The problem with a prople-powered movement is that eventually the people want a say.John Rosinski,an engineer in Orlando,Fla,always believed in the you-centered philoosphy of Barack Obama's campaign.So he and more than 22000 other supporters who baned together on Obama's webiste were furious when the illinois Sensator,despite their petition,voted July 9 for a bill that would allow the Bush administration to continue its program of wiretapping withour warrants,a measure Obama once swore he would filibuster.To Rosinski,that's apostasy.I really don't know right now if I'll vote for him,Rosinski says.He is just continue politics as usual,becoming like any other politician.
In his transition from upstart candidate to presumptive nomiee,Obama has,to some of his once ardent fans,come to look dangerously like the ingratiating Washington politician he so often rails against.Worried about his patriotism?He now wears a flag pin daily.Uneasy about his church?He felt it,too liberal?Just look at his recet policy statement endorsing gun rights,calling for trade talks and supporting restrictions on late-term aboration.
Such tactical shifts to the center are a general-election ritual for Democratic presidential candidates.a pre-emptive defense against the Republican attack machine.But Obama isn't like other candidates.In his 2006 best seller,The audacity of Hope,Obama wrote of himself,I serve as a black screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.So as his pragmatic side fills that screen,those loyal foot soldiers who got used to seeing their own reflections are beginning to cry betrayal.The people in Obama's movement feel they have an open line directly to him,and these days many want their objections heeded.It's wake up call on how much wiggle room he has.
The rumbling of liberal discontent began last month,after Obama came out in favor of the superme court's decision striking down Washington's handgun ban.That was followed by a press conference in which he appeared to backtrack on his commitment to a speedy withdrwal form Iraq and by speech to an Ohio ministry in which he pledged to expand George W.Bush's faith-based initative program.In an interview with fortune,he said his critique of free trade during the primaries was overheated and amplified.By the time Obama voted for the wiretapping bill.Rosinski and his fellow rebels had become the largest group on the senator's website.Being accused of flip-flopping by the Republicans us routine,infuriating the faithful is risky business.Obama denies that sacrificing principle to appeal to moderates.Don't assume that if I don't agree with you or something that it must be because I'm doing that politically,he told a aduience in Powder Spring.I may just disagree with you.It's ture that some of Obama's shifts have been more about a change in emphasis than in policy.
2008年7月30日 星期三
It's the Economy,Stupid
The economy needs attention,too.During Musharraf's eight-year tenure,first as General,then as President,foreign direct investment rose,the Karachi stock exchange outperformed regional neighbors and GDP grew on average 7% a year.The lifting of international economic sanctions,imposed in 1998 when Pakistan tested its first nuclear bomb,was partially responsible for the boost,but Musharraf also privatized key industries and opened up the banking sector.The rapid growth,however,exposed cracks in infrastructure that was failing to keep up.The economy has been good for big bussiness,good for the per capita averages and good for GDP,say Tasneem Noorani,who served as Secretary of the Interior under Musharraf.But it has not been good for the common man.We are all waiting for the trickle-down effect.
While Musharraf's government brought electricity to remote villages-a popular vote earner-it failed to increase energy production.Sure,we saw incredible growth over the past five years.says industrialist Mirza Ikhtiar Baig,but the pervious government failed to generate a single additional megawatt.If you have that kind of growth but do not generate the power to go with it then the system will collapse.Load-shedding- as much as 18 hours a day in some area-has brought production ines in key employment sectors such as textile-manufacturing to a standstill.Rising oil prices had been mitigated by government subsides during much of Musharraf's tenure.But such subsides can no longer be sustained.Thr cost of fuel-used for both transportation and energy production-jumped 17.7% in March.Echoed by 20.6% leap in food price inflation.The price of bread has nearly doubled.So has the cost of haircut and a shave on the streets of Karachi.What can we do?Says barber Shoaid Ahmed,a bachelor who eats all of his meals at a nearby hostel.If the hotel raises the cost of a roti(a small,flat,bread)there is no way then but to raise the haircut prices.
The new government point out that it is not responsible for the country's current difficuities.How many of Pakistan's problem have been created soley during the past 100 days(that the coalition government has been in power) and how much is the cumulative effect of constitutional deviations and patchwork policies over serveral years?says Farahnaz Ispahano,a ppp parlimentarian and spokesperson.Food-price inflation and high oil-prices are now a global phenomenon.Bring prices down may be beyond the capacity of any Pakistan government. But Gilani's adminstration cannot just wring its hands.It could start by encouraging foreign investment and privatization-moves that have been anathema to his socialist-leaning ppp.The pro-business Muslim League may prove useful.At this point in time,given the start of the economic crisis,it actually makes sense to have a coalition between there two parties,says Samina Ahmed,South Asia project director of the International Crisis Group.The workers have voice in government as much as the industrialists,treaders and the business community.If they can work together,she says,they may be able to form a compromise that pushes the economy forward.
Most urgently the government will have to address Pakistan's pressing energy needs.It has already installed barge-based power generators that run on diesel,but that is a temporary,and expensive,solution.The building of dams and coal-based generators is stymied by political disputes.The Indus River,a potential source of hydropower,run throgh two provinces whose govenments cannot agree on sharing-water rights.Development in Baluchistan,which has rich reserves of coal,has been held hostage to a local insurgency rooted in long-simmering resentment over what it considers to be the central government's exploitative approach to the province.Baluchistan is central to Pakistan's economy,says the Crisis Group's Ahmed.It is incredibly rich in not just the resources that are being exploited,but in the resources that are yet to be exploited.Bringing the alienated Baluch back into the fold by stopping military operations and by releasing political prisoners means that the riches of Baluchistan will work to benefit not just the federation but also the Baluch people.
Riots over power shortages,usually a stardard summer feature when demand is at its highest,are rocking Pakistan's major cities.In the industrial town of Multan,a recent protest over power outage saw 58 gravely injured and hundred of thousands of dollars in damage to government buildings,factories,utilities and vehicles.If the problem continue it could lead to political instability.The economy is more urgent than extremism,says an American diplomat in Islamabad.
A terrorist Sanctuary
The federally administered tribal areas,which include Mehsud's South Waziristan base but not Swat,have always been Pakistan's Wild West,a lawless frontier land notorious for smugglers,thieves,guns and drugs.The Fata,as the area is called.is a legacy of a 19th century agreement between the British rulers of undivided India and the Pashtun tribes inhabiting the mountainous fringes of the Empire.In exchange for autonomy and the freedom to run their affairs in accordance with their Islamic faith and customs,the tribal leader promised to guard the border with Afghanistan and keep peace in the region.At independence in 1947,Pakistan kept the agreement.The army stayed out.In place of government,Pakistan adopted a set of adminstrative and legal measures called the frontier crime regulations that forces the tribes to take collective responsibility for the actions of their members.Justice follows the tribal code and is meted out by clan elders who consult in public gatherings called jirags.It was an imperfect solution to a difficult problem.But when Al-Qaeda leaders fled at Afghanistan in the wake of the 2001 war on their Taliban hosts and took refuge in the tribal areas,it became downright dangerous.
In May CIA Director Michael Hayden called the FATA an al-Qaeda safe haven that presents a clear and present danger to Afghanistan,to Pakistan and to the West in generalmand to the United States in particular.Admiral Michael Mullen.Chairman of the U.S joint Chiefs of Staff,says,If I were going to pick the next attack to hit the United Stated,it would come out of Fata.Intelligence officals in the reigon,and abroad,say that al-Qaeda operatives,taking advertage of the limited reach of government,have been able to set up sophisticated communications systems,financial networks and training facilities.Al-qaeda has hunders of training camps scattered throughout the Fata,says a western offical in Pakistan with access to intelligence reports.Most are less than an acre in size,so they are difficult to detect.
To Khalid Aziz,a onetime political agent appointed by IsIamabad to administer to the tribal areas,the militancy is an obvious outcome of the antiquated agreement.Development that brought schools,jobs,roads,health care and electricity to the rest of Pakistan largely bypassed the tribal areas.Unployment among the population of 3.5 million hover around 70%.Two-thirds live below the porverty line.Only 6% of inhabitants can read.For women it's less than 1%.Given that kind of environment,it's not likely that you will see a Leonardo da Vinci come up,says Aziz,who now heads the regoional institute of policy research and Training in Peshawar.You'll get an Osama or one of his clones instead.Aziz welcomes the U.S. Administration's promise of $750 million to provide economic development in the area but says it is not enough.What we need are jobs.
Most fata people want development,but not at the expanse of their traditional way.Shari'a law is the foundation of their justice system and few will willingly give it up.Rather than a wholesale elimination of the FCR,there should be a gradual transition,says Haider Mullick,a former Brooking analyst.It's not rocket science.It's sitting down and saying,Ok.Here are 100 things that are different from how we operate in Islambad.We will conced on some of there issues.But there are going to be some no-nos on our side,and some on yours.For example,no public stoning of women-that's out of question.In turn we will ensure that no solider can walk in and search your house and strip you naked and beat you up.There needs to be a give and take on each side.
Democrats in the U.S. senate have proposed a $7 billion aid package to Pakistan,including a democracy dividend of $1 billion,over the next four years to help the civilian government with education reform,health care and infrastructre.It's a welcome move,but opening up the U.S. market to Pakistani products such as textiles would provide a longer-term-and taint-free-solution.The chorus among businessmen and analyst across the country is trade,not aid.
While Musharraf's government brought electricity to remote villages-a popular vote earner-it failed to increase energy production.Sure,we saw incredible growth over the past five years.says industrialist Mirza Ikhtiar Baig,but the pervious government failed to generate a single additional megawatt.If you have that kind of growth but do not generate the power to go with it then the system will collapse.Load-shedding- as much as 18 hours a day in some area-has brought production ines in key employment sectors such as textile-manufacturing to a standstill.Rising oil prices had been mitigated by government subsides during much of Musharraf's tenure.But such subsides can no longer be sustained.Thr cost of fuel-used for both transportation and energy production-jumped 17.7% in March.Echoed by 20.6% leap in food price inflation.The price of bread has nearly doubled.So has the cost of haircut and a shave on the streets of Karachi.What can we do?Says barber Shoaid Ahmed,a bachelor who eats all of his meals at a nearby hostel.If the hotel raises the cost of a roti(a small,flat,bread)there is no way then but to raise the haircut prices.
The new government point out that it is not responsible for the country's current difficuities.How many of Pakistan's problem have been created soley during the past 100 days(that the coalition government has been in power) and how much is the cumulative effect of constitutional deviations and patchwork policies over serveral years?says Farahnaz Ispahano,a ppp parlimentarian and spokesperson.Food-price inflation and high oil-prices are now a global phenomenon.Bring prices down may be beyond the capacity of any Pakistan government. But Gilani's adminstration cannot just wring its hands.It could start by encouraging foreign investment and privatization-moves that have been anathema to his socialist-leaning ppp.The pro-business Muslim League may prove useful.At this point in time,given the start of the economic crisis,it actually makes sense to have a coalition between there two parties,says Samina Ahmed,South Asia project director of the International Crisis Group.The workers have voice in government as much as the industrialists,treaders and the business community.If they can work together,she says,they may be able to form a compromise that pushes the economy forward.
Most urgently the government will have to address Pakistan's pressing energy needs.It has already installed barge-based power generators that run on diesel,but that is a temporary,and expensive,solution.The building of dams and coal-based generators is stymied by political disputes.The Indus River,a potential source of hydropower,run throgh two provinces whose govenments cannot agree on sharing-water rights.Development in Baluchistan,which has rich reserves of coal,has been held hostage to a local insurgency rooted in long-simmering resentment over what it considers to be the central government's exploitative approach to the province.Baluchistan is central to Pakistan's economy,says the Crisis Group's Ahmed.It is incredibly rich in not just the resources that are being exploited,but in the resources that are yet to be exploited.Bringing the alienated Baluch back into the fold by stopping military operations and by releasing political prisoners means that the riches of Baluchistan will work to benefit not just the federation but also the Baluch people.
Riots over power shortages,usually a stardard summer feature when demand is at its highest,are rocking Pakistan's major cities.In the industrial town of Multan,a recent protest over power outage saw 58 gravely injured and hundred of thousands of dollars in damage to government buildings,factories,utilities and vehicles.If the problem continue it could lead to political instability.The economy is more urgent than extremism,says an American diplomat in Islamabad.
A terrorist Sanctuary
The federally administered tribal areas,which include Mehsud's South Waziristan base but not Swat,have always been Pakistan's Wild West,a lawless frontier land notorious for smugglers,thieves,guns and drugs.The Fata,as the area is called.is a legacy of a 19th century agreement between the British rulers of undivided India and the Pashtun tribes inhabiting the mountainous fringes of the Empire.In exchange for autonomy and the freedom to run their affairs in accordance with their Islamic faith and customs,the tribal leader promised to guard the border with Afghanistan and keep peace in the region.At independence in 1947,Pakistan kept the agreement.The army stayed out.In place of government,Pakistan adopted a set of adminstrative and legal measures called the frontier crime regulations that forces the tribes to take collective responsibility for the actions of their members.Justice follows the tribal code and is meted out by clan elders who consult in public gatherings called jirags.It was an imperfect solution to a difficult problem.But when Al-Qaeda leaders fled at Afghanistan in the wake of the 2001 war on their Taliban hosts and took refuge in the tribal areas,it became downright dangerous.
In May CIA Director Michael Hayden called the FATA an al-Qaeda safe haven that presents a clear and present danger to Afghanistan,to Pakistan and to the West in generalmand to the United States in particular.Admiral Michael Mullen.Chairman of the U.S joint Chiefs of Staff,says,If I were going to pick the next attack to hit the United Stated,it would come out of Fata.Intelligence officals in the reigon,and abroad,say that al-Qaeda operatives,taking advertage of the limited reach of government,have been able to set up sophisticated communications systems,financial networks and training facilities.Al-qaeda has hunders of training camps scattered throughout the Fata,says a western offical in Pakistan with access to intelligence reports.Most are less than an acre in size,so they are difficult to detect.
To Khalid Aziz,a onetime political agent appointed by IsIamabad to administer to the tribal areas,the militancy is an obvious outcome of the antiquated agreement.Development that brought schools,jobs,roads,health care and electricity to the rest of Pakistan largely bypassed the tribal areas.Unployment among the population of 3.5 million hover around 70%.Two-thirds live below the porverty line.Only 6% of inhabitants can read.For women it's less than 1%.Given that kind of environment,it's not likely that you will see a Leonardo da Vinci come up,says Aziz,who now heads the regoional institute of policy research and Training in Peshawar.You'll get an Osama or one of his clones instead.Aziz welcomes the U.S. Administration's promise of $750 million to provide economic development in the area but says it is not enough.What we need are jobs.
Most fata people want development,but not at the expanse of their traditional way.Shari'a law is the foundation of their justice system and few will willingly give it up.Rather than a wholesale elimination of the FCR,there should be a gradual transition,says Haider Mullick,a former Brooking analyst.It's not rocket science.It's sitting down and saying,Ok.Here are 100 things that are different from how we operate in Islambad.We will conced on some of there issues.But there are going to be some no-nos on our side,and some on yours.For example,no public stoning of women-that's out of question.In turn we will ensure that no solider can walk in and search your house and strip you naked and beat you up.There needs to be a give and take on each side.
Democrats in the U.S. senate have proposed a $7 billion aid package to Pakistan,including a democracy dividend of $1 billion,over the next four years to help the civilian government with education reform,health care and infrastructre.It's a welcome move,but opening up the U.S. market to Pakistani products such as textiles would provide a longer-term-and taint-free-solution.The chorus among businessmen and analyst across the country is trade,not aid.
2008年7月29日 星期二
Dangerous ground Pakistan is reeling from rising radicalism and slumping economy.What the new government must do to fix the nation
In recent weeks,Pakistan,one of the world's most dangerous countries,has been further shaken by,of all people,a bus driver,a ski-shift operator and a gym rat.On june 28 Pakistan paramilitary forced chased militants led by Mangel Bagh,who used to drive a bus,from the fringes of Peshawar,a key transit point for supplies for U.S. and NATO forces fighting the Taliban insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan.While the operation was nominally successful-Bagh and his men were driven from the area and his compound was blown up-the militant leader was back on his pirate raido station a few hours later,vowing to continue his fight for an Islamic state.In Swat,once a tourist haven 100 miles from the international capital Islamabad,militants burned down the country's only ski-resort and torched 21 girls schools.A spokesman for Mullan Fazlullah,the local Taliban leader who used to work the resort's chairlift,said their group was forced to act because government security forces were using some of the school as bunkers.In the fobidding tribal zone of Waziristan,followers of Baitullah Mehsud,the physical-education teacher turned assassin(both the CIA and Pakistan's intelligence agencies say he is behind the attack that killed former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December),slaughtered 22 government negotiators seeking to cement a cease-fire accord.And on July 6 a suicide bomber blew himself up near Islamabad's red mosque,killing 19.While no one has claimed responsibility,it's assumed that the attack was in revenge for the death of some 100 Islamic militants who died in clashes with security forces at the mosque exactly a year ago.Radicalism is on the rise,says political analyst Takat Masood.The government has not been able to take control of the situation.
