recognize faces. telephone company manager who lives near Snohomish, Washington. “The birds were really raucous, screaming persistently,” he said, “and it was clear they weren’t upset about something in general. They were upset with me.” Crows were significantly more likely to scold observers who wore a dangerous mask, and when confronted simultaneously by observers in dangerous and neutral masks, the birds almost unerringly chose to persecute the dangerous face. In downtown Seattle, where most passersby ignore crows, angry birds nearly touched their human foes. In rural areas, where

crows are more likely to be viewed as noisy “flying rats” and shot, the birds expressed their displeasure from a distance. Though Dr. Marzluff’s is the first formal study of human face recognition in wild birds, his preliminary findings confirm the suspicions of many other researchers who have observed similar abilities in crows, ravens, gulls and other species. Dr. Marzluff believe that this ability gives crows and their brethren an evolutionary edge. “If you can learn who to avoid and who to seek out, that’s a lot easier than continually getting hurt,” Dr. Marzluff said. “I think it allows these animals to survive with us — and take advantage of us — in a much safer, more effective way.’’

le monde

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2008

7

l i v i n g : at h o m e

When the Architect Doubles as Psychologist By PENELOPE GREEN

ROUND TOP, Texas — Building a home, like getting married, is not easy. It is a rare individual (or couple) who can manage the mix of high expectations, inexperience and a ballooning budget in service of a goal so freighted with meaning, and come out unscathed. Architects complain that they are asked to behave more like mental health professionals than designers, clients complain that their architects and their mates do not understand them, and the stories of couples coming asunder, or of clients suing their architects, are legion. One poignant story concerned the recent auction of the $21 million, 7,925-square-meter “dream house” of a couple in Connecticut who discovered, once they had built it and moved in, that the house’s style, proportions and accouterments — billiards room, theater and indoor Tuscan-style courtyard — did not fit them at all. “I would be happy with 3,500 square feet,” the wife was reported as saying. Cases like this have encouraged Christopher K. Travis, 57, an architectural designer here, to promote his

Before designing the kitchen, let’s talk about your parents.

his process, which for now is contained in a huge binder with more than 100 pages of questions, visualization exercises and directives — some fuzzy and psychological (“ask your partner for attention in a way that allows them to decline”), others more practical (“if your partner’s messiness was behind closed doors, would you be willing to accept it?”). Mr. Travis envisions the contents of his binder eventually uploaded onto an interactive Web site that could be used all over the world. “Truehome isn’t quite up and running because I ran out of the money Cheryl would let me spend,” said Mr. Travis, referring to his wife. Kathy and Frank Johnston, who live nearby in a German-American Texas farmhouse, are among his clients. It took more than 90 days, Ms. Johnston said, to work their way through their separate homework binders. When she and her husband brought in their binders, there was a breakthrough, she said, “when we realized everything was the same: the same open spaces, the same architectural details”; in addition to his psychological probing, Mr. Travis requires clients to clip photographs of styles and details. “We both looked at each other,” Ms. Johnston remembered, “and said, ‘I can’t believe you like the same stuff!’ ” Their house is a hybrid, with a hall that looks like a street in a tiny Italian town, BENJAMIN SKLAR FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Arts and Crafts-style millChristopher K. Travis tries to design homes work and interior windows. that are “a suite of emotional experiences.” The kitchen is open on three sides, allowing Ms. Johnston to connect with the many method, a psychological and aesthetic guests she likes to have in her home. Mr. Travis said he drew on Ms. Johncompatibility exercise for would-be home builders that is part self-help ston’s childhood memories of chaotic manual, part personality test. Mr. Tra- family meals and the distress they caused. The kitchen he designed for vis calls it the Truehome workshop. If you don’t understand the contents, her is meant to replace her unsettling he is fond of saying, how can you design memories with a controlled and happy current environment. the package? How others might implement the You may think you want Spanish Colonial, he said, “but I don’t believe you, “blueprints” yielded by Mr. Travis’s and I don’t want to hear it.” What he system is unclear, but he would like to does want to hear is every detail about make his process flexible enough so your relationship with your mother, anyone could use it. “It shows real forward thinking, but your issues with your father, and how you feel you might have failed both par- I don’t know how realistic that is,” said ents in your life choices. He would also Toby Israel, author of “Some Place Like like to know what things about your Home: Using Design Psychology to Create Ideal Places.” mate drive you crazy. Ms. Israel is an environmental psyHe uses this information to practice what he calls emotional architecture, chologist in Princeton, New Jersey, to design a house that is not so much who, like Mr. Travis, helps clients reach “bricks and sticks,” he said, “but a suite “emotional goals” through the décor and layout of their spaces. Her method of emotional experiences.” Mr. Travis can sound a bit crazy him- uses one-on-one sessions, like therapy. “I totally accept that the story of a self, but he has a track record of happy house is the story of a life,” she said. customers — more than 70, he said. He has had a neuropsychologist and “But interpreting that story is not just a clinical psychologist advising him on a science, but an art.”