Five months after elections brought a civilian government back to power,Pakistan is reeling.It's not just the attacks by militants.The economy,which had been growing steadily,has been hit hard by spiking fuel and food costs.The paramilitary coalition that eclipsed the former military leader,Prevez Musharraf,promised to bring peace and progress.Instead,the new leaders are preoccupied with wrangling over who is in charge.Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani,a stalwart of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party,bows to Asif Zardari,Bhutto's windower,who is co-chair of the party but does not hold government office.The government is an unwidely coalition between bitter enemies.The ppp and the Pakistan Muslim League-N,led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif,the two parties traded power three times in eight years before Musharraf put an end to their bickering by overthrowing Sharif in a 1999 coup.Their power-sharing agreement,formed out of a common desire to oust Musharraf,is now riven over how to accomplish that.Musharraf,meanwhile,has been reduced to a largely ceremonial role as President.Says Masood.The people are disappointed with the leadership and they are losing faith in democracy.
In order to fix the Pakistan,the new government msut move simultaneously on serveral fronts,besides tackling militancy,also the slowing economy,skyrocketing inflation,a nationwide electricity shortage and the integration of the troubled tribal areas that operate under colonial-era laws separating them from the rest of the country.But first the coalition partners need to figure out how to co-operate.Nobody is minding the store,says Shaukat Qadir,a retired brigadier.If they dont't start paying attention,we will be in trouble.
The most immediate casualty of the political shenanigans in Islamabad is the global war on terror.According to a report released by the Pentagon on June 27,Taliban militants in Afghanistan have regrouped after their fall from power and coalesced into a resilient insurgency.That resilience,say Western military officals in Afghanistan,has a lot to do with their ability to find sanctuary in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas along the border.The day before the report's release,U.S defense Secretary Robert Gates said in a press briefing that he had real concern that Pakistan was contributing to Afghanistan's instability by failing to prevent militants from crossing into Afghanistan to carry out attacks on coalition forces.Cross-border attacks on U.S. troops in eastern Afghanistan have gone up some 40% in recent months.Gates at contributes the increase to cease-fire accords between Pakistani authorities and Islamic militants,under which Islamabad agreed to pull its miitary out of area controlled by the radicals in exchange for their promise not to attack government institutions.The ideal mean that the pressure was taken off the militants,who are now free to be able to cross the border and create problem for us.said Gates.Not that American are the only target-only July 7 a suicide bombing outside the Indian embassy in Kabul killed at least 40 people-an attack Afghan authorities blamed on Pakistani elements.
To be fair,Pakistan's new government came into power after the military,at the behest of Musharraf,decide to negotiate with militants.The administration embraced the peace effort in the hope that diplomacy wold succeed where force had failed.Perhaps over time the accords would have worked.Says Ayaz Wazir,a former Pakistani ambassador who hails from Waziristan.We have a saying in Pashto the local language,that if you fight for 100 years,on the last day you will again sit around the table and find a solution.So why not just start it now?
But negotiations require effort,attention and political will-all of which the current government,
Five months after elections brought a civilian government back to power,Pakistan is reeling.It's not just the attacks by militants.The economy,which had been growing steadily,has been hit hard by spiking fuel and food costs.The paramilitary coalition that eclipsed the former military leader,Prevez Musharraf,promised to bring peace and progress.Instead,the new leaders are preoccupied with wrangling over who is in charge.Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani,a stalwart of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party,bows to Asif Zardari,Bhutto's windower,who is co-chair of the party but does not hold government office.The government is an unwidely coalition between bitter enemies.The ppp and the Pakistan Muslim League-N,led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif,the two parties traded power three times in eight years before Musharraf put an end to their bickering by overthrowing Sharif in a 1999 coup.Their power-sharing agreement,formed out of a common desire to oust Musharraf,is now riven over how to accomplish that.Musharraf,meanwhile,has been reduced to a largely ceremonial role as President.Says Masood.The people are disappointed with the leadership and they are losing faith in democracy.
In order to fix the Pakistan,the new government msut move simultaneously on serveral fronts,besides tackling militancy,also the slowing economy,skyrocketing inflation,a nationwide electricity shortage and the integration of the troubled tribal areas that operate under colonial-era laws separating them from the rest of the country.But first the coalition partners need to figure out how to co-operate.Nobody is minding the store,says Shaukat Qadir,a retired brigadier.If they dont't start paying attention,we will be in trouble.
The most immediate casualty of the political shenanigans in Islamabad is the global war on terror.According to a report released by the Pentagon on June 27,Taliban militants in Afghanistan have regrouped after their fall from power and coalesced into a resilient insurgency.That resilience,say Western military officals in Afghanistan,has a lot to do with their ability to find sanctuary in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas along the border.The day before the report's release,U.S defense Secretary Robert Gates said in a press briefing that he had real concern that Pakistan was contributing to Afghanistan's instability by failing to prevent militants from crossing into Afghanistan to carry out attacks on coalition forces.Cross-border attacks on U.S. troops in eastern Afghanistan have gone up some 40% in recent months.Gates at contributes the increase to cease-fire accords between Pakistani authorities and Islamic militants,under which Islamabad agreed to pull its miitary out of area controlled by the radicals in exchange for their promise not to attack government institutions.The ideal mean that the pressure was taken off the militants,who are now free to be able to cross the border and create problem for us.said Gates.Not that American are the only target-only July 7 a suicide bombing outside the Indian embassy in Kabul killed at least 40 people-an attack Afghan authorities blamed on Pakistani elements.
To be fair,Pakistan's new government came into power after the military,at the behest of Musharraf,decide to negotiate with militants.The administration embraced the peace effort in the hope that diplomacy wold succeed where force had failed.Perhaps over time the accords would have worked.Says Ayaz Wazir,a former Pakistani ambassador who hails from Waziristan.We have a saying in Pashto the local language,that if you fight for 100 years,on the last day you will again sit around the table and find a solution.So why not just start it now?
But negotiations require effort,attention and political will-all of which the current government,
2008年7月28日 星期一
No 5 Keep your friends close-and your rivals even closer
Many of the guests Mandela invited to the house he built in Qunu were people whom,he intimated to me,he did not wholly trust.He had them to dinner,he called to consult with them,he flattered them and gave them gifts.Mandela is a man of invincible charm-and he has often used that charm to even greater effect on his rivals than on his allies.
On Rubben Island,Mandela would always include in his brain trust men he neither liked nor relied on.One person he became close to was Chris Hani,the fiery chief of staff of the ANC's military wing.There were some who thought Hani was conspiring against Mandela,but Mandela cozied up to him.It wasn't just Hani,says Ramaphosa,It was also the big industrialists,the mining families,the opposition.He would pick up the phone and call them on their birthdays.He would go to family funerals.He saw it as an opportunity.When Mandela emerged from prison,he famously include his jailers among his friends and put leaders who had kept him in prision in his first cabinet.Yet I well knew that he despised some of these men.
There were times he washed his hands of people- and times when,like so many people of great charm,he allowed himself to be charmed.Mandela initially developed a quick rapport with South African President FW. de Klerk,which is why he later left so betrayed when De Klerk attacked him in public.Mandela believed that embracing his rivals was a way of controlling them,they were more dangerous on their own than within his circle of influence.He cherished loyalty,but he was never obsessed by it.After all,he used to say,people act in their own interest.It was simply a fact of human nature,not a flaw or a defect.The flip side of being an optimist-and he is one-is trusting people too mcuh.But Mandela recognized that the way to deal with those he didn't trust was to neutralize them with charm.
On Rubben Island,Mandela would always include in his brain trust men he neither liked nor relied on.One person he became close to was Chris Hani,the fiery chief of staff of the ANC's military wing.There were some who thought Hani was conspiring against Mandela,but Mandela cozied up to him.It wasn't just Hani,says Ramaphosa,It was also the big industrialists,the mining families,the opposition.He would pick up the phone and call them on their birthdays.He would go to family funerals.He saw it as an opportunity.When Mandela emerged from prison,he famously include his jailers among his friends and put leaders who had kept him in prision in his first cabinet.Yet I well knew that he despised some of these men.
There were times he washed his hands of people- and times when,like so many people of great charm,he allowed himself to be charmed.Mandela initially developed a quick rapport with South African President FW. de Klerk,which is why he later left so betrayed when De Klerk attacked him in public.Mandela believed that embracing his rivals was a way of controlling them,they were more dangerous on their own than within his circle of influence.He cherished loyalty,but he was never obsessed by it.After all,he used to say,people act in their own interest.It was simply a fact of human nature,not a flaw or a defect.The flip side of being an optimist-and he is one-is trusting people too mcuh.But Mandela recognized that the way to deal with those he didn't trust was to neutralize them with charm.
Mandela understood that blacks and Afrikaners had something fundamental in common
Afrikaners believed them-selves to be Afrikaners believed themselves to be Africans as deeply as blacks did.He knew,too,that Afrikaners had been the victims of prejudice themselves,the British governmnet and the white English settlters look downed on them.Afrikaners suffered from a cultural inferiority complex almost as much as blacks did.
Mandela was a lawyer,and in prison he helped the warder with their legal problems.They were far less educated and worldly than he,and it was extraordinary to them that a black man was willing and able to help them.These were the most ruthless and brutal of the apartheid regime's characters,says Allister Sparks,the great South African historian,and he realized that even the worst and crudest could be negotiated with.
Mandela was a lawyer,and in prison he helped the warder with their legal problems.They were far less educated and worldly than he,and it was extraordinary to them that a black man was willing and able to help them.These were the most ruthless and brutal of the apartheid regime's characters,says Allister Sparks,the great South African historian,and he realized that even the worst and crudest could be negotiated with.
NO 4 Know your enemy-and learn about his favorite sport
As far back as the 1960, Mandela began studying Afrikaans,the language of the white South Africans who created apartheid.His comrades in the ANC teased him about it,but he wanted to understand the Afrikaner's worldview,he knew that one day he would be fighting them or negotiating with them,and either way,his destiny was tied to theirs.
This was strategic in two senses,by speaking his opponents' language,he might understand their strengths and weaknesses and formulate tactics accordingly.But he would also be ingratiating himself with his enemy.Everyone from ordinary jailers to P.W.Botha was impressed by Mandela's willingness to speak Afrikanns and his knowledge of Afrikaner history.He even brushed up on his knowledge of rugby,the Afrikaners' beloved sport,so he would be able to compare notes on teams and players.
This was strategic in two senses,by speaking his opponents' language,he might understand their strengths and weaknesses and formulate tactics accordingly.But he would also be ingratiating himself with his enemy.Everyone from ordinary jailers to P.W.Botha was impressed by Mandela's willingness to speak Afrikanns and his knowledge of Afrikaner history.He even brushed up on his knowledge of rugby,the Afrikaners' beloved sport,so he would be able to compare notes on teams and players.
2008年7月27日 星期日
No1 courage is not the absence of fear-its inspiring others to move beyond it
In 1994,During the presidential election campaign,Mandela got on a tiny propeller plane to fly down to the killing fields of Natal and give a speech to his Zulu supporters.I agreed to meet him at the airport,where we would continue our work after his speech.When the plane was 20 minutes from landing,one of its engines failed.Some on the plane began to panic.The only thing that calmed them was looking at Mandela,who quietly read his newspaper as if he were a commuter on his morning train to the office.The airport prepare for an emergency landing,and the pilot managed to land the plane safely.When Mandela and I got in the backseat of his bulletproof BMW that would take us to the rally,he turned to me and said,Man,I was terrified up there.
Mandela was often afraid during his time underground,during the Rivonia trial that led to his imprisonment,during his time on Robben island.Of course I was afraid.He would tell me later.It would have been irrational,he suggested not to be.I can't pretend that I'm brave and that I can beat the whole world.But as a leader,you cann't let people know.You must put up a front.
And that's precisely what he learned to do,pretend and ,through the act of appearing fearless inspire others.It was a pantomime Mandela perfected on Roben Island,where there was much to fear.Prisoner who were with him said watching Mandela walk across the courtyard,upright and proud,was enough to keep them going for days.He knew that he was a model for others,and that gave hime the strength to triumph over his own fear.
No2 lead from the front-but don't leave your base behind
Mandela is cagey.In 1985 he was operated on for an enlarged prostate.When he was returned to prison,he was separated from his colleagues and friends for the first time in 21 years.They prostated.But as his longtime friends Ahmed Kathrada recalls,he said to them,Wait a minute,chaps.Some good may come of this.
The good that came of it was that Mandela on his own launched negotitations with the apartheid goverment.This was anathema to the Africa National Congress.After decades of saying prisoner cannot negotiate and after advocating an armed struggle that would bring the government to its knees,he decide that the time was right to begin to talk to his oppressors.When he initiated his negotiations with the government in 1985,there were many who thought he had lost it.We thought he was selling out,says Cyru Ramaphosa,then the powerful and fiery leader of the National Union of Mineworkers.I went to see hime to tell him,What are you doing?It was an unbelievable initative.He took a massive risk.
Mandela launched a campaign to persuade the ANC that his was the correct course.His reputation was on the line.He went to each of his comrades in prison,Kathrada remembers,and explained what he was doing.Slowly and deliveratedly,he brought them along.You take your support base along with you,says Ramaphosa,who was secretary-general of the ANC and is now a business mogul.Once you arrive at the beachhead,then you allow the people to move on.He's not a bubble-gum leader-chew it now and throw it away.
For Mandela,refusing to negotiate was about tactics,not principles,Throughout his life,he has always made that distinction.His unwavering principle-the overthrow of apartheid and the achievement of one man,one vote-was immutable,but almost anything that helped him get to that goal he regarded as a tactic.He is the most pragmatic of idealists.He's historical man,says Ramaphosa,He was thinking way ahead of us.He has posterity in mind.How will they view what we've done?Prison gave him the ability to take the long view.I had to,there was no other view possible.He was thinking in terms of not days and weeks but decades.He knew history was on his side,that the result was inevitable,it was just a question of how soon and how it would be achieved.Things will be better in the long run,he sometimes said,He always played for the long run.
No3 Lead from the back-and let others believe they are in front
Mandela loved to reminisce about his boyhood and his lazy afternoon herding cattle.You know,he would say,you can only lead them from behind.He would then raise his eyebrows to make sure I got the analogy.
As a boy,Mandela was greatly influenced by Jongintaba,the tribal king who raise him,When Jongintaba had meeting of his court,the man gathered in a circle,and only after all had spoken did the king begin to speak.The chief's job,Mandela said,was not to tell people what to do form a consensus.Don't enter the debate too early,he used to say.
During the time I worked with Mandela,he often called meetings of his kitchen cabinet at his home in Houghton,a lovely suburb of Johannesburg.He would gather half a dozen men,Ramaphosa,Thano Mbeki(who is now the South African President)and other around the dining-room table or sometimes in a circle in his driveway.Some of his colleagues would shout at him- to move faster,to be more radical-and Mandela would simply listen.When he finally did speak at those meetings,he slowly and methodically summarized everyone's point of view and then unfurled his own thoughts,subtly steering the decision in the direction he wanted without imposing it.The trick of leader is allow yourself to be led too.It is wise,he said,to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.
Mandela was often afraid during his time underground,during the Rivonia trial that led to his imprisonment,during his time on Robben island.Of course I was afraid.He would tell me later.It would have been irrational,he suggested not to be.I can't pretend that I'm brave and that I can beat the whole world.But as a leader,you cann't let people know.You must put up a front.
And that's precisely what he learned to do,pretend and ,through the act of appearing fearless inspire others.It was a pantomime Mandela perfected on Roben Island,where there was much to fear.Prisoner who were with him said watching Mandela walk across the courtyard,upright and proud,was enough to keep them going for days.He knew that he was a model for others,and that gave hime the strength to triumph over his own fear.
No2 lead from the front-but don't leave your base behind
Mandela is cagey.In 1985 he was operated on for an enlarged prostate.When he was returned to prison,he was separated from his colleagues and friends for the first time in 21 years.They prostated.But as his longtime friends Ahmed Kathrada recalls,he said to them,Wait a minute,chaps.Some good may come of this.
The good that came of it was that Mandela on his own launched negotitations with the apartheid goverment.This was anathema to the Africa National Congress.After decades of saying prisoner cannot negotiate and after advocating an armed struggle that would bring the government to its knees,he decide that the time was right to begin to talk to his oppressors.When he initiated his negotiations with the government in 1985,there were many who thought he had lost it.We thought he was selling out,says Cyru Ramaphosa,then the powerful and fiery leader of the National Union of Mineworkers.I went to see hime to tell him,What are you doing?It was an unbelievable initative.He took a massive risk.
Mandela launched a campaign to persuade the ANC that his was the correct course.His reputation was on the line.He went to each of his comrades in prison,Kathrada remembers,and explained what he was doing.Slowly and deliveratedly,he brought them along.You take your support base along with you,says Ramaphosa,who was secretary-general of the ANC and is now a business mogul.Once you arrive at the beachhead,then you allow the people to move on.He's not a bubble-gum leader-chew it now and throw it away.
For Mandela,refusing to negotiate was about tactics,not principles,Throughout his life,he has always made that distinction.His unwavering principle-the overthrow of apartheid and the achievement of one man,one vote-was immutable,but almost anything that helped him get to that goal he regarded as a tactic.He is the most pragmatic of idealists.He's historical man,says Ramaphosa,He was thinking way ahead of us.He has posterity in mind.How will they view what we've done?Prison gave him the ability to take the long view.I had to,there was no other view possible.He was thinking in terms of not days and weeks but decades.He knew history was on his side,that the result was inevitable,it was just a question of how soon and how it would be achieved.Things will be better in the long run,he sometimes said,He always played for the long run.
No3 Lead from the back-and let others believe they are in front
Mandela loved to reminisce about his boyhood and his lazy afternoon herding cattle.You know,he would say,you can only lead them from behind.He would then raise his eyebrows to make sure I got the analogy.
As a boy,Mandela was greatly influenced by Jongintaba,the tribal king who raise him,When Jongintaba had meeting of his court,the man gathered in a circle,and only after all had spoken did the king begin to speak.The chief's job,Mandela said,was not to tell people what to do form a consensus.Don't enter the debate too early,he used to say.
During the time I worked with Mandela,he often called meetings of his kitchen cabinet at his home in Houghton,a lovely suburb of Johannesburg.He would gather half a dozen men,Ramaphosa,Thano Mbeki(who is now the South African President)and other around the dining-room table or sometimes in a circle in his driveway.Some of his colleagues would shout at him- to move faster,to be more radical-and Mandela would simply listen.When he finally did speak at those meetings,he slowly and methodically summarized everyone's point of view and then unfurled his own thoughts,subtly steering the decision in the direction he wanted without imposing it.The trick of leader is allow yourself to be led too.It is wise,he said,to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.
His 8 lessons of leadership as he celebrates his 90th biethday,the world's greatest moral leaders reflects on a lifetime of service
And what the rest of us can learn from it.Nelson Mandela has always felt most at ease around children,and in some ways his greatest deprivation was that he spent his 27 years without hearing a baby cry or holding a child's hand.Last month,when I visited Mandela in Johannesburg-a frailer,foggier Mandela than the one I used to know-his first instinct was to spread his arms to my two boys.Within seconds they were hugging the friendly old man who asked them what sports they liked to play and what they'd had for brasket.While he talked,he held my son Gabriel,whose complicated middle name is Rolihlahla,Nelson Mandela's real first name.He told Gabriel the story of that name,how in Xhosa it translates as pulling down the branch of tree.but that its real meaning is troublemaker.
As he celebrates his 90th birthday next week ,Nelson Mandela has made enough trouble for several lifetimes.He libertaed a country from a system of prejudice and helped unite white and black,oppressor and oppressed,in a way that had never been done before.In the 1990s I worked with Mandela for almost two years on his autobiography,Long walk to freedom,After all that time spent in his company,I felt a terrible sense of withdrawal when the book was done,it was like the sun going out of one's life.We have seen each other occasionally over the years,but I wanted to make what might be a final visit and have my sons meet him one more time.
I also wanted to talk to him about leadership.Mandela is the closest thing the world has to a secular saint,but he would be the first to admit that he is something far more pedestrian.a politician.He overthrew apartheid and created a nonracial democratic South Africa by knowing precisely when and how to transition between his roles as warrior,martyr,diplomat and statesman.Uncomfortable with abstract philosophical concepts,he would often say to me that an issue was not a question of principle,it was a question of tactics.He is a master tactician.
Mandela is no longer comfortable with inquires or favors.He's fearful that he may not be able to summon what people expect when they visit a living deity.And vain enough to care that they not think him diminished.But the world has never needed Mandela's gifts-as a tactician,as an activist and ,yes,as a politician-more,as he showed again in London on June 25,when he rose to condemn the savagery of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.As we enter the main stretch of historic presidential campaign in America,there is much that he can teach the two candidates.I've always thought of what you are about to read as Madiba's rules(Madiba,his clan name,is what everyone close to hime calls him)and they are cobbled together from our conversations old and new and from observing him up close and from afar .They are mostly practical.Many of them stem directly from his personal experience.All of them are calibrate to cause the best kind of trouble,the trouble that forces us to ask how we can make the world a better place.
As he celebrates his 90th birthday next week ,Nelson Mandela has made enough trouble for several lifetimes.He libertaed a country from a system of prejudice and helped unite white and black,oppressor and oppressed,in a way that had never been done before.In the 1990s I worked with Mandela for almost two years on his autobiography,Long walk to freedom,After all that time spent in his company,I felt a terrible sense of withdrawal when the book was done,it was like the sun going out of one's life.We have seen each other occasionally over the years,but I wanted to make what might be a final visit and have my sons meet him one more time.
I also wanted to talk to him about leadership.Mandela is the closest thing the world has to a secular saint,but he would be the first to admit that he is something far more pedestrian.a politician.He overthrew apartheid and created a nonracial democratic South Africa by knowing precisely when and how to transition between his roles as warrior,martyr,diplomat and statesman.Uncomfortable with abstract philosophical concepts,he would often say to me that an issue was not a question of principle,it was a question of tactics.He is a master tactician.
Mandela is no longer comfortable with inquires or favors.He's fearful that he may not be able to summon what people expect when they visit a living deity.And vain enough to care that they not think him diminished.But the world has never needed Mandela's gifts-as a tactician,as an activist and ,yes,as a politician-more,as he showed again in London on June 25,when he rose to condemn the savagery of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.As we enter the main stretch of historic presidential campaign in America,there is much that he can teach the two candidates.I've always thought of what you are about to read as Madiba's rules(Madiba,his clan name,is what everyone close to hime calls him)and they are cobbled together from our conversations old and new and from observing him up close and from afar .They are mostly practical.Many of them stem directly from his personal experience.All of them are calibrate to cause the best kind of trouble,the trouble that forces us to ask how we can make the world a better place.
Santa Barbara Living at the mercy of the winds
In that conflagration,which wiped out our house and more than 500 others-at the time the worst fire in California history-I sat in a car on our mountain road,watching the fire pick apart my bedroom,our living room,all our past and present and for me ,a writer,who had his next eight years or so in notes ,my future.Now it was all happening again.The phones were dead.Electricity was out across the city.Reports came that the fire had receded a little but still was most intense and threatening right next to my house.All I could do was sit in the town below-the traffic lights around me blanked out-and listen to the blades of the helicopters above,watching for the turning of the wind.
2008年7月26日 星期六
Santa Barbara.Eighteen years after it burned to the ground,the author
I flew back to Santa Barbara a week ago,and as I drove home from the airport,I looked up to the foothills where we live and saw two mall rivulets of orange surging through the darkness.My heart stopped.Eighteen years before,almost to the day,a forest fire had broken out very close to our home.For three hours I had been caught in the middle of 70 ft.flames,whipped on by 70-m.p.h.( 110km/h).sundowner winds.This time, I pushed down the pedal and raced around the curves of our narrow,hill-framed mountain road to tell my mother and sweetheart that our most loyal,if unreliable,annual visitor was on its way.
By now,1500 fires were burning up and down the state,from Big Sur down to San Bernardino.Slashes of orange began to tear up the hills two or three miles from our house,and the sky turned blooded,then black.For 24 hours we remained in a state of limbo,leaving the house as a precaution and then returning when it appeared the fire had subsided.I went down to the local post office in late afternoon,and as I came out,the whole residential suburb next to the sea was all but buried under a mud-down haze.Up in the hills,orange gashes were appearing everywhere.
I started driving home and turned on the radio to hear that we,and a few neighbors,had been given an evacuation warning.As I began the ascent up our road,the warning turned to an order.I careened around the curves,with plumes of oranges seeming to rise in every valley around my house.We have to leave now!I shouted to my wife and mother as fires cut across the dry brush with a speed and efficiency I remembered from before.The air was so clouded with smoke,we could hardly breathe.Driving up our road was like driving into an oven.Brakes screaming,we swerved and skidded at crazy speeds down the mountain as the flames rose behind us,and within 10 minutes or so we were in downtown Santa Barbara in middle of a quiet,bule-sky midsummer day.Fire-fighters and planes started arriving from every corner of California.Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced a state of emergency,which meant that resources would soon arrival from around the country.
Then came the wait.Ash was falling over the city like snow,Hillsides disappeared permanently behind a gary-black haze.Sometimes the wind receded,and our home came into view.Then the sun grew more intense,and we could imagine the heroic firefighters surrounded by flames that were barely 10% contained.They tell you how to prepare for fires,but you can preapre no more for them than for a sudden daeth.Eighteen years ago,I had been sitting in my house when I saw a waterfall of orange few hillsides away.I tried to call the fire department but the phone went dead.I tried to turn the lights on,but the electricity was gone.Within 10 minutes the flames had so encircled my home with smoke that I could not be seen by helicopters above.
By now,1500 fires were burning up and down the state,from Big Sur down to San Bernardino.Slashes of orange began to tear up the hills two or three miles from our house,and the sky turned blooded,then black.For 24 hours we remained in a state of limbo,leaving the house as a precaution and then returning when it appeared the fire had subsided.I went down to the local post office in late afternoon,and as I came out,the whole residential suburb next to the sea was all but buried under a mud-down haze.Up in the hills,orange gashes were appearing everywhere.
I started driving home and turned on the radio to hear that we,and a few neighbors,had been given an evacuation warning.As I began the ascent up our road,the warning turned to an order.I careened around the curves,with plumes of oranges seeming to rise in every valley around my house.We have to leave now!I shouted to my wife and mother as fires cut across the dry brush with a speed and efficiency I remembered from before.The air was so clouded with smoke,we could hardly breathe.Driving up our road was like driving into an oven.Brakes screaming,we swerved and skidded at crazy speeds down the mountain as the flames rose behind us,and within 10 minutes or so we were in downtown Santa Barbara in middle of a quiet,bule-sky midsummer day.Fire-fighters and planes started arriving from every corner of California.Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced a state of emergency,which meant that resources would soon arrival from around the country.
Then came the wait.Ash was falling over the city like snow,Hillsides disappeared permanently behind a gary-black haze.Sometimes the wind receded,and our home came into view.Then the sun grew more intense,and we could imagine the heroic firefighters surrounded by flames that were barely 10% contained.They tell you how to prepare for fires,but you can preapre no more for them than for a sudden daeth.Eighteen years ago,I had been sitting in my house when I saw a waterfall of orange few hillsides away.I tried to call the fire department but the phone went dead.I tried to turn the lights on,but the electricity was gone.Within 10 minutes the flames had so encircled my home with smoke that I could not be seen by helicopters above.
Though he wasn't the original Bozo the clown,Larry Harmon was perhaps the best
First portraying in 1952,Harmon later acquired the rights to the character and trained others to portray him.As his wife Susan recalls,At one time he had 183 different Bozos all going at the same time in this country.His dedication to the icon and ability to make people laugh were pervasive.You would be sitting at dinner,and he would do the Bozo laugh for you ,his wife says.He was a born entertainer.Harmon was 83.
A man who passed his state's bar exam without having attended a day of law school,former U.S. National Park Service director George Hartzog was anything but conventional.During his nine-year tenure as director,the South Carolina native brought nearly 70 new areas-some 2.7 million acres 1.1 million hectares-under Park Service protection and often used daring techniques to secure funding,including shutting down parks two days each week when President Richard Nixon cut the budget in 1969,After a public outcry,the funding was restored,and Hartzog's legacy was secured as a dedicated proponent of the environment.He was 88.
By age 12,Russian ballerina Irina Baronova had already won critics hearts,thanks to famed choreographer George Balanchine.He launched the young dancer's career when he cast her in a 1931 performance of the operetta Orpheus in the underworld.Baronova went on to perform in ballets such as Swan Lake and The sleeping Beauty,but she is best known for touring the world with two other young Balanchine proteges.The trio,known as the Baby Ballerina, was hugely popular in the 1930s.Baronova was 89.
A man who passed his state's bar exam without having attended a day of law school,former U.S. National Park Service director George Hartzog was anything but conventional.During his nine-year tenure as director,the South Carolina native brought nearly 70 new areas-some 2.7 million acres 1.1 million hectares-under Park Service protection and often used daring techniques to secure funding,including shutting down parks two days each week when President Richard Nixon cut the budget in 1969,After a public outcry,the funding was restored,and Hartzog's legacy was secured as a dedicated proponent of the environment.He was 88.
By age 12,Russian ballerina Irina Baronova had already won critics hearts,thanks to famed choreographer George Balanchine.He launched the young dancer's career when he cast her in a 1931 performance of the operetta Orpheus in the underworld.Baronova went on to perform in ballets such as Swan Lake and The sleeping Beauty,but she is best known for touring the world with two other young Balanchine proteges.The trio,known as the Baby Ballerina, was hugely popular in the 1930s.Baronova was 89.
Sir John Templeton
A great teacher and investor with a gentle and loving disposition,Sir John Templeton,who died on July 9 at 95,pioneered value investing beyond U.S. shores long before global investing became commonplace,and that made him a finanical legend.His success lay in patiently waiting for the prices to reach points of maximum pessimism.In addition to leading me into global emerging markets by asking me to manage the first Templeton emerging-markets fund,he taught me and others how to become investors by pursuing long term goals and undervalued securities.He taught us that in order to find that best investment opporitunities,you must open your mind to all possibilities around the world.More important,he showed us that if you want to be successful in any endeavor,particularly investing,you need to keep an open mind and be willing to learn.His investment career spanned five decades,but his lifelong devotion was to spiritual concern and philanthropy.While Sir.John was famous as a financial-industry lagend and visionary,we knew him as a man of strong principles and wisdom,but more important,as a loving father to all who worked with him.His greatest lesson was humility,not only by practicing it himself but also by showing us that only through humility can you achieve great understanding.
2008年7月25日 星期五
A brief history of Kabbalah
In the beginning,there was madona,at least that's how most see the modern history of Kabbalah-the New Agey revival of traditional Jewish mysticism recently linked in the tabloids to a love triangle involving the Material Girl and New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez.Yet despite its high-profile Hollywood associations,the Kabbalah tradition-which involves the attempt to more directly understand God through contemplation and arcane textual study-stretches back centuries.
Kabbalah cohered and still revolves around its essential book,the Zohar-a gargantuan work penned in 13th century Sapin by Moses de Leon-that explores divine mysteries under the guise of a commentary on the Torah.But it wasn't until the 18th century emergence of Hasidism as a Jewish movement in Eastern Europe that Kabbalah began to expand beyond its tiny group of scholars.Many Kabbalist masters,however,were killed in the Holocaust,causing the practice to languish temporarily.
Most celebrity practitioners,including Madonna and actress Demi Moore,are members of the Los Angles-based Kabbalah Centre,which distances itself from the traditions Jewish roots in favor of a more nonspecific spirituality.Followers take expensive courses and wear red strings on their wrists to ward off the Evil Eye(a practice not directly linked to traditional Kabbalah study).While some Jewish leaders have criticized the group for turning an ancient tradition into a shampop spirituality(see its cynical sales of supposedly curative Kabbalah water,the center's emphasis on a more personal connection with the Almighty might not necessarily have seemed out of place to its earliest adherents.
Kabbalah cohered and still revolves around its essential book,the Zohar-a gargantuan work penned in 13th century Sapin by Moses de Leon-that explores divine mysteries under the guise of a commentary on the Torah.But it wasn't until the 18th century emergence of Hasidism as a Jewish movement in Eastern Europe that Kabbalah began to expand beyond its tiny group of scholars.Many Kabbalist masters,however,were killed in the Holocaust,causing the practice to languish temporarily.
Most celebrity practitioners,including Madonna and actress Demi Moore,are members of the Los Angles-based Kabbalah Centre,which distances itself from the traditions Jewish roots in favor of a more nonspecific spirituality.Followers take expensive courses and wear red strings on their wrists to ward off the Evil Eye(a practice not directly linked to traditional Kabbalah study).While some Jewish leaders have criticized the group for turning an ancient tradition into a shampop spirituality(see its cynical sales of supposedly curative Kabbalah water,the center's emphasis on a more personal connection with the Almighty might not necessarily have seemed out of place to its earliest adherents.
2008年7月24日 星期四
G8 summit Japan too little too late a pledge to cut carbon emissions is less than it seems
At the G8 summit in the Japanese resort town of Toyako,President George W.Bush proudly presented a pledge by the group's eight member nations to cut global greenhouse-gas emissions at least 50% by 2050.For a president who came into office publicly doubting climate change and has repeatedly refuse to set specific limits on carbon emissions,the G-8 statement was personal step forward.
Unfortunately for the rest of us,this year's G-8 summit which marked the first time that leaders of the world's 16 biggest carbon emitters have sat down to talk about climate change-will be remembered as a lost opportunity.First of all,the 2050 pledge doesn't specify a baseline year.European leaders want to bring emissions down to 50% of 1990 levels,but host nation Japan seemed to indicate that it would be happy to use present-day levels.The difference in actual reductions would be enormous.So what appears to be a firm numerical target is just more hot aspirations-not too different form the original U.N. framework Convention on Climate Change,which aimed to stabilize carbon emssions at a level that would prevent dangerous human interference with the environment.
That was signed in 1992-by another President Bush.But the real loss in Toyako was tge chance to fully enlist big developing nations like China and India in the fight agaist climate change.In the weeks leading up to the summit,there countries would indicated that they would be amenable to broad,long term emissions reductions-provided that rich nations agreed to their own short-term cuts.The U.S along wiht Canada and Austrlia nixed the idea,and so the developing nations conspicuously did not agree to the G8's 2050 target.
By next year's summit,the U.S will have a new and more environmental President,and the ground is set for substantial negotiationBut we won't get back eight lost years of White house indifference and interference on climate.It's too late for Bush to reverse that now.We can only hope it's not too late for the rest of us.