PHOTOGRAPHS BY SHIHO FUKADA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Beijing’s siheyuans, or courtyard homes, are being restored by foreigners like Liu Heung Shing, an American.

Trying to Save Old Beijing, Brick by Brick By DAN LEVIN

BEIJING — A stroll through one of this city’s labyrinthine hutongs — alleys lined with courtyard houses that wind away from the boulevards and public squares — offers glimpses of a life mostly hidden behind the gray walls on either side: chain-smoking old men at a checkerboard, a workman intent on a lunch of steamed dumplings, a cobbler hunched over a pair of worn canvas shoes. Occasionally an open door reveals a warren of cramped passageways or a courtyard packed with battered bicycles, caged songbirds and clothes hung out to dry in the hazy sunlight. Just as on the main streets, the air is filled with construction dust and the din of car horns. But when Liu Heung Shing, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, slips through the red doors of his siheyuan, or traditional courtyard home, off a hutong just north of the Forbidden City, the cacophony ceases. Inside the house, which he spent two years and more than $1 million buying and restoring, the frenzy of the new Beijing gives way to the peace of the courtyard. “Chinese believe that in a siheyuan you can feel the spirit of the earth,” he said, “because unlike in a high-rise apart-

ment, you step on it every day.” In fact, though, Mr. Liu is one of many siheyuan owners in Beijing who are not Chinese, at least officially. He was born in Hong Kong and is an American citizen. He and his wife, Karen Smith, an English art historian, are among a growing number of foreigners who have invested in the houses, refurbishing them with the mix of modern sensibility and respect for original detail one expects of a high-end renovation in Brooklyn or East London. At a time when the siheyuans have been disappearing rapidly, these renovators, and some newly moneyed Chinese ones, are emerging as the city’s best hope for holding on to what’s left of the old hutongs, even as they transform dwellings that once housed dozens of people into private homes for their own small families. For 18 years, under a program of demolishing “old and dilapidated housing,” Beijing has been erasing and remaking itself in a rush to prepare for the Olympics and to capitalize on the new market economy. Land rights have been transferred to well-connected developers, historic buildings have been razed and hundreds of thousands of residents of the city center have been displaced. Of the 3,000 to

The siheyuans line the winding alleys called hutongs, a traditional center of social life in the capital’s disappearing older quarters.

Sustainable Landscapes That Aim to Seduce By STEPHEN ORR

DARREN HIGGINS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

At Tupelo Farm near Charlottesville, Virginia, the design incorporates native smooth flagstone and grasses.

Over the past five years, as climate change has become more obvious and energy costs have spiraled up, a number of designers have begun to champion an approach to landscaping that marries traditional environmental concerns — sustainability, biodiversity, restoration, conservation — with sensitivity to aesthetics and flexibility. A project in Marin County, California, is typical of this emerging movement in environmentally conscious landscape and garden design. Kenneth Hillan and his partner, Duncan Robertson, wanted to build a 24-meter lap pool in the hilltop meadow outside their house several years ago. Their garden designer, Bernard Trainor, known for ecology-minded landscapes, could have balked. At first glance, the wild meadow and the unspoiled views seemed to call for a conservationist approach. And the cli-

ents had been clear that they wanted the garden areas “to look completely natural, almost like California was before it had been farmed,” as Mr. Hillan put it. The resulting design, built in 2005, set a minimalist, carved-concrete, solarheated pool almost seamlessly into the meadow, where it is surrounded by seasonal wildflowers and native grasses. The main thing, these designers believe, is to win clients over to environmental landscaping through design that is both thoughtful and seductive. “I used to hide behind the needs and desires of my clients in the interest of serving them,” Mr. Trainor said, “but now my starting point is the place. The clients bought their property for a reason; it’s up to me to uncover that reason and reveal it.” Thomas Woltz, a co-owner of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, which has offices in Charlottesville, Virginia,