Unfortunately for the rest of us,this year's G-8 summit which marked the first time that leaders of the world's 16 biggest carbon emitters have sat down to talk about climate change-will be remembered as a lost opportunity.First of all,the 2050 pledge doesn't specify a baseline year.European leaders want to bring emissions down to 50% of 1990 levels,but host nation Japan seemed to indicate that it would be happy to use present-day levels.The difference in actual reductions would be enormous.So what appears to be a firm numerical target is just more hot aspirations-not too different form the original U.N. framework Convention on Climate Change,which aimed to stabilize carbon emssions at a level that would prevent dangerous human interference with the environment.
That was signed in 1992-by another President Bush.But the real loss in Toyako was tge chance to fully enlist big developing nations like China and India in the fight agaist climate change.In the weeks leading up to the summit,there countries would indicated that they would be amenable to broad,long term emissions reductions-provided that rich nations agreed to their own short-term cuts.The U.S along wiht Canada and Austrlia nixed the idea,and so the developing nations conspicuously did not agree to the G8's 2050 target.
By next year's summit,the U.S will have a new and more environmental President,and the ground is set for substantial negotiationBut we won't get back eight lost years of White house indifference and interference on climate.It's too late for Bush to reverse that now.We can only hope it's not too late for the rest of us.
2008年7月23日 星期三
Tha abstract and the concrete.A splendidly simple new building by Tadao Ando proves that less can still be more
Let's say Frank Gehry presents one end of the architectural spectrum,the shiny,exuberant,walls that do the hula end.The man in the opposite side-the serene,economical,subdued side-would have to be Japanese architect Tadao Ando.If Gehry's signature form is a whiplash,Ando's is a broad,flat plane.Gehry's best known materials are titanium and glowing steel.Ando's is pale gary concrete.
Broad,flat,and gary may not sould like a formula for pleasure.But you don't know what pleasure is until you've seen Ando's Church of the light near Osaka,Japan,where two intersecting slots in a rear wall admits sunlight in the from of a glowing cross.And then there's his triumphant Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth,in Texas,a palisade of glass pavilions that touch down mysteriously on a broad reflecting pool.
What the 21st century should look like is still a contested question,but the contest is increasingly going to forms that are not broad,flat,pale and gary.In a world being radically reconfigured by Gehry,Zaha Hadid and Daniel Libeskind,Ando represents the continuing relevance of a more reductive strain of 20th century Modernism.When the Fort Worth museum was commissioned,Ando,now 66,had built widely in Japan but not much outside.By the time it opened six years ago,he was firmly located on the international short list of architects that everybody was after.
But he hasn't completed another building in the US until now.In late June,his Stone hill Center,a combination of galleries and art-conservation labs,opened at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute,the superb small museum and art-study cneter in Willamstown,Mass.It's exactly what you would expect from him.It's pale gary ,serene,economical,subdued and from the most angles,pretty splendid.
Mark Twain once said about rural England that it was too absolutely beautiful to be left out of doors.He could have said the same about Berkshires,Where the Clark is set.More than any of his other American projects,the Stone Hill Center,which he worked on with the landscape
designers Reed Hilderbrand Associates,Has allowed Ando to set up the elegant interactions with nature he's known for in Japan.And in his way,he does indeed bring it indoors.In one gallery,a view of woodlands is abstracted-compressed and subdivided-by way of a window wall that look out across a covered terrace.Outside,a squared archway in a freestanding diagonal wall creates a proscenium that turns earth and sky into a kind of cosmic theater.
Like everything else Ando does,this building calls to mind the delicacy and simplicity of traditional Japanese architecture.That he achieves that effect with concrete is the ever charming paradox of his work.But in that way,his building bear the mark of two 20 century Modernists he admires,Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn.who found in concrete an opportunity for blunt majesty and even a kind of lyricism.The minimalist Modernlism that Ando practices may not be in vogue these days.But in the right hands,it still works wonders.
Broad,flat,and gary may not sould like a formula for pleasure.But you don't know what pleasure is until you've seen Ando's Church of the light near Osaka,Japan,where two intersecting slots in a rear wall admits sunlight in the from of a glowing cross.And then there's his triumphant Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth,in Texas,a palisade of glass pavilions that touch down mysteriously on a broad reflecting pool.
What the 21st century should look like is still a contested question,but the contest is increasingly going to forms that are not broad,flat,pale and gary.In a world being radically reconfigured by Gehry,Zaha Hadid and Daniel Libeskind,Ando represents the continuing relevance of a more reductive strain of 20th century Modernism.When the Fort Worth museum was commissioned,Ando,now 66,had built widely in Japan but not much outside.By the time it opened six years ago,he was firmly located on the international short list of architects that everybody was after.
But he hasn't completed another building in the US until now.In late June,his Stone hill Center,a combination of galleries and art-conservation labs,opened at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute,the superb small museum and art-study cneter in Willamstown,Mass.It's exactly what you would expect from him.It's pale gary ,serene,economical,subdued and from the most angles,pretty splendid.
Mark Twain once said about rural England that it was too absolutely beautiful to be left out of doors.He could have said the same about Berkshires,Where the Clark is set.More than any of his other American projects,the Stone Hill Center,which he worked on with the landscape
designers Reed Hilderbrand Associates,Has allowed Ando to set up the elegant interactions with nature he's known for in Japan.And in his way,he does indeed bring it indoors.In one gallery,a view of woodlands is abstracted-compressed and subdivided-by way of a window wall that look out across a covered terrace.Outside,a squared archway in a freestanding diagonal wall creates a proscenium that turns earth and sky into a kind of cosmic theater.
Like everything else Ando does,this building calls to mind the delicacy and simplicity of traditional Japanese architecture.That he achieves that effect with concrete is the ever charming paradox of his work.But in that way,his building bear the mark of two 20 century Modernists he admires,Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn.who found in concrete an opportunity for blunt majesty and even a kind of lyricism.The minimalist Modernlism that Ando practices may not be in vogue these days.But in the right hands,it still works wonders.
Stay in Helsinki for summer days
I once lived overlooking the Rock church,and it is still my favorite spot in town.Built in 1952,the church is really a massive hole in the ground,its roughly hewn rock walls lit with flickering candles and its ceiling a great coil of copper and glass.Stop by the Cafe Eeops,one block west of the church on the corner of Sammonkatu and Runeburg,a friendly neighborhood place full of books that serves homemade pastries,soups and sandwiches.
Lunch in Helsinki is a casual affair,best experienced at the classic old-fashioned cafes Ekberg on Bulevardi has been an institution for even longer than the Finnish state,while eating at Fazer is an excuse to indulge in their iconic chocolates.
Fazer's most decadent ice-cream sundae comes in an Alvar Aalto dish,a sweet reminder that Finnish design is world-renowned.I have a passion for piece from the 1930s-1970s,and I can easily spend the afternoon browsing vintage glass specialists Van-haa JA kaunista at Liisankatu 6,or visiting the boutiques and galleries in Helsinki's burgeoning design district.
My exploration of Finnish design continues with dinner at Atelje Finne.The restaurant is in the former studio of Art Deco sculptor Gunna Finne and several of his pieces are on display.The simple menu uses the best ingredients and the atmosphere is artsy and intimate.After dinner,head up to the rooftop bar of the Hotel Torni for a drink and to watch the sunset.By the midnight,it's still light out-the summer night is young.
Lunch in Helsinki is a casual affair,best experienced at the classic old-fashioned cafes Ekberg on Bulevardi has been an institution for even longer than the Finnish state,while eating at Fazer is an excuse to indulge in their iconic chocolates.
Fazer's most decadent ice-cream sundae comes in an Alvar Aalto dish,a sweet reminder that Finnish design is world-renowned.I have a passion for piece from the 1930s-1970s,and I can easily spend the afternoon browsing vintage glass specialists Van-haa JA kaunista at Liisankatu 6,or visiting the boutiques and galleries in Helsinki's burgeoning design district.
My exploration of Finnish design continues with dinner at Atelje Finne.The restaurant is in the former studio of Art Deco sculptor Gunna Finne and several of his pieces are on display.The simple menu uses the best ingredients and the atmosphere is artsy and intimate.After dinner,head up to the rooftop bar of the Hotel Torni for a drink and to watch the sunset.By the midnight,it's still light out-the summer night is young.
A perfect Day in Helsinki Food writer Lydia Itoi's tips on where to eat and what to see in the Finnish capital
It's good thing Finland's summer days are so long,as there's plenty to do in Helsinki,the world's northern-most capital city.I start with a morning walk along the coastline of Kaivopuisto Park at the southern tip of the city,then head to breakfast at the Klaus K design hotel ,where the restaurant offers up the best of Finaland's field,forests and farms.Try spooning the homemade cloudberry or black-currant jam over oatmeal or artisanal yogurt.You can also have farmhouse ham and eggs to order,fresh juice of the orange sea-buckthorn berry,and crispbread made from birch bark.
After that ,I like to wander the picturesque Market Square by Helsinki Harbor and scour the produces stands for the best wild strawberries on earth- bursting with flavor of 20 hours a day of Finnish sun,they only grow for two to four weeks every summer.Make sure to stop by fishmonger E.Eriksson in the Kauppatori Old Market Hall for fantastic gravlax.Diaphanous pink wafers of cured salmon on a slice of buttered rye sprinkled with dill,my ideal market snack.
After that ,I like to wander the picturesque Market Square by Helsinki Harbor and scour the produces stands for the best wild strawberries on earth- bursting with flavor of 20 hours a day of Finnish sun,they only grow for two to four weeks every summer.Make sure to stop by fishmonger E.Eriksson in the Kauppatori Old Market Hall for fantastic gravlax.Diaphanous pink wafers of cured salmon on a slice of buttered rye sprinkled with dill,my ideal market snack.
2008年7月22日 星期二
Murder into Art.There are almost as many bad true-crime books as there are crimes.What makes them so hard to do?
In 1959 Truman Capote spotted a short item in the New York Times.It describes a quadruple murder in small town Kansas,two men entered a farmhouse,shot the parents and two children and left with $40,a radio and a pair of binoculars.Capote lit out for Kansas,interviewed everyone he could get his well-manicured hands 9n and seven years later published a book about it.In Cold Blood combined journalism with the literary liberties of fiction to creat what Capote called a non-fiction novel,about two antiheros and the thwarted dreams that made them killers.He believed he had discovered a new literary art form.
He had and he hadn't.Capote didn't invent true crime,though he did revive and revitalize it since 1966,In cold blood has served as the template for thousands of true crime books.But the weird thing is that with a few exceptions-such as Norman Mailer's The executioner's song--they aren't very good.In Cold blood is not just the first modern work of true crime.It is also the only true-crime masterpiece period.
What did Capote do that nobody else could?In the master of Florence,thriller author Douglas Preston writing with the Italian journalist Mario Spezi tells the story of serial killer who terrorized Florence in the 1970 and 1980s.The monster,as he is known,stalked couple making love in parked cars in the hills outside the city,which is something Florentines apparently do quite a lot.He would wait till they were finished,then shoot the man in the head,then the woman.Afterward,he would mutilate her.
Preston's account of the crimes is lucid and mesmerizing.In one case,the victims realized what was happening,but in a panic,they drove their car into the ditch.The killer cooly shot out their headlights before going to work.What's missing from the monster of Florence is the Monster,the killer was never caught.This isn't Preston's fault,but it hamstrings the book.The acme of the true-crime writer's art,what raises it above lurid rubbernecking,is making the psychology of a killer comprehensible,even sympathetic.In doing that,the ture-crime writer gives meaning to the ultimate meaningless act,murder.
By contrast,it took only a few hours to catch the killer in Kathryn Harrison's while they slept.Early on the morning of April 27 1984,Billy Frank Gilley.Jr,THEN 19,beat his parents and his sister Becky to death with a baseball bat in their home in Oregon.He said afterward that he did it to save himself and his other sister Jody from a abusive domestic situation.He imagined that they would run away together.Jody called 911.
This story fasciated Harrison for years before she track down Billy (still in prison) and Jody (now a successful bussinesswoman) and interviewed them.Billy's quasi-incestuous interest in his sister echoes an episode of incest in Harrison's life.I find their story has a forbidden,sexual charge,she writes.Because love,murder and running away together to imply sex.They do suggest an illicit erotic fixation.There's something very creepy about her interest in the Gilley murders that is difficult for the reader to make peace with-she is not just a clarifying interpreting narrator,she also makes herself specimen to be gawked at.
Harrison rummages heroically through the detritus of Gillery family life,which is certainly authentically depressing,poverty,alcoholism,physical and emotional abuse,but the deep ,human reality of Billy's act eludes her-he's a dull,nasty subject,with none of the thwarted,Romantic brilliance with which Capote endows his subjects.Or maybe the problem is that she grasps Billy's truth too well,and that while they slept suffers from an excess of honesty.That's something Capote certainly avoided in In Cold Blood.When it comes to true crime,too much truth can be fatal.
He had and he hadn't.Capote didn't invent true crime,though he did revive and revitalize it since 1966,In cold blood has served as the template for thousands of true crime books.But the weird thing is that with a few exceptions-such as Norman Mailer's The executioner's song--they aren't very good.In Cold blood is not just the first modern work of true crime.It is also the only true-crime masterpiece period.
What did Capote do that nobody else could?In the master of Florence,thriller author Douglas Preston writing with the Italian journalist Mario Spezi tells the story of serial killer who terrorized Florence in the 1970 and 1980s.The monster,as he is known,stalked couple making love in parked cars in the hills outside the city,which is something Florentines apparently do quite a lot.He would wait till they were finished,then shoot the man in the head,then the woman.Afterward,he would mutilate her.
Preston's account of the crimes is lucid and mesmerizing.In one case,the victims realized what was happening,but in a panic,they drove their car into the ditch.The killer cooly shot out their headlights before going to work.What's missing from the monster of Florence is the Monster,the killer was never caught.This isn't Preston's fault,but it hamstrings the book.The acme of the true-crime writer's art,what raises it above lurid rubbernecking,is making the psychology of a killer comprehensible,even sympathetic.In doing that,the ture-crime writer gives meaning to the ultimate meaningless act,murder.
By contrast,it took only a few hours to catch the killer in Kathryn Harrison's while they slept.Early on the morning of April 27 1984,Billy Frank Gilley.Jr,THEN 19,beat his parents and his sister Becky to death with a baseball bat in their home in Oregon.He said afterward that he did it to save himself and his other sister Jody from a abusive domestic situation.He imagined that they would run away together.Jody called 911.
This story fasciated Harrison for years before she track down Billy (still in prison) and Jody (now a successful bussinesswoman) and interviewed them.Billy's quasi-incestuous interest in his sister echoes an episode of incest in Harrison's life.I find their story has a forbidden,sexual charge,she writes.Because love,murder and running away together to imply sex.They do suggest an illicit erotic fixation.There's something very creepy about her interest in the Gilley murders that is difficult for the reader to make peace with-she is not just a clarifying interpreting narrator,she also makes herself specimen to be gawked at.
Harrison rummages heroically through the detritus of Gillery family life,which is certainly authentically depressing,poverty,alcoholism,physical and emotional abuse,but the deep ,human reality of Billy's act eludes her-he's a dull,nasty subject,with none of the thwarted,Romantic brilliance with which Capote endows his subjects.Or maybe the problem is that she grasps Billy's truth too well,and that while they slept suffers from an excess of honesty.That's something Capote certainly avoided in In Cold Blood.When it comes to true crime,too much truth can be fatal.
Old charmer
Of all the things seville has to offer-Tapas,bull-lighting,flamenco-it's probably best known as the home of legendary ladies man Don Juan.And now the Spanish city finally has a hotel as seductive and romantic as the charming rouge himself.Opened last year in Seville's Barrio Alfalfa,on the fringes of the old Jewish Quarter,the bijou hotel corral del rey exudes an off-the-beaten-path glamour that is a welcome antidote to the city's more ostentatious luxury grandes dames.
In a previous life,the Corral del Rey-a towering trio of floors built around a traditional Moorish-style courtyard-was a private 17th century palacio.Now,after a meticulous two year restoration,it houses six luxuriantly laid-back suites.The hotel's young Anglo-Iberuan owners,brought in local architect Javier Betancourt and interior designer Kuky Mora-Figueroa,who have retained the palacio's original antique tapestries.Roman marble column and vaulted,carved-wood ceilings,while introducing 21st century mod cons such as flat-screen TVs,marble-and-glass baths and wi-fi.Burmese side table,over-sized Uzbek wall hangings,Scandinavian oak-paneled floors and pieces by Spanish
modernist painter Enrique Vara accent the Corral's whitewashed interiors,helping to complete its boho-boutique aesthetic.
And above all this is a duplex rooftop perch with a secluded table for two where,each evening,one couple can dine surrounded by Seville's illuminated landmarks,including its famous cathedral-the perfect setting for a Don Juan-worthy rendezvous.
In a previous life,the Corral del Rey-a towering trio of floors built around a traditional Moorish-style courtyard-was a private 17th century palacio.Now,after a meticulous two year restoration,it houses six luxuriantly laid-back suites.The hotel's young Anglo-Iberuan owners,brought in local architect Javier Betancourt and interior designer Kuky Mora-Figueroa,who have retained the palacio's original antique tapestries.Roman marble column and vaulted,carved-wood ceilings,while introducing 21st century mod cons such as flat-screen TVs,marble-and-glass baths and wi-fi.Burmese side table,over-sized Uzbek wall hangings,Scandinavian oak-paneled floors and pieces by Spanish
modernist painter Enrique Vara accent the Corral's whitewashed interiors,helping to complete its boho-boutique aesthetic.
And above all this is a duplex rooftop perch with a secluded table for two where,each evening,one couple can dine surrounded by Seville's illuminated landmarks,including its famous cathedral-the perfect setting for a Don Juan-worthy rendezvous.
seeing green above par the Castle Course at St.Andrews
The game of golf has idled along largely unchanged in the Scottish town of St.Andrews since the 15th century,when local nobles first put stick to ball on stretch of windswept turf now known as the Old Course.But on June 28 the birthplace of golf got a rare addition,another full-length course.
Set on a cliff above St Andrews,the Castle Course was designed by Scottish architect David Kidd,who was responsible for the much raved-about Bandon Dunes in Oregon.(His new creation named after a fortification formerly on the site )uses dramatic mounding and undulating greens to enhance the dizzying sense of expanse that comes with having the course overlook St.Andrews Bay.This is no place for beginners,the par 3 17th hole requires a 180 yard carry over a sea-splashed ravine,visual trickery makes wide fairways seem daunting tight.
Purists may ask whether this artifice-tons of earth molded into hills on what was once a flat field-is appropriate for a town so devoted to the ethos of links golf,which emphasizes natural features over altered landscapes.Still,the Castle Course offers the open,unpredictable greens that make a Scottish pilgrimage worthwhile.To paraphrase Mark Twain,it's a great way to spoil a good walk.
Set on a cliff above St Andrews,the Castle Course was designed by Scottish architect David Kidd,who was responsible for the much raved-about Bandon Dunes in Oregon.(His new creation named after a fortification formerly on the site )uses dramatic mounding and undulating greens to enhance the dizzying sense of expanse that comes with having the course overlook St.Andrews Bay.This is no place for beginners,the par 3 17th hole requires a 180 yard carry over a sea-splashed ravine,visual trickery makes wide fairways seem daunting tight.
Purists may ask whether this artifice-tons of earth molded into hills on what was once a flat field-is appropriate for a town so devoted to the ethos of links golf,which emphasizes natural features over altered landscapes.Still,the Castle Course offers the open,unpredictable greens that make a Scottish pilgrimage worthwhile.To paraphrase Mark Twain,it's a great way to spoil a good walk.
2008年7月21日 星期一
Global Adviser Clearly Beautiful A Murano exhibition seeks to reignite this island's passion for glass
Over seven centuries.The venetian island of Murano has built a reputation as home to some of the world's finest glassmakers.But now that many Venetian glass shops devote their shelves to kitsch trinkets and cheap pieces from the Far East,Murano's proud tradition of colorful,creative glasswork is fading.
FareVetro,an exhibition at the Glass Museum on Murano,aims to change that.This show is a reawakening,a sing that the artistic spirit of Murano has not been killed,says Giampaolo Sesugo,one of the showcased designers.All the pieces in the exhibition-which runs until Sep 30-are made by manufactures with deep roots on the island.Allegories of Life,a clear,curved panel etched with delicate neoclassical figures,was made for the Salir company in 1929 by engraver Franz Pelzel,from the Nason Moretti company's 1950's work comes a set of funky two-tone cups and bowl.
Glassblowers born on the island have often collaborated with artists from further afield.But FareVetro also celebrates those who work to their own vision.Andrea Zilio's Rainbow vase is all melting geometrics,created through the fusion of colored glass canes,while Simpme Cenedese proffers an installation of Pop Art-style flowers.
Murabo's future lies in nourishing such home-grown talents,in the last 40 years,the number of glassworkers on the island has declined form 5000 to 4000.If this show reminds Murano's younger generation that they belong to a great tradition,says Seguso,I will be a happy man.
FareVetro,an exhibition at the Glass Museum on Murano,aims to change that.This show is a reawakening,a sing that the artistic spirit of Murano has not been killed,says Giampaolo Sesugo,one of the showcased designers.All the pieces in the exhibition-which runs until Sep 30-are made by manufactures with deep roots on the island.Allegories of Life,a clear,curved panel etched with delicate neoclassical figures,was made for the Salir company in 1929 by engraver Franz Pelzel,from the Nason Moretti company's 1950's work comes a set of funky two-tone cups and bowl.
Glassblowers born on the island have often collaborated with artists from further afield.But FareVetro also celebrates those who work to their own vision.Andrea Zilio's Rainbow vase is all melting geometrics,created through the fusion of colored glass canes,while Simpme Cenedese proffers an installation of Pop Art-style flowers.
Murabo's future lies in nourishing such home-grown talents,in the last 40 years,the number of glassworkers on the island has declined form 5000 to 4000.If this show reminds Murano's younger generation that they belong to a great tradition,says Seguso,I will be a happy man.
2008年7月20日 星期日
Cue China snooker conjures up images of smoke-filled British Pubs and bow-tied players onTV But its newest face is Chinese
In front of what looks like a warehouse in an industrial zone in Chelmsford, a commuter town 30 mile nortthest of London,an electricity generator is billowing smoke.In the adjacent building,Ali Carter,28,is sitting by the bar,seemingly unfazed by the power cut that has plunged his snooker club into semidarkness.It's 10 am.on a Friday and a group of old-timers continue game,playing by the midmorning sunlight that dapples the table nearest the windows.
With no tournament,the summer used to ba an enforced holiday for the professional players,but no this year.Carter,ranked seventh in the world had just returned from China as victor of the Huangshan Cup and a few days later would pack his cue again ,this time for Nnjing to complete in the Jiangsu Classic.Like many of those on the snooker circuit,most of them from Britain,he struggles with jet lag on the China trips and isn't knee on the local food.But he's as stoic about it as he is about the faulty generator.China's where the game is popular and that's where the money is say Carter.And I try and stick with Western-style food anyway.
China's interest in snooker was seeded when promoter Barry Hearn toured with the stars of the game's heyday in the mid-1980s and Guangzhou hosted the first ranking event in China in 1990.Today,three of the tournaments in China are staged by the sport's governing body,World snooker.China is the most vibrant area of growth right now,say Ivan Hirschowitz,a World Snooker spokesman.What's happening there is fantastic.All world-ranking events are shown live on TV in China,adding up to 250 hours of televised snooker last season.But it's the emergence of a new generation of homegrown talent that has sparked in explosion in interest.Four Chinese players made it to the last 32 at the world champonships this year.Ding Junhui,who won the Jiangsu Classic on June 8,is modded wherever he goes.When the star of the East,to use his snooker sobriquet,won the China open two days after his 18th birthday in 2005,110 million watched on TV.By these figures,for any sport that wants to develop,an obsessive Chinese fan base makes a lot of financial sense.
What began as a monsoon-season diversion around 1875 in the British officers mess in Jabalpur in colonial India spread to the gentlemen's club's,then to the working men's clubs of Britian and the English-speaking corners of the commonwealth.It was the popularized and dominated in the 1930s and 40s by Joe Davis,who would pack theaters like the London Palladium for exhibition games with a 20 ft mirror suspended above the table for the audience to share the marvel.But obscurity followed,and snooker retreated to backstreet clubs,finding solace amid drinkers and gamblers.
Which is where David Attenborough,who was then a top offical at the BBC,found it,He saw snooker,with its colored balls and green baize,as the perfect format to exploit the new color TV technology and launched the show pot black in 1969.By the world championship final in 1985,snooker was more popular than perms and soulder pads.When Dennis Taylor sank the final black of the final 35th frame to win the trophy over Steve the Nugget Davis,after two days of play,it was 12 :19 am on Monday and 18.5 million Brits were still glued to their sets,the greatest ever TV audience for a sporting event in Britain at the time.
But the future is Asia,and particularly China,It's estimated that 50 million people now play snooker in China,and Benijing alone has 300 snooker halls, so it's only a matter of time before a Chinese world champion emerges.Ding is favored to be the first,and he has relocated to Sheffield,England,home of the World snooker Academy,in pursuit of his goal,although appreantly he misses his mother's huo guo hot pot.I had never to cooked for myself before....when I tried to cook chinese food it was inedible,Ding told the British daily the Independent.Snooker's in a good place now,says the Carter as the lights flickering back on in his club.There are sponsors,tournaments in China,prize money is on the up and it's on TV,And maybe a bowl of home-cooked huo guo could make those China trips all the more enjoyable.
With no tournament,the summer used to ba an enforced holiday for the professional players,but no this year.Carter,ranked seventh in the world had just returned from China as victor of the Huangshan Cup and a few days later would pack his cue again ,this time for Nnjing to complete in the Jiangsu Classic.Like many of those on the snooker circuit,most of them from Britain,he struggles with jet lag on the China trips and isn't knee on the local food.But he's as stoic about it as he is about the faulty generator.China's where the game is popular and that's where the money is say Carter.And I try and stick with Western-style food anyway.
China's interest in snooker was seeded when promoter Barry Hearn toured with the stars of the game's heyday in the mid-1980s and Guangzhou hosted the first ranking event in China in 1990.Today,three of the tournaments in China are staged by the sport's governing body,World snooker.China is the most vibrant area of growth right now,say Ivan Hirschowitz,a World Snooker spokesman.What's happening there is fantastic.All world-ranking events are shown live on TV in China,adding up to 250 hours of televised snooker last season.But it's the emergence of a new generation of homegrown talent that has sparked in explosion in interest.Four Chinese players made it to the last 32 at the world champonships this year.Ding Junhui,who won the Jiangsu Classic on June 8,is modded wherever he goes.When the star of the East,to use his snooker sobriquet,won the China open two days after his 18th birthday in 2005,110 million watched on TV.By these figures,for any sport that wants to develop,an obsessive Chinese fan base makes a lot of financial sense.
What began as a monsoon-season diversion around 1875 in the British officers mess in Jabalpur in colonial India spread to the gentlemen's club's,then to the working men's clubs of Britian and the English-speaking corners of the commonwealth.It was the popularized and dominated in the 1930s and 40s by Joe Davis,who would pack theaters like the London Palladium for exhibition games with a 20 ft mirror suspended above the table for the audience to share the marvel.But obscurity followed,and snooker retreated to backstreet clubs,finding solace amid drinkers and gamblers.
Which is where David Attenborough,who was then a top offical at the BBC,found it,He saw snooker,with its colored balls and green baize,as the perfect format to exploit the new color TV technology and launched the show pot black in 1969.By the world championship final in 1985,snooker was more popular than perms and soulder pads.When Dennis Taylor sank the final black of the final 35th frame to win the trophy over Steve the Nugget Davis,after two days of play,it was 12 :19 am on Monday and 18.5 million Brits were still glued to their sets,the greatest ever TV audience for a sporting event in Britain at the time.
But the future is Asia,and particularly China,It's estimated that 50 million people now play snooker in China,and Benijing alone has 300 snooker halls, so it's only a matter of time before a Chinese world champion emerges.Ding is favored to be the first,and he has relocated to Sheffield,England,home of the World snooker Academy,in pursuit of his goal,although appreantly he misses his mother's huo guo hot pot.I had never to cooked for myself before....when I tried to cook chinese food it was inedible,Ding told the British daily the Independent.Snooker's in a good place now,says the Carter as the lights flickering back on in his club.There are sponsors,tournaments in China,prize money is on the up and it's on TV,And maybe a bowl of home-cooked huo guo could make those China trips all the more enjoyable.
2008年7月19日 星期六
Fast living Why a small town of farmer and herder in the Ethoipian highlands has consistently yielded many of the world's best distance runners.
It is half an hour before dawn in the Ethiopian highlands,and most of the town of Bekoji still slumbers in the shadow of a 14000 ft high (4300 m high)volcano.On the street,though,a silent army is on the move.More than a hundred boys and girls-many in bare feet,some no taller than the goats feeding by the roadside-gravitate toward a vast,grassy plateau on Bekoji's outskirts.There,a man with a stopwatch,local running coach Santayehu Eshetch,is waiting.So intense is hunger here for running-and its rewards -that Eshetu's workouts,initially meant for 25 athletes,now draw 150 or more.Focused and serious,the runners listen to his words of guidance before taking off across the plateau,their feet slapping the earth in thunderous unison. I've no doubt,that one of these kids will be world champion.
Anywhere else,that comment might be an idle boast.In Bekoji,it is a virtual guarantee.By an improbable quick of history,this small community of farmer and herder along the Great Rift Valley has become the world's leading producer of distance runners.Many of the fastest male and female middle-distance runners on the planet hail form this patch of red earth 170 miles south of the capital,Addis Ababa,the athletes attended the same primary school,trained with the same childhood coach and in two cases grew up in the same thatched-roof hut.Led by two sets of siblings-the Bekele brothers and the Dibava sisters-Bekoji's ruuners are poised to rack up medals at this summer Benijing Olympics.So many,in fact,that their medal count alone may well surpass that of many industrilized nations.It's enough to make the hand-painted sign that greets vistiors on the dirt road into Bekoji seem endearingly modest,welcome to the village of athletes.
Bron to Race
Bekoji ranks as one of sport's great anomalies.Here,after all,is a rural African town where time almost stands still,where horse-drawn carts outnumber motor vehicles and neighbors greet each other by asking after their herds or crops.And yet its most famous products are Tirunesh Dibaba,a 23 years old blur who smashedthe women's 5000 meter world record in June by five seconds,and Kenensia Bekele,26 who has run the fastest times in human history at 5000 and 10000 meters.And they are just the beginning.Kenensia's 21 years-old brother,Tariku,is the current 3000 meter world indoor champion,while Diabab's sisters,Ejegayehu and Ginzebe,are would world-class runners.Serveral other Bekoji atives are close on their heels,while hunderds of others-that silent army on the plateau-are striving to join them.The tidal wave of runners from Bekoji is unstoppable,a Canadian investment banker whose foundation,A running start,has helped build classrooms in Bekoji.The physical conditions are just perfect for producing runners.
It's tempting,when breathing the thin air of Bekoji,to focus only on the confluence of geography and genetics.The town sits on the flank of a volcano nearly 10000 ft.Above sea level,making daily life itself a kind of high altitude training .Children in this region often start running at an early age,covering great distances to fetch water and firewood or to reach the nearest school.Our natural talent begins at the age of 2,says two-time Olympic gold medalist Haile Gebrselassie,who grew up in a village about 30 miles north of Bekoji,Gebrselassie,who set a new marathon world record last year,remember running over six miles to and from school every day carrying his books,leaving him with extraordinary stamina-and a distinctive crook in his left arm.Add to this early training the physique shared by many members of the Oromo ethnic group that predominates in the region- a short torso on disproportionately long legs-and you have the perfectly engineered distance runner.
No formula,however ,can conjure up the desire that burns inside Bekoji's young runners.Take the case of Million Abate,an 18 year old who caught Eshetu's attention last year when he sprinted to the finish of a 12 mile training run with his bare feet bleeding profusely.The coach took off his own Nikes and handed them to the young runner.Today,as he serves customers injera,the spongy Ethiopian flat bread,at a local truckers motel,Abate is still wearing the coach's shoes.They are his only pair,though he confesses a preference for running in bare feet.Shoes affect my speed,he says.And speed may be his only salvation.Forced to quit school in fifth grade after his father died,Abate worked as a shoe-shine boy before getting the motel job,which pay $9 a month.All along, he has never stopped running,chasing the dream of prosperity his mother imprinted on him shortly after his father's death,when she changed his name from Damelach to Million.
A place called hope
By Ethiopian standards,Bekoji is not a desperately poor town.The famine and malnutrition that stalk other parts of the country have bypassed this region of potato and barely farms.Still,families in Bekoji's outlying villages often live hand to mouth,and distance running-like foot-ball elsewhere in Africa or baseball in the Dominican Rebublic-offers the younger generation one of the few ways out.Bekoji's trailblazer was Tirunesh Dibaba's aunt,Derartu Tulu,who left home to avoid an early arranged marriage and ended up a national hero,winning the 10,000 meter Olympic gold medals in 1992 and 2000.As a reward,the goverment gave her a lovely house behind a stand of eucalyptus trees on the ruunners' plateau.Dibaba herself has used some of her millions of dollars in winnings to build her widowed father one of the only two-story houses in Bekoji the only other is the Bekeles.Though locals gawk admiringly ,the mansion is often empty.Dibaba's father perfers to stay in his old village tukul,or conical hut,where he can cook over an open fire and keep an eye on his herd of goats.
Anywhere else,that comment might be an idle boast.In Bekoji,it is a virtual guarantee.By an improbable quick of history,this small community of farmer and herder along the Great Rift Valley has become the world's leading producer of distance runners.Many of the fastest male and female middle-distance runners on the planet hail form this patch of red earth 170 miles south of the capital,Addis Ababa,the athletes attended the same primary school,trained with the same childhood coach and in two cases grew up in the same thatched-roof hut.Led by two sets of siblings-the Bekele brothers and the Dibava sisters-Bekoji's ruuners are poised to rack up medals at this summer Benijing Olympics.So many,in fact,that their medal count alone may well surpass that of many industrilized nations.It's enough to make the hand-painted sign that greets vistiors on the dirt road into Bekoji seem endearingly modest,welcome to the village of athletes.