and Manhattan, likewise emphasizes “the dynamic power of a garden’s site,” both in his designs and in his communication with clients. At Tupelo Farm, an estate near Charlottesville, Mr. Woltz, 40, drew on the region’s geology, agricultural traditions and plants in designing the garden. Locally quarried fieldstone walls retain the heat of the springtime sun and establish curving terraces for a peach orchard, a gesture at Albemarle County’s history as one of the state’s largest producer of peaches in the 19th century. On a smooth flagstone terrace, a group of half-buried boulders has the same geological composition and similarly mounded shapes as the nearby Blue Ridge Mountains. For Andrea Cochran, 54, a San Francisco landscape architect, elements of the hardscape — walls, water features, paths — are also a primary concern. Her design for Walden Studios, a mixed-

7,000 hutongs believed to have existed at the time of the 1949 revolution, according to the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center, only about 1,000, comprising some 30,000 siheyuans, remain. “These houses are volumes of the city’s history, written in brick and beams,” said Michael Meyer, the author of the new book “The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed.” But “the real heritage of Beijing that’s being lost isn’t just the architecture, but the dense social network within it,” he added. “In a hutong, you can’t honk your horn without hearing about it later. People look out for one another.” Even in the hutongs that survive, some fear, the new class of siheyuan owner may ultimately mean an end to that world. Tom Luckock, 33, an Australian lawyer who began rebuilding a siheyuan three years ago with his wife, Zhang Yue, acknowledged that his hutong had been “changing a bit.” But he, too, maintained that its social life was relatively stable. What has struck him about his neighbors, and about most Chinese, is their uncomprehending attitude toward his preservationist bent. The couple’s Chinese friends were flabbergasted, he said, by his desire to reuse old bricks, doors and beams in the renovation of the 200-yearold building. “My neighbors would come in and say, ‘You’re spending so much money on your place but can’t afford new materials?’ ” he added. The house abounds with salvaged items. Floors are made from old wooden doors the couple found in the countryside; the living room mantelpiece, carved with horses, was rescued from a roadside. It took Ms. Zhang, who is 28 and grew up in Beijing, some time to see the value in her husband’s approach. “I’m Chinese, and we like everything brand new,” she said. “But as a little girl I lived in a siheyuan with my grandmother, and every summer we would have dinner outside. Living here brings back those memories.”

use development where artists live and work in Sonoma County, California, has graphic overlapping planes of crushed local Napa cobble chip. For environmental and practical reasons, she tries to use local stone that blends in with the site’s color palette, but she sometimes finds that what is closest at hand is not always what appeals most to her clients. “The fact that people often want the more exotic imported items, a stone brought in from China can be cheaper to buy even with the shipping costs,” she said. “It can be a challenge to keep your principles in the face of budget concerns.” But after two years of drought, the worst in California’s history, Ms. Cochran can sense that attitudes are changing. “These days, everybody’s talking about green issues and sustainability,” she said. “I find my clients really want to engage in a more meaningful way. They want to think holistically about their property.”

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le monde

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2008 arts & styles

Coen Brothers’ World Is Morbid and Funny By BRUCE HEADLAM

“Something just went horribly wrong,” he said. The sound of hysterical laughter is heard. That line of dialogue and the stage direction that follows could have plausibly been found in many of the 13 major movies created by the Coen brothers: black comedies like “Blood Simple,” “Barton Fink” or “Fargo” where invariably something does go horribly wrong. Here, however, the speaker is Joel Coen, and the laughter is provided by Ethan, his younger brother (by three years). They were responding to the question of whether their big night at the Academy Awards last February — four Oscars for “No Country for Old Men,” including best picture — changed the brothers’ outlook on the film industry, or their place in it, or in any way represented a high point of their 24-year career as darlings of art-house cinema. Apparently not. According to the Coens, who spoke by phone from their hometown, Minneapolis, where they are currently shooting their next movie, the Oscars were barely an interruption. “It was very amusing to us,” Ethan said. “Went right into the ‘Life is strange’ file,” Joel said. The Coens’ “Life is strange” file must be overflowing by now. For more than