Bron to Race
Bekoji ranks as one of sport's great anomalies.Here,after all,is a rural African town where time almost stands still,where horse-drawn carts outnumber motor vehicles and neighbors greet each other by asking after their herds or crops.And yet its most famous products are Tirunesh Dibaba,a 23 years old blur who smashedthe women's 5000 meter world record in June by five seconds,and Kenensia Bekele,26 who has run the fastest times in human history at 5000 and 10000 meters.And they are just the beginning.Kenensia's 21 years-old brother,Tariku,is the current 3000 meter world indoor champion,while Diabab's sisters,Ejegayehu and Ginzebe,are would world-class runners.Serveral other Bekoji atives are close on their heels,while hunderds of others-that silent army on the plateau-are striving to join them.The tidal wave of runners from Bekoji is unstoppable,a Canadian investment banker whose foundation,A running start,has helped build classrooms in Bekoji.The physical conditions are just perfect for producing runners.
It's tempting,when breathing the thin air of Bekoji,to focus only on the confluence of geography and genetics.The town sits on the flank of a volcano nearly 10000 ft.Above sea level,making daily life itself a kind of high altitude training .Children in this region often start running at an early age,covering great distances to fetch water and firewood or to reach the nearest school.Our natural talent begins at the age of 2,says two-time Olympic gold medalist Haile Gebrselassie,who grew up in a village about 30 miles north of Bekoji,Gebrselassie,who set a new marathon world record last year,remember running over six miles to and from school every day carrying his books,leaving him with extraordinary stamina-and a distinctive crook in his left arm.Add to this early training the physique shared by many members of the Oromo ethnic group that predominates in the region- a short torso on disproportionately long legs-and you have the perfectly engineered distance runner.
No formula,however ,can conjure up the desire that burns inside Bekoji's young runners.Take the case of Million Abate,an 18 year old who caught Eshetu's attention last year when he sprinted to the finish of a 12 mile training run with his bare feet bleeding profusely.The coach took off his own Nikes and handed them to the young runner.Today,as he serves customers injera,the spongy Ethiopian flat bread,at a local truckers motel,Abate is still wearing the coach's shoes.They are his only pair,though he confesses a preference for running in bare feet.Shoes affect my speed,he says.And speed may be his only salvation.Forced to quit school in fifth grade after his father died,Abate worked as a shoe-shine boy before getting the motel job,which pay $9 a month.All along, he has never stopped running,chasing the dream of prosperity his mother imprinted on him shortly after his father's death,when she changed his name from Damelach to Million.
A place called hope
By Ethiopian standards,Bekoji is not a desperately poor town.The famine and malnutrition that stalk other parts of the country have bypassed this region of potato and barely farms.Still,families in Bekoji's outlying villages often live hand to mouth,and distance running-like foot-ball elsewhere in Africa or baseball in the Dominican Rebublic-offers the younger generation one of the few ways out.Bekoji's trailblazer was Tirunesh Dibaba's aunt,Derartu Tulu,who left home to avoid an early arranged marriage and ended up a national hero,winning the 10,000 meter Olympic gold medals in 1992 and 2000.As a reward,the goverment gave her a lovely house behind a stand of eucalyptus trees on the ruunners' plateau.Dibaba herself has used some of her millions of dollars in winnings to build her widowed father one of the only two-story houses in Bekoji the only other is the Bekeles.Though locals gawk admiringly ,the mansion is often empty.Dibaba's father perfers to stay in his old village tukul,or conical hut,where he can cook over an open fire and keep an eye on his herd of goats.
2008年7月18日 星期五
The Indian Defense Virtually every nation or people has claimed to have invented chess.But the game's origin is clear.it lies in my own homeland India
Where did chess begin?For many who play the sport at its highest,most obsessive levels,that's not just a question of history-it's a matter of ownership,of dominion.We're so completely lost in our universe of 64 black and white squares that we like to think every move we make changes the way the world exists.So it's easy for Russian to imagine that chess began when they started to play it.In 1991,at my first international tournament,in Reggio Emilia in northern Italy,a Russian grandmaster condescendingly told me I could at best be a coffee-house player because I had not been tutored in the Soviet school of chess,which then dominated the sport.With the arrogance of youth- I was 21 I thought to myself,but didn't we Indians invent chess?Why shouldn't I have my own route to the top of the sport?
It would take 17 years to find that route,and along the way I've had hundreds of conversations about the origins of chess-with players,fans,officals,taxi drivers,barbers and who knows how many people who sat next to me on a plane.I've heard the owner-ship of chess being claimed by Russians,Chinese,Ukrainians,Arabs,Iranians,Turks,Spaniards and Greeks.My own view is that the sport belongs to everybody who play it,but the question of its origins is easy enough to answer,chess comes from India.
Our claim is based not on dominance-although the Indian school is now producing lots of high quality player,including ahem the world No1 .Some of the oldest references to the sport are found in ancient Indian texts.In the great epic Ramayana (which,according to some sources,was orally transmitted sometime between 750B.C.and 500 B.C.),the demon king Ravana invents chess to amuse his wife Mandodari.A brilliant mind,she promptly beats him at it.My grandmother told me that story when I first began to play the game at age 6.Chess also features in the Arthashastra (3rd century B.C),perhaps the world's oldest political treaties.Its author,Chanakya,describes chess as a game of war strategy,know as chaturanga,played on an 8-by-8 board.Think of it as the world's first virtual war game.
I believe chess traveled westward out of India,through what is now Afghanistan into Persia,where it arrived during the Sassanid Empire-an India king is believed to have sent a chessboard as a gift to his Persian counterpart.At the royal court in Ctesiphon,the game was known as chatrang.The Arabs learned it (they called it shatranj) when they conquered Persia in the 6th century A.D. and carried it across northern Africa.They introduced the game to Europe when the Moors crossed the Mediterranean into the Iberian peninsula.It grew immensely popular in Moorish Spain,where it was played in the street-a practice still seen in parks and other squares in cities around the world.
Iberia underwent a major change after the 15th century reconquista by Catholic forces led by Queen Isabella I-and chess changed,too.On the board,the queen became the most imporant piece,the bishop replaced the camel and flanked the king and queen.(Modern chess is still played by rules formalized under Isabella's reign).Around this time,the Spanish player Luis Ramirez de Lucena wrote what may have been the first book about chess theory-the Lucena Position remains to his day the cornerstone of rook and pawn endings.
Ironically,Russia may have been one of the last places in the Old World to receive chess,likely throught the Volga trade route.It became popular there during the reign of Peter the Great.The late introduction didn't stop the Russians from becoming the game's superpower,though,and it wasn't until 2000 that an Indian-your truly-finally brought the title of world chess champion back to the land of the sport's birth.
I like to think that the arc of my own career has in some ways mirrored the journey of chess.I learned to play in India,then moved to Spain so I could play the European circuit,and won my first world championship in Iran.It's nice when your place in chess history has something to do with the bigger picture.
It would take 17 years to find that route,and along the way I've had hundreds of conversations about the origins of chess-with players,fans,officals,taxi drivers,barbers and who knows how many people who sat next to me on a plane.I've heard the owner-ship of chess being claimed by Russians,Chinese,Ukrainians,Arabs,Iranians,Turks,Spaniards and Greeks.My own view is that the sport belongs to everybody who play it,but the question of its origins is easy enough to answer,chess comes from India.
Our claim is based not on dominance-although the Indian school is now producing lots of high quality player,including ahem the world No1 .Some of the oldest references to the sport are found in ancient Indian texts.In the great epic Ramayana (which,according to some sources,was orally transmitted sometime between 750B.C.and 500 B.C.),the demon king Ravana invents chess to amuse his wife Mandodari.A brilliant mind,she promptly beats him at it.My grandmother told me that story when I first began to play the game at age 6.Chess also features in the Arthashastra (3rd century B.C),perhaps the world's oldest political treaties.Its author,Chanakya,describes chess as a game of war strategy,know as chaturanga,played on an 8-by-8 board.Think of it as the world's first virtual war game.
I believe chess traveled westward out of India,through what is now Afghanistan into Persia,where it arrived during the Sassanid Empire-an India king is believed to have sent a chessboard as a gift to his Persian counterpart.At the royal court in Ctesiphon,the game was known as chatrang.The Arabs learned it (they called it shatranj) when they conquered Persia in the 6th century A.D. and carried it across northern Africa.They introduced the game to Europe when the Moors crossed the Mediterranean into the Iberian peninsula.It grew immensely popular in Moorish Spain,where it was played in the street-a practice still seen in parks and other squares in cities around the world.
Iberia underwent a major change after the 15th century reconquista by Catholic forces led by Queen Isabella I-and chess changed,too.On the board,the queen became the most imporant piece,the bishop replaced the camel and flanked the king and queen.(Modern chess is still played by rules formalized under Isabella's reign).Around this time,the Spanish player Luis Ramirez de Lucena wrote what may have been the first book about chess theory-the Lucena Position remains to his day the cornerstone of rook and pawn endings.
Ironically,Russia may have been one of the last places in the Old World to receive chess,likely throught the Volga trade route.It became popular there during the reign of Peter the Great.The late introduction didn't stop the Russians from becoming the game's superpower,though,and it wasn't until 2000 that an Indian-your truly-finally brought the title of world chess champion back to the land of the sport's birth.
I like to think that the arc of my own career has in some ways mirrored the journey of chess.I learned to play in India,then moved to Spain so I could play the European circuit,and won my first world championship in Iran.It's nice when your place in chess history has something to do with the bigger picture.
2008年7月17日 星期四
Leaps and Bounds It's not quite a sport,and it is certainly no game.But for sheer athleticism,the French-born extreme activity parkour is unmatched
In single-file formation and with remarkable economy of movement,half a dozen men bound up the face of a six-foot wall,leap into the exposed gap of a stairwell,then reappear two stories higher perched on the thin ledge of a terrace.After jumping to another balcony serveral feet away,they vault the side rail and lower themselves to the veranda below where they hang from the edge for a few minutes.Then,one by one they drop 10 feet to the ground,collapsing into tightly wound balls and rolling away before popping up to scale the face of another structure several yards away.The entire circuit takes fewer than 30 seconds to complete and comprises just one leg in a nearly hour-long session of the spectacular urban adventure known as parkour-where the destination,to steal a phrase,is the journey.
A blend of gymnastic,athlentics,free climbing and accelerated tei-chi movement executed on the move,parkour is attracting a growing number of adepts across its birthplace France and around the world by providing remarkable physical and mental training-as well as an amazing spectacle to behold.And it does that in places most people consider anything but a playground,the very urban settings,city structures and office complexes that half the planet lives and works in every day.Parkour turns the city into nature for me by transforming a building into a mountain and a wall into a tree,the creator and best known practitioner of parkour.It's a form of expression through movement amid obstacles that aren't suppose to be overcome.
The sight of people vaulting imposing obstruction or plunging bone-rattling distances can be spectacular-a major reason for the abundance of Internet videos of parkour enthusiasts or traceurs in their lingo leaping between vertiginous rooftops,or executing flips or twists while rappelling off walls.But while that may look snazzy,hard-core traceurs say most razzle-dazzle misses the point of the discipline,which they describe as exploring the capabilities of one's body,the better to react in extreme,even urgent situations.Belle based parkour on the multidiscipline training his fireman father devised to help himself and his colleagues deal with emergency conditions.The objective of parkour is to make yourself strong in order to be useful,an offical in France's military fire-fighting forces.
It's also a form of transport,both metaphoric and practical.Real parkour is about going from point A to B as fast,efficiently and safely as possible,which is why you repeat all the moves,jumps and falls a million times in controlled situations before you try anything more challenging,says 18 years old Thomas Mougne,a traceur from suburban Paris.The guys in the videos are doing flashy stuff because that's the point of the video,to be seen.Parkour is more about being here and gone as quickly as possible.Mougne's parkour partner,Seyf Boubakeur,says he used to be undisciplined and showy-bouncing off walls and taking heart-stopping risks,But regular training and a focus on the efficiency beloved by parkour purists,have taught him that limitations must first be conquerd in his own head.It's liberateing to learn how to do something I initially discovered I couldn't do,rather than just attacking it blindly as I would have before,often failing,say Boubakeur,20 an architecture student.
The combination of physical and mental elements is the real appeal of parkour to true devotees.Parkour takes you to places and across boundaries you didn't think you could cross before,say Paris area traceur Erwan Suquet 22.The key is to prepare and endure,And ultimately to test the limits of mind and body.
A blend of gymnastic,athlentics,free climbing and accelerated tei-chi movement executed on the move,parkour is attracting a growing number of adepts across its birthplace France and around the world by providing remarkable physical and mental training-as well as an amazing spectacle to behold.And it does that in places most people consider anything but a playground,the very urban settings,city structures and office complexes that half the planet lives and works in every day.Parkour turns the city into nature for me by transforming a building into a mountain and a wall into a tree,the creator and best known practitioner of parkour.It's a form of expression through movement amid obstacles that aren't suppose to be overcome.
The sight of people vaulting imposing obstruction or plunging bone-rattling distances can be spectacular-a major reason for the abundance of Internet videos of parkour enthusiasts or traceurs in their lingo leaping between vertiginous rooftops,or executing flips or twists while rappelling off walls.But while that may look snazzy,hard-core traceurs say most razzle-dazzle misses the point of the discipline,which they describe as exploring the capabilities of one's body,the better to react in extreme,even urgent situations.Belle based parkour on the multidiscipline training his fireman father devised to help himself and his colleagues deal with emergency conditions.The objective of parkour is to make yourself strong in order to be useful,an offical in France's military fire-fighting forces.
It's also a form of transport,both metaphoric and practical.Real parkour is about going from point A to B as fast,efficiently and safely as possible,which is why you repeat all the moves,jumps and falls a million times in controlled situations before you try anything more challenging,says 18 years old Thomas Mougne,a traceur from suburban Paris.The guys in the videos are doing flashy stuff because that's the point of the video,to be seen.Parkour is more about being here and gone as quickly as possible.Mougne's parkour partner,Seyf Boubakeur,says he used to be undisciplined and showy-bouncing off walls and taking heart-stopping risks,But regular training and a focus on the efficiency beloved by parkour purists,have taught him that limitations must first be conquerd in his own head.It's liberateing to learn how to do something I initially discovered I couldn't do,rather than just attacking it blindly as I would have before,often failing,say Boubakeur,20 an architecture student.
The combination of physical and mental elements is the real appeal of parkour to true devotees.Parkour takes you to places and across boundaries you didn't think you could cross before,say Paris area traceur Erwan Suquet 22.The key is to prepare and endure,And ultimately to test the limits of mind and body.
2008年7月16日 星期三
Loed of thr ring
The slab of concrete hidden behind thick walls and loops of barbed wire at the Central Correctional Institute for Young Male Offender may be the largest boxing gym in the world.For six hours each day.,160 wiry,lavishly tattooed ,thoroughly badass looking prisoners spar and attack punching bags with a single-minded determinated that underlies how high the stakes are.Many gifted pugilists have been released early on parole.Those who are still incarcerated but have fewer than 42 months left of their sentences can box in outside fights and keep their prize money to buy prison perks,like shrimp chips or enough space to sleep on their backs.According to prison officals,not a single boxer released from detention there has landed back in jail,compared to at least a 10 % recidivism rate among the prison's general population.
For all the sweat and testosterone,the young-offenders gym is a peculiar place,because it's missing the edge of aggresion you would expect in a boxing ring,not to mention a prison,Inmates finish pummeling each other and then deferentially bring their hands together in the traditional Thai greeting.Voices are gentle.One of the best boxers,a bantamweight nickname black lion who has already fought in 30 outside bouts,point out his favorite tattoo,It says Mam,It's dedicate to his mother,though he's embarrassed that the English word is mispelled.I have disappionted her for so long.I'm only finished first grade.I took drugs.Maybe with boxing and good focus,I can fix myself and make my mother proud.
Amnat Runeroeng can't make amends with his father.He didn't make it to his dad's funeral,because he was too high on heroin or crazy medicine or something else,he can't remember.Of all the mistakes the 29 years old has made-beating up his first grade teacher,snatching necklaces and wallets,robbing houses of everything including their fittings-missing his father's cremation is his biggest regret .Amnat is the ninth of nine childern.His parents sold pigs,and all his other siblings now sell pigs,but pigs just weren't Amnat's thing.So he stopped school in second grade and apprenticed himself to a Thai kickboxing gym.At 7 years old,he lost his first fight and cried from the pain in his ribs.He lost his second bout,too.But at least he stopped the tears from flowing.The years after that were a blur of highs and lows,well-aimed kicks that placed him among the top kickboxers in the region,drug-fueled robbery sprees that landed him in jail three times.
Then in 2006,Amnat decide to try his hand at international boxing.Having barely cracked a 15 year robbery sentence,he figured it would be a good way to pass time.A year later,Amnat had won a national title on the light flyweight division.Not coincidentally,he was paroled the day after that January 2007 fight-just two years and six months into his sentence.Last November,Amnat captured a bronze at the 2007 World Boxing Championships in Chicago.He's now on the Thai Olympic boxing team,which has been traning in Vietnam to avoid,as one coach puts it,girls ,nightclubs and other distractions.Amnat's Cuban coach Omar Puentes rates the former prisoner a medal contender in Bejing.The discipline and dedication that he got in prison are what account for his success,says Puentes.He's got more discipline than anyone else I 've trained.Amnat is even more direct.If I was not a champion,I'd still be in jail,That makes me try very hard.
The boxing narrative doesn't always end with redemption in the ring.Witness former world heavyweight champ Mike Tyson's slow motion self-destruction,the rape conviction,the bizarre facial tattoo,the ear he chomped during a 1997 title fight most everyone knew he'd lose.Out of the ring,pugilists can be unprepared for the pitfalls of fame.Convict boxers are more vulnerable than most.A stranger comes and promises you a second chance-who would turn that down?
In Thailand,for women jailbird boxers,Chuwong Toomkit is your man.Eddy favors dark suits,even when the mercury rises near 40c.His hair is dyed as black as his clothes.Eddy speaks English with an American twang and claims that Samson has about $15700 in the bank,courtesy of his promotional prowess.Some boxing insiders have hinted that Samson's success owes more to Eddy's ability to land her big fights than any proven track record.Eddy also says that since Time's policy is not to pay for interviews,he won't allow Samson wants?She trusts me on everything,he says I do everything for her.Asked,when Eddy isn't around,what kind of savings she has,Samson say she has no idea.Eddy knows all that,she says .And in Phnom Penh,the boxer admits she has no idea of the amount of the purse she just won.Eddy doesn't tell me things like that,she whispers.You'll have to ask him.
But for a girl who went to jail at 17,Samson's fairy tale continues.After her successful defense of her world title in Phnom Penh,the birthday girl went for dinner at the Thai ambassador's house.Imagine, a convicted drug dealer dining with diplomants and generals.She gave a speech and teared up.So did the men in suits and uniforms.
For all the sweat and testosterone,the young-offenders gym is a peculiar place,because it's missing the edge of aggresion you would expect in a boxing ring,not to mention a prison,Inmates finish pummeling each other and then deferentially bring their hands together in the traditional Thai greeting.Voices are gentle.One of the best boxers,a bantamweight nickname black lion who has already fought in 30 outside bouts,point out his favorite tattoo,It says Mam,It's dedicate to his mother,though he's embarrassed that the English word is mispelled.I have disappionted her for so long.I'm only finished first grade.I took drugs.Maybe with boxing and good focus,I can fix myself and make my mother proud.
Amnat Runeroeng can't make amends with his father.He didn't make it to his dad's funeral,because he was too high on heroin or crazy medicine or something else,he can't remember.Of all the mistakes the 29 years old has made-beating up his first grade teacher,snatching necklaces and wallets,robbing houses of everything including their fittings-missing his father's cremation is his biggest regret .Amnat is the ninth of nine childern.His parents sold pigs,and all his other siblings now sell pigs,but pigs just weren't Amnat's thing.So he stopped school in second grade and apprenticed himself to a Thai kickboxing gym.At 7 years old,he lost his first fight and cried from the pain in his ribs.He lost his second bout,too.But at least he stopped the tears from flowing.The years after that were a blur of highs and lows,well-aimed kicks that placed him among the top kickboxers in the region,drug-fueled robbery sprees that landed him in jail three times.
Then in 2006,Amnat decide to try his hand at international boxing.Having barely cracked a 15 year robbery sentence,he figured it would be a good way to pass time.A year later,Amnat had won a national title on the light flyweight division.Not coincidentally,he was paroled the day after that January 2007 fight-just two years and six months into his sentence.Last November,Amnat captured a bronze at the 2007 World Boxing Championships in Chicago.He's now on the Thai Olympic boxing team,which has been traning in Vietnam to avoid,as one coach puts it,girls ,nightclubs and other distractions.Amnat's Cuban coach Omar Puentes rates the former prisoner a medal contender in Bejing.The discipline and dedication that he got in prison are what account for his success,says Puentes.He's got more discipline than anyone else I 've trained.Amnat is even more direct.If I was not a champion,I'd still be in jail,That makes me try very hard.
The boxing narrative doesn't always end with redemption in the ring.Witness former world heavyweight champ Mike Tyson's slow motion self-destruction,the rape conviction,the bizarre facial tattoo,the ear he chomped during a 1997 title fight most everyone knew he'd lose.Out of the ring,pugilists can be unprepared for the pitfalls of fame.Convict boxers are more vulnerable than most.A stranger comes and promises you a second chance-who would turn that down?
In Thailand,for women jailbird boxers,Chuwong Toomkit is your man.Eddy favors dark suits,even when the mercury rises near 40c.His hair is dyed as black as his clothes.Eddy speaks English with an American twang and claims that Samson has about $15700 in the bank,courtesy of his promotional prowess.Some boxing insiders have hinted that Samson's success owes more to Eddy's ability to land her big fights than any proven track record.Eddy also says that since Time's policy is not to pay for interviews,he won't allow Samson wants?She trusts me on everything,he says I do everything for her.Asked,when Eddy isn't around,what kind of savings she has,Samson say she has no idea.Eddy knows all that,she says .And in Phnom Penh,the boxer admits she has no idea of the amount of the purse she just won.Eddy doesn't tell me things like that,she whispers.You'll have to ask him.
But for a girl who went to jail at 17,Samson's fairy tale continues.After her successful defense of her world title in Phnom Penh,the birthday girl went for dinner at the Thai ambassador's house.Imagine, a convicted drug dealer dining with diplomants and generals.She gave a speech and teared up.So did the men in suits and uniforms.
Prison Break In Thailand,boxing gives convicts a fighting chance to punch their way out of jail-and create a new life free from crime
She was on fire.She was on ice.When your whole body has been rubbed with menthol balm,it's hard to know whether you're hot or cold,but that sensory invigoration was just what Thailand's Siriporn(Samson)Thaveesuk needed to take the Japanese girl.The venue for the World Boxing Council(WBC)light-flyweight world championship bout was the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces stadium in Phnom Penh,paint peeling,bleachers sweaty-slick with nervous punters,the smell of dope in the air.Samson's opponent had a career in advertising before turning pro,but the japanese knew how to punch efficiently and clearly.With her pink boxing gloves,Samson hunkered down for 10 rounds.The boxing was workmanlike,jab,hook,upper cut,jab.No floating like a butterfly,barely a bee sting.When the flight was finally called on points inSamson's favor,the 25 years-old beamed briefly then spent the rest of her victory parade looking relieved.Boxing to Samson was a way out,just like selling methamphetamine was suppose to be a path away from poverty.Dealing crazy medicine,as meth is known in Thailand,had landed her in jail.Boxing had freed her.
If everyone global sport has narrative,boxing's is a tale of redemption.With each teeth-jarring blow and flutter of feet comes potential salvation.Cassius Clay fought for black pride and transformed into Muhammad Ali,In an earlier era,Joe Louis had floored Max Schmeling to expose the lie of Aryan supremacy.For others,boxing has offered a literal escape.Sonny Linston earned early parole from an armed-robbery conviction because of his A-bomb jab.
Drug dealers in Thailand aren't suppose to get second chances.Some things Samson couldn't help,like being born into a dirt-poor family in the cnetral Thai province of Lopburi.Then again,some Thais believe Buddist karma deposits people in a slum for a reason.Samson's father left when she was little.Her mother died on the job,powering a stunt motocycle up a Wall of Death.Some choices,through,were Samson's own,like dropping out of seventh grade and trying brightly colored tablets of crazy medicine.Using led to dealing.Dealing led to a 10 year prison sentence at age 17.For years in,Samson signed up for a new prison boxing program,partly to alleviate the boredom of life in jail,partly to learn how to defend herself other inmates.Each day,she changed out of her orange jumpsuit and studied the sweet science in a makeshift gym located on the fringes of a factory where prisoners sewed clothes.
Calling her a quick study would be an understatement.In April 2007,less than three years after she first entered the ring,Samson won the vacant World Boxing Council's light-flyweight title against a Japanese fighter.The contest was held in a Thai prison,and Samson entered the record books as the first world champion to claim her title in jail.Two month later,Samson was released early on parole for good behavior- a euphemism for having fought her way out of prison.Her accomplishment was just one of dozens of world boxing titles claimed by Thais.Steeped in a local tradition of kickboxing,known as the art of eight limbs,Thais have seamlessly transferred that skill to international boxing.Eleven of the country's 17 Olympic medals have come courtesy of the sport.Since leaving prison Samson has defended her title three times,most recently in Phnom Penh on April 26 against the Japanese boxer.The date also happened to be Samson's birthday.I've really made it,she said after the bout,with more than a touch of wonderment in her voice.I never thought my life would turn out like this.
With 170,000 people behind bars in a country of 65 million,Thailand has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. The majority of prisoners are drug offenders,many first-time felons who in other countries might have gotten off with a warning or stint in rehab.Cells are crowded that inmates are sometimes forced to sleep sideways instead of on their backs.In such an environment,any diversion is welcome.The Thai prison system began its formal nationwide boxing program five years ago,inviting both international and Thai kickboxing coaches to train inmates.The one thing people in detention have a lot of is time,says Wanchai Roujanavong ,director general of Thailand's Department of Corrections.It's a good environment for dedicating yourself to boxing.The sport also provides postprison opportunities.A lot of people have a hard time finding jobs after they are released ,says Wanchai.But in boxing,no one cares about your history.
If everyone global sport has narrative,boxing's is a tale of redemption.With each teeth-jarring blow and flutter of feet comes potential salvation.Cassius Clay fought for black pride and transformed into Muhammad Ali,In an earlier era,Joe Louis had floored Max Schmeling to expose the lie of Aryan supremacy.For others,boxing has offered a literal escape.Sonny Linston earned early parole from an armed-robbery conviction because of his A-bomb jab.
Drug dealers in Thailand aren't suppose to get second chances.Some things Samson couldn't help,like being born into a dirt-poor family in the cnetral Thai province of Lopburi.Then again,some Thais believe Buddist karma deposits people in a slum for a reason.Samson's father left when she was little.Her mother died on the job,powering a stunt motocycle up a Wall of Death.Some choices,through,were Samson's own,like dropping out of seventh grade and trying brightly colored tablets of crazy medicine.Using led to dealing.Dealing led to a 10 year prison sentence at age 17.For years in,Samson signed up for a new prison boxing program,partly to alleviate the boredom of life in jail,partly to learn how to defend herself other inmates.Each day,she changed out of her orange jumpsuit and studied the sweet science in a makeshift gym located on the fringes of a factory where prisoners sewed clothes.
Calling her a quick study would be an understatement.In April 2007,less than three years after she first entered the ring,Samson won the vacant World Boxing Council's light-flyweight title against a Japanese fighter.The contest was held in a Thai prison,and Samson entered the record books as the first world champion to claim her title in jail.Two month later,Samson was released early on parole for good behavior- a euphemism for having fought her way out of prison.Her accomplishment was just one of dozens of world boxing titles claimed by Thais.Steeped in a local tradition of kickboxing,known as the art of eight limbs,Thais have seamlessly transferred that skill to international boxing.Eleven of the country's 17 Olympic medals have come courtesy of the sport.Since leaving prison Samson has defended her title three times,most recently in Phnom Penh on April 26 against the Japanese boxer.The date also happened to be Samson's birthday.I've really made it,she said after the bout,with more than a touch of wonderment in her voice.I never thought my life would turn out like this.
With 170,000 people behind bars in a country of 65 million,Thailand has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. The majority of prisoners are drug offenders,many first-time felons who in other countries might have gotten off with a warning or stint in rehab.Cells are crowded that inmates are sometimes forced to sleep sideways instead of on their backs.In such an environment,any diversion is welcome.The Thai prison system began its formal nationwide boxing program five years ago,inviting both international and Thai kickboxing coaches to train inmates.The one thing people in detention have a lot of is time,says Wanchai Roujanavong ,director general of Thailand's Department of Corrections.It's a good environment for dedicating yourself to boxing.The sport also provides postprison opportunities.A lot of people have a hard time finding jobs after they are released ,says Wanchai.But in boxing,no one cares about your history.
2008年7月15日 星期二
Riding a new wave Why surfers are inundating the frigid waters off Britain's rocky Cornwall coast
Oil Adams lists the glamorous shores he has surfed over the past year,Hawaii,Brazil,the Canaries,South Africa.He could go on.Right now,though,the 23 years old British professional surfer is sitting under a gloomy sky in Newquay-a small beachside town of 20000 in Cornwall,England's most south and westerly county.And he's exactly where he want to be.Cornwall is the most beautiful,mellow place in the world,he says looking out to sea,where some 30 surfers are paddling through 15c waters and cutting along four-foot waves.I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.
Adams isn't the only surfer to call these frigid Atlantic waters home.Over the past 50 years, a sport that was once synonymous with sun-blessed Hwaiians,Californians and Australians has been embraced by an ever-swelling number of Europeans.You can now head to any wave-battered beach from the west coast of Ireland to the north of France and see shoals of wet-suited surfers battling to catch the perfect break.In the U.K alone,the British Surfing Association BSA estimates that there are 500,000 regular surfer-a 900% rise over the past 15 years.And it's along Cornwall's north coast that some of the country's finest wave break.Low pressure systems over the Atlantic push swells toward the county all year round.The 125 miles coastline is pockmarked with bays and coves facing different directions,so a determined surfer can track down good waves on almost any day.
Locals and holidaymakers had been riding those breaks on bellyboar-tombstone shaped pieces of plywood-since the early 1990s.Then ,in the 1960s,nomadic Australians and South Africans arrived in Newquay to work as lifeguards.They brought with team modern fiber-glass boards,and started to teach loacl boys,like Roger Mansfield(who went on to become British champion in 1970,)the art of suring.In 1963,there were 10 to 15 people surfing in Newquay,says Mansfield,author of the soon-to-be-released The Surfing Tribe.A history of surfing in Britain.It was an isloated,esoteric activity.
Thers days,It's hard to get any alone time with the ocean.Three miles north of Newquay,the waves at Watergate Bay are crammed with 100 surfers.Most are beginners,bobing around in the three-foot swell on foam learner boards,hired from nearby shops for $10 .Dan Deacon,31, a marketing executive from London,amd his wife Ley, a 31 year old lawyer,have just emerged from the water and are resting on the sand.It's harder than it looks,gasps Dan.We've only been at it for 30 minutes,and we're knackered.The couple decieded to take a weeklong surfing break after hearing friends and colleaguess rave about the waves.There's real buzz about surfing now,he says.A lot of our friends have taken it up.
People like Dan and Ley are one reason surfing's once edgy image has gone more mainstream.According to the BSA,some 43% of British surfers earn $50,000 or more a year,compared to 34 % just two years ago.Surfers are now doctors,solicitors,architects and accountants,says Chris Jones,who has been making sunboards in Newquay since 1965.The sport has also been made more accessible by constant advances in wet-suit design over the past 20 years.Waterproof seams and thicker,more flexible neoprene material mean that would-be surfers cna stay in the often icy water for longer,12 month a year.
The possibility of year round surfing has brought a new splash of cash to Cornwall.The BSA reckons the sport is now worth $140 million to the Cornish economy.The spending power of this new wave of weekend surfers can be seen most clearly at watergate bay,Until a decade ago,the cliff-top hotel perched above the bay was a fusty,Edwardian pile.On the beach,buckets,spades and ice creams were sold out of a wooden hut.then,in 2001,Will Ashworth took over the hotel from his parents,and together with his brother Henry set out to create a ski resort on a beach where guests could roll out of the sea,straight into their luxury beachside lodge.
A 7 million renovation transformed the hotel into a slick,modern gateway,and that beach-hut shop is now a cafe,bar and branch of British chef Jamie Olive's Fifteen restaurant.An extreme Academy was established to teach water sports to guests and beach visitors-last year 3500 people signed up for surfing lessons.Ashwotrth 31 says the hotel turned over 10 million last year,compared to 2.2 million in 1999.And while the old hotel employed only 10 people in winter.it now employs 102 through the colder months and up to 150 in peak season,This is immensely positive for the local economy.
Some local surfers worry however,that surfing's ever increasing popularity could hurt the sport's traditional free and informal nature.Tourism is important to Cornwall,says Newquay-based fireman Nathaniel Hooton,who has been surfing for 17 years.But surfing has completely changed in the past decade.There days the waves around Newquay are too crowded in summer.Even secret spot,once surfed exclusively by locals who would shimmy down ropes into the water,have been outed to the world on the Internet.
Adams and Hooton-the two surf together occasionally-have resigned themselves to their once-tranquil hometown becoming a magnet for surf tourists because they share the newcomers love the place.Surfing here is addictive,says Hooton.There really is no better feeling in the world than waking up at 4 am.And getting in the water as the sun comes up.In Cornwall today,whatever season,the surf's always up.
Adams isn't the only surfer to call these frigid Atlantic waters home.Over the past 50 years, a sport that was once synonymous with sun-blessed Hwaiians,Californians and Australians has been embraced by an ever-swelling number of Europeans.You can now head to any wave-battered beach from the west coast of Ireland to the north of France and see shoals of wet-suited surfers battling to catch the perfect break.In the U.K alone,the British Surfing Association BSA estimates that there are 500,000 regular surfer-a 900% rise over the past 15 years.And it's along Cornwall's north coast that some of the country's finest wave break.Low pressure systems over the Atlantic push swells toward the county all year round.The 125 miles coastline is pockmarked with bays and coves facing different directions,so a determined surfer can track down good waves on almost any day.
Locals and holidaymakers had been riding those breaks on bellyboar-tombstone shaped pieces of plywood-since the early 1990s.Then ,in the 1960s,nomadic Australians and South Africans arrived in Newquay to work as lifeguards.They brought with team modern fiber-glass boards,and started to teach loacl boys,like Roger Mansfield(who went on to become British champion in 1970,)the art of suring.In 1963,there were 10 to 15 people surfing in Newquay,says Mansfield,author of the soon-to-be-released The Surfing Tribe.A history of surfing in Britain.It was an isloated,esoteric activity.