two decades they have made popular movies — some loved by critics, some loathed — by following a simple formula: Typically, a slightly down-onhis-luck protagonist driven by a single motivating belief (like “I’m a writer”) gets involved in a low-level criminal plot involving kidnapping or extortion, setting off a chain reaction of complications and reversals. And more often than not, somebody gets shot in the face. Sometimes Ethan, 50, is credited as the writer, and sometimes Joel, 53, as director. But in reality both conceive the film, write the screenplay and direct, and edit under the joint pseudonym Roderick Jaynes. Their new movie, “Burn After Reading,” is set in Washington. Frances McDormand, Joel’s wife, plays Linda Litzke, a literally wide-eyed employee of Hardbodies Fitness gym. Through a series of strained coincidences, Linda receives a computer disk containing a draft of a memoir written by Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich), an angry alcoholic relic of the C.I.A. whose wife (Tilda Swinton) is having an affair with a federal marshal and aging Lothario (George Clooney). Linda decides to trade the memoir for cash, aided by a dimwitted personal trainer played by Brad Pitt, showing again that he’s a great character actor in a leading man’s body. With its coldly satirical tone, stylized

Joel and Ethan Coen, on the set of ‘‘Burn After Reading,’’ stick to a low-budget formula despite Oscar success.

Israel Asks Beatles Back, Years Later By ETHAN BRONNER

MACALL POLAY

dialogue and broadly drawn characters, “Burn” will feel like familiar territory for longtime fans, a return to Coen Country for Odd Men. Is “Burn” a deliberate return to form, a step away from being Very Important Oscar-Winning Filmmakers? “It was nothing like that,” Ethan said. “To tell you the truth, we started writing down actors we wanted to work with.” Together the Coens have little capacity for abstraction or intellectualism, and they resist delving into the philosophy or the processes underpinning their films. Analyzing their work, Joel says, “is just not something that interests us.” Since “Blood Simple” in 1984, the Coens have put out a film at least once every two years. One explanation for their longevity is money — the lack of it. All told, the Coens have spent an estimated $340 million, the cost of just a couple of summer blockbusters. Joelsaid:“Tobe quite honest our movies have never broken any records in terms of box office. We’ve never operated at that

level. We’ve never threatened the bottom line of any company that finances us. So they’re happy to finance us, because the stakes are so low.” Coen brothers films may be cheap, but they’re not small. Long before “No Country” they built large frames for their films, then filled in their themes of morality, violence and the failure of communication using everyday vernacular, like the gangster slang of “Miller’s Crossing” or the flat Minnesota accents of “Fargo.” The Coens are big Hitchcock fans, and “Burn After Reading” has a MacGuffin (the device to move the plot along), in this case Cox’s memoir. What’s striking is that this MacGuffin, unlike the suitcase in “No Country,” is worthless. “Why in God’s name would they think that’s worth anything?” the analyst’s wife says in the film. Ethan said the choice was deliberate: “We liked that idea. There’s nothing at the center.”

JERUSALEM — In 1965, when Israel had no television, and public entertainment consisted largely of kibbutz songfests celebrating the wheat harvest, the Beatles, already international celebrities, were booked for a concert here. To young Israeli fans, it seemed an impossible dream. And so it was. The official permission required to withdraw precious foreign currency to pay the band was denied because a ministerial committee feared the corrupting influence of four long-haired Englishmen singing about pleasure. As its report said, “The Beatles have an insufficient artistic level and cannot add to the spiritual and cultural life of the youth in Israel.” Since then, especially in recent years, Israel has expressed embarrassment about the episode and tried to make amends. Last January, it sent a letter from its London embassy to the remaining Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, asking forgiveness for the “missed opportunity” to have the band that “shaped the minds of a generation, to come to Israel and perform before the young generation in Israel who admired you and continues to admire you.” The artists were asked to consider again coming to perform. There was little progress until recently, but now Mr. McCartney has been booked for a huge outdoor concert in Tel Aviv on September 25. And nearly everything about the event — the $8 million price tag borne by a Israeli financier who expects to turn a profit, the tickets selling for hundreds of dollars on the Internet, indeed its very existence — is a parable of a nation transformed. The promised concert has led many here to reflect on the cocooned simplicity of life only four decades ago. “I had just gotten my first LP record for my bar mitzvah from my two best

Long-haired English singers might have corrupted Israeli youth.

PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE DEVI ART FOUNDATION

A Private Obsession Evolves Into a Contemporary Art Museum By SOMINI SENGUPTA

NEW DELHI — Anupam Poddar had a living room once. These days the sofa is shoved into a corner, and the rest of the space is taken up by a life-size model of an antique cream-colored Jaguar with a giant mechanical dinosaur mounting it from behind. On the dining table sits a row of exquisitely delicate sculptures made of human bone and red velvet. A video installation has found a home above a bathroom tub. For Mr. Poddar, 34, buying art long ago stopped being a question of what to hang on which wall. Installations, many of them large and provocative, squeezed themselves into each room, across the garden, in the driveway and in every lavatory. “It just took over my life. I had to throw out most of my furniture,” Mr. Poddar confessed. “It became an obsession.” The private obsession Mr. Poddar shares with his mother, Lekha, who lives downstairs, is about to become a public boon. What they have collected separately and together over the last 30 years is being exhibited in a new space in the suburb of Gurgaon, becoming, in effect, India’s first contemporary art museum. Spread over two floors and 700 square meters in an office tower, the Devi Art

A piece from Navin Thomas’s ‘‘Still Asleep Series,’’ above right; Bharti Kher’s ‘‘Chocolate Muffins,’’ above left; and Susanta Mandal’s ‘‘It’s a Routine Scrutiny.’’

Foundation, as it is called, opened on August 30, with an inaugural show of photography and video called “Still Moving Image.” It features the work of 25 artists, a fraction of the roughly 2,000 contemporary pieces that make up Mr. Poddar’s collection, along with an estimated 5,000 folk and tribal pieces, which are his mother’s passion. India is bursting with commercial art galleries, but Devi is poised to be what the Poddars’ home has been for many years: a noncommercial, nonprofit exhibition space for contemporary art from India and the subcontinent.

In a way, Devi (online at www.deviartfoundation.org) is the natural next step for a country awash in new wealth, soaring art prices and a prolific crop of artists and collectors. The birth of the Devi Art Foundation signals a sort of turning point in the Indian art scene, in that it opens up a private family trove to the public and is devoted entirely to contemporary art. The Poddars are known in the art world here for their daring eye, for seeking out artists before they start fetching high prices or become recognizable names at fashionable dinner parties in

Delhi. Mr. Poddar, whose day job is running an upscale hotel company, admits to being inspired by his mother, who began collecting modern and folk art several decades ago. Except that the work his mother sought out, including pieces by the post-Indian-independence generation of artists known as the Progressives, did not resonate with the son. He gravitated toward artists of his own generation. His first acquisition, in 1999, was a lifesize pink fiberglass cow by Subodh Gupta. “It was quintessentially Indian but modern in its essence,” he said. “That’s what spoke to me.” The obsession flowered quickly. Mr. Poddar acquired the bone and velvet series, by Anita Dube, from its previous owner, whose family did not want it displayed at home, which is understandable. One of the pieces is a human rib cage fashioned into a bordello-style red velvet fan. It found pride of place on the dining table here — in a vegetarian household, no less. Art, Mr. Poddar is fond of saying, is something you have to live with no matter how provocative. “You can’t avoid it. Also, it’s not safe.” Sometimes, he said, he wonders why he hadn’t taken up gardening instead.

friends, and it was by the Beatles,” recalled Yoel Esteron, 55, editor of the daily business newspaper Calcalist. “And then they canceled the concert. We still had no television and only official radio stations. We were living in a cultural ghetto; the country was Bolshevik. Teenagers and their parents debated it for weeks. Every teenager was furious.” For Yossi Sarid, a leftist former Parliament member and government minister, the arrival of Mr. McCartney is an opportunity to set the story straight about his father, Yaakov Sarid, who was the director general of the Education and Culture Ministry and an official involved in canceling the original concert. In a front-page article in the newspaper Haaretz on August 25, Yossi Sarid said the real cause of the cancellation was a rivalry between impresarios at the time. One had been offered a Beatles concert in 1962, before their star had risen, and had turned them down. When a competitor booked them three years later, the first impresario used his government connections to cancel the show. A glance at the printed tickets for the canceled 1965 Beatles concert, copies of which still exist as collectors’ items and can be viewed on the Internet, tell their own story of a bygone era. The marked price, in the lira currency, now defunct, amounted to about $7. The performers may have been known as the Beatles, but in Israel, then still trying earnestly to create a culture buffered from foreign words and influence, they were Hipushiot Haketzev, or the Beat Beetles. Mr. Sarid said he was grateful to the musicians. Thanks to their canceled concert, he said, his father, a great educator and modest man whose accomplishments would have long ago been forgotten, has earned an eternal place in Israeli history.