Thers days,It's hard to get any alone time with the ocean.Three miles north of Newquay,the waves at Watergate Bay are crammed with 100 surfers.Most are beginners,bobing around in the three-foot swell on foam learner boards,hired from nearby shops for $10 .Dan Deacon,31, a marketing executive from London,amd his wife Ley, a 31 year old lawyer,have just emerged from the water and are resting on the sand.It's harder than it looks,gasps Dan.We've only been at it for 30 minutes,and we're knackered.The couple decieded to take a weeklong surfing break after hearing friends and colleaguess rave about the waves.There's real buzz about surfing now,he says.A lot of our friends have taken it up.
People like Dan and Ley are one reason surfing's once edgy image has gone more mainstream.According to the BSA,some 43% of British surfers earn $50,000 or more a year,compared to 34 % just two years ago.Surfers are now doctors,solicitors,architects and accountants,says Chris Jones,who has been making sunboards in Newquay since 1965.The sport has also been made more accessible by constant advances in wet-suit design over the past 20 years.Waterproof seams and thicker,more flexible neoprene material mean that would-be surfers cna stay in the often icy water for longer,12 month a year.
The possibility of year round surfing has brought a new splash of cash to Cornwall.The BSA reckons the sport is now worth $140 million to the Cornish economy.The spending power of this new wave of weekend surfers can be seen most clearly at watergate bay,Until a decade ago,the cliff-top hotel perched above the bay was a fusty,Edwardian pile.On the beach,buckets,spades and ice creams were sold out of a wooden hut.then,in 2001,Will Ashworth took over the hotel from his parents,and together with his brother Henry set out to create a ski resort on a beach where guests could roll out of the sea,straight into their luxury beachside lodge.
A 7 million renovation transformed the hotel into a slick,modern gateway,and that beach-hut shop is now a cafe,bar and branch of British chef Jamie Olive's Fifteen restaurant.An extreme Academy was established to teach water sports to guests and beach visitors-last year 3500 people signed up for surfing lessons.Ashwotrth 31 says the hotel turned over 10 million last year,compared to 2.2 million in 1999.And while the old hotel employed only 10 people in winter.it now employs 102 through the colder months and up to 150 in peak season,This is immensely positive for the local economy.
Some local surfers worry however,that surfing's ever increasing popularity could hurt the sport's traditional free and informal nature.Tourism is important to Cornwall,says Newquay-based fireman Nathaniel Hooton,who has been surfing for 17 years.But surfing has completely changed in the past decade.There days the waves around Newquay are too crowded in summer.Even secret spot,once surfed exclusively by locals who would shimmy down ropes into the water,have been outed to the world on the Internet.
Adams and Hooton-the two surf together occasionally-have resigned themselves to their once-tranquil hometown becoming a magnet for surf tourists because they share the newcomers love the place.Surfing here is addictive,says Hooton.There really is no better feeling in the world than waking up at 4 am.And getting in the water as the sun comes up.In Cornwall today,whatever season,the surf's always up.
2008年7月14日 星期一
Brilliant Boys and Their Cool Toys
If there's any anxiety at Pixar about doing an I Am Legend for the junior set,you won't hear it from John Lasster,Pixar's creative director and the inventive mind behind Toy Story,A Bug's life and Car's.He's his usual beaming,cartoon-round,Hawaiian-shirt-wearing self as he waxes rhapsodic about Wall.E and,in passing,confides the secret of the studio's success.The people who work here are doing what they've wanted to do their whole lives.
That would sound like cult-leader talk from anyone else.But a visitor to Pixar HQ in Emeryville,Calif.(Where the upscale cafeteria serves iced tea,not Kool-aid),find a workforce that is able to channel a child's sense of play and wild imagination into the business of CGI moviemaking.The trick, never grow up.Lassester's office shelves groan with hundreds of gewgaws from Pixas films.I love toys,he says unabashedly.A lot of animations love toys.
Toy love-the child's belief that a piece of cloth or a machine can have life,feelings,personality-is at the heart of many Pixar movies,begining with Lasseter's 80's shorts Luxo,Jr(Whose lamp became the i in the company's logo),Red's Dream and Tin Toy,all made to demostrate the possibilities of the infant CGI medium but with the savvy and sentiment of a natural storyteller.Staton says he has seen Luxo,Jr. dozen of times,yet,Miraculously,I get caught up every time,in the wordless story of father and son lamps.Take that 2 min experiment from 1986,and WALL.E is the logical romantic extension,toy meets girl.
And,on a technical level,sight meets sound.WALL.E's animation,especially in scences on Earth,has a photorealistic quality,it looks like a gorgeously arid,live-action waste dump.The appointments of the Axiom,exterior and interior,are as finely detailed as those in any Star Wars or Alien film.Even if the exploits of Wall.E and Eve don't take and break your heart,you'll be impressed by the graphic design.
Add to that the amazing dimension Burtt brought to the film.Signing with Pixar after 28 years at Lucasfilm Ltd,he got this plum of a project,he'd be creating most of Wall.E's sounds,from the hero's voice(Brutt's own,which he stretched,distorted and metallicized on his computer keyboard) to the wind of Wall.E's world 'that's just Niagara Falls' and the sound of the bot driving around It's taken from a tank,but it's made to sound tiny.
Brutt is an audio Audubon.Much of his recording is done on location-in zoos, his driveway or (lots of this in WALL.E) a junkyard,The chirps needed for WALL.E's cockroach companion were provided by a raccoon,speeded up ,and the insect's clicks came from the sound of locking handcuffs.I was recording a policeman's Taser,Burtt recalls,and I said,Let me hear your handcuffs.
Having spent so much time with Geroge Lucars on the Star War series,Burtt is used to demanding directors.But even he was sometimes perplexed by Stanton's requests.Andrew would say,That sound of the motor-could we have one with more pathos?And then I see it as just another challenge and say,O.K. I'll get ya one!
Pixar at its best,invents its own challenges.The typical director worries that most people will see his movie at home,their finger on the fast-forward and stop buttons,so he makes every element instantly understandable.That's why most movies seem as if they were made for the passengers of Axiom.But Wall.E plays without safety nets or spoon-feeding,it reinvents the delicate,potent behavioral language of silent-film comedy,of the Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin films.
We don't have to contribute to the dreck,Stanton says of the Pixar team.We want to sustain the love of going to movies.After Finding Nemo,I thought, Now is the time to push open the door-to broaden the palette,increase the possibility of what a good movie is in the audience's mind.Will they have to open their receptors?Fine.If they discorver it on their own,They'll enjoy it so much more.Pixar has taken its biggest gamble,but it's moviegoers who'll be the winners.
That would sound like cult-leader talk from anyone else.But a visitor to Pixar HQ in Emeryville,Calif.(Where the upscale cafeteria serves iced tea,not Kool-aid),find a workforce that is able to channel a child's sense of play and wild imagination into the business of CGI moviemaking.The trick, never grow up.Lassester's office shelves groan with hundreds of gewgaws from Pixas films.I love toys,he says unabashedly.A lot of animations love toys.
Toy love-the child's belief that a piece of cloth or a machine can have life,feelings,personality-is at the heart of many Pixar movies,begining with Lasseter's 80's shorts Luxo,Jr(Whose lamp became the i in the company's logo),Red's Dream and Tin Toy,all made to demostrate the possibilities of the infant CGI medium but with the savvy and sentiment of a natural storyteller.Staton says he has seen Luxo,Jr. dozen of times,yet,Miraculously,I get caught up every time,in the wordless story of father and son lamps.Take that 2 min experiment from 1986,and WALL.E is the logical romantic extension,toy meets girl.
And,on a technical level,sight meets sound.WALL.E's animation,especially in scences on Earth,has a photorealistic quality,it looks like a gorgeously arid,live-action waste dump.The appointments of the Axiom,exterior and interior,are as finely detailed as those in any Star Wars or Alien film.Even if the exploits of Wall.E and Eve don't take and break your heart,you'll be impressed by the graphic design.
Add to that the amazing dimension Burtt brought to the film.Signing with Pixar after 28 years at Lucasfilm Ltd,he got this plum of a project,he'd be creating most of Wall.E's sounds,from the hero's voice(Brutt's own,which he stretched,distorted and metallicized on his computer keyboard) to the wind of Wall.E's world 'that's just Niagara Falls' and the sound of the bot driving around It's taken from a tank,but it's made to sound tiny.
Brutt is an audio Audubon.Much of his recording is done on location-in zoos, his driveway or (lots of this in WALL.E) a junkyard,The chirps needed for WALL.E's cockroach companion were provided by a raccoon,speeded up ,and the insect's clicks came from the sound of locking handcuffs.I was recording a policeman's Taser,Burtt recalls,and I said,Let me hear your handcuffs.
Having spent so much time with Geroge Lucars on the Star War series,Burtt is used to demanding directors.But even he was sometimes perplexed by Stanton's requests.Andrew would say,That sound of the motor-could we have one with more pathos?And then I see it as just another challenge and say,O.K. I'll get ya one!
Pixar at its best,invents its own challenges.The typical director worries that most people will see his movie at home,their finger on the fast-forward and stop buttons,so he makes every element instantly understandable.That's why most movies seem as if they were made for the passengers of Axiom.But Wall.E plays without safety nets or spoon-feeding,it reinvents the delicate,potent behavioral language of silent-film comedy,of the Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin films.
We don't have to contribute to the dreck,Stanton says of the Pixar team.We want to sustain the love of going to movies.After Finding Nemo,I thought, Now is the time to push open the door-to broaden the palette,increase the possibility of what a good movie is in the audience's mind.Will they have to open their receptors?Fine.If they discorver it on their own,They'll enjoy it so much more.Pixar has taken its biggest gamble,but it's moviegoers who'll be the winners.
2008年7月13日 星期日
Pixar's Biggest Gamble The animation wonder boys roll the dice on a demanding and delightful sci-fi robot romance
The dusty cityscape shows remnants of a civilization,an empty work, a createred warehouse mall,tattered billboards for coals and travel agencies,all bearing the logo of Buy-N-Large.Too much trash-earth covered reads an old headline,and we note that some of the skyscrapers are made of compacted trash cubes.The planet has become one huge junkyard,as if all humanity were a rock band that had made a shambles of hotal room,then just strolled out.The only remaining sign of organic life on Earth is that unkillable little bugger,a cockroach.
Among this urban detritus,something else is moving.It looks like another trash cube-but with binocular eyes,forklift plates for arms and Caterpillar tracks to navigate the rough terrain.The thing is called a waste allocation load lifter,Earth class and its job is to clean up the mess of consumerism run amok.It's also apparently the last of its kind still functioning.
Appreantly,because for its first 30 min,the new Pixar astonishment Wall.E has virtually no dialogue.Nor does it offer a Star Wars-like print crawl to inform viewers that this is Earth 800 years from now.The mechanical critter who is the film's hero can speak only in electronic grunts and sighs,or in one-word bursts,like a chatter R2D2.The movie's other main creature,a robot name eve,also can speak only a few words.Yet it's Pixar's big,bold belief that the mass audience will be astute enough to follow the visual clues and game enough to play along.So confident is the studio in its ability to charm audiences,it has made a futurist movie that's a lot like an old silent picture.
Among this urban detritus,something else is moving.It looks like another trash cube-but with binocular eyes,forklift plates for arms and Caterpillar tracks to navigate the rough terrain.The thing is called a waste allocation load lifter,Earth class and its job is to clean up the mess of consumerism run amok.It's also apparently the last of its kind still functioning.
Appreantly,because for its first 30 min,the new Pixar astonishment Wall.E has virtually no dialogue.Nor does it offer a Star Wars-like print crawl to inform viewers that this is Earth 800 years from now.The mechanical critter who is the film's hero can speak only in electronic grunts and sighs,or in one-word bursts,like a chatter R2D2.The movie's other main creature,a robot name eve,also can speak only a few words.Yet it's Pixar's big,bold belief that the mass audience will be astute enough to follow the visual clues and game enough to play along.So confident is the studio in its ability to charm audiences,it has made a futurist movie that's a lot like an old silent picture.
2008年7月12日 星期六
The case for big banks
Yet as money floods in,Alkua has tales of brewing conflict.Consider the time a bank chairman asked if SKS could raise its interest rates.Akula said yes(in most markets it has a monopoly),but that SKS wouldn't do so because it would be exploitative.The banker scoffed that Akula didn't understand economics.Akula shot back that the banker didn't understand customers,who would turn on SKS if they felt abused.We're maintaining a loyal customer base that will stay with us as they get out of poverty.
As long as investors have a long-term view,Akula argues,the social and financial missions of microfinanace intertwine.We're not giving away money here,we expect a return,say Gary Hattem,a managing director of Deutsche Bank,which runs four microfinance funds.But we do keep our eye on the social-impact side of this.It's very humbling when you go to places where the people coming to borrow smell like the cows they're raising.
Yet the pressure to turn a profit often forces microfinance to change their business models in ways that depart from the industry's orginal purposes.As Al Amana,Morocco's largest outfit,has shifted from grants to commercial funding,it's average loan size has roughly tripled,smaller loans to the most desperate borrowers are costlier to service.One consequence of commercialization is that a lower percentage of loans go to women because they tend to take out smaller sums,according to a recent study by Women's World banking.
As a growing number of microfinance firms go public,qualms about putting the financial interests of shareholders above the needs of clients have mounted.Already he flood of new money has come under criticism from longtime microfinance advocates for focusing too much on the largest firms operating in the most profitable countries.According to CGAP,75% of cross-border funds go to Latin America and Eastern Europe,the world's most developed microfinance markets the low hanging fruit.That could leave out the poorest of the world's poor,who are predominantly in Asia and Africa.Says Alex Counts,CEO of the nonprofit Grameen Foundation,which helps develop microfinance institution,you might need to invent the microfinance industry all ovr again.
Segmenting the industry,though,might not be so bad if it allows more of the poor to get access to credit.Let multinational corporations take the top microfinance institutions to the next level,and leave the bottom of the pyramid to development groups and regional banks.That's what Ecoback is doing in Africa.The Togo-based company,with operations in 22 countries,has for years acted as a banker to microfinance groups,taking deposits and writing loans.Over that time,Ecobank has grow hip to the business model and last year launched a microfinance institution of its own,in Nigeria and then in Ghana.Senegal and Cameroon are next.This empowers the bottom of the African market,says Ecobank microfinance head Rotimi Nihinlolamand, is a good opporitunity to grow our business.
Yet marking loans to poor people,while an important tool,is hardly a poverty cure-all.Proverty right,the rule of law,these things mater too.You cannot overidealize what microfinance alone can do.Most outfits started with lending simply because local laws prohibited nonbanks from offering deposit accounts.When people do have the option to save instead of borrow,saving is often what they prefer.
With marketing savvy introduced into the equation,poverty-alleviation experts are concerned that people will be talked into loans they wouldn't otherwise wnat.Most genuinely poor people are not happy with carrying debt,the danger of all this new money is that microcredit institutions will feel compelled to go out and generatemore borrowers.But the new money is also expanding the scope of microfinance beyond small loanmarking.As institution compete for customers,they are rolling out other services.In Mexico,Citigroup has written more than 1 million life-insurance policies in conjunction with compartamos, and in India it offers customers savings accounts and ATM access in partnership with microfinancier BASIX.Not everyone will be an entrepreneur,but most of us have to save for something.Microfinanciers around the world are racing to offer the first real micromortagages.That we are now talking about creating financial systems that include the majority of people in developing countries is a real departure form what has existed for centuries.
As long as investors have a long-term view,Akula argues,the social and financial missions of microfinanace intertwine.We're not giving away money here,we expect a return,say Gary Hattem,a managing director of Deutsche Bank,which runs four microfinance funds.But we do keep our eye on the social-impact side of this.It's very humbling when you go to places where the people coming to borrow smell like the cows they're raising.
Yet the pressure to turn a profit often forces microfinance to change their business models in ways that depart from the industry's orginal purposes.As Al Amana,Morocco's largest outfit,has shifted from grants to commercial funding,it's average loan size has roughly tripled,smaller loans to the most desperate borrowers are costlier to service.One consequence of commercialization is that a lower percentage of loans go to women because they tend to take out smaller sums,according to a recent study by Women's World banking.
As a growing number of microfinance firms go public,qualms about putting the financial interests of shareholders above the needs of clients have mounted.Already he flood of new money has come under criticism from longtime microfinance advocates for focusing too much on the largest firms operating in the most profitable countries.According to CGAP,75% of cross-border funds go to Latin America and Eastern Europe,the world's most developed microfinance markets the low hanging fruit.That could leave out the poorest of the world's poor,who are predominantly in Asia and Africa.Says Alex Counts,CEO of the nonprofit Grameen Foundation,which helps develop microfinance institution,you might need to invent the microfinance industry all ovr again.
Segmenting the industry,though,might not be so bad if it allows more of the poor to get access to credit.Let multinational corporations take the top microfinance institutions to the next level,and leave the bottom of the pyramid to development groups and regional banks.That's what Ecoback is doing in Africa.The Togo-based company,with operations in 22 countries,has for years acted as a banker to microfinance groups,taking deposits and writing loans.Over that time,Ecobank has grow hip to the business model and last year launched a microfinance institution of its own,in Nigeria and then in Ghana.Senegal and Cameroon are next.This empowers the bottom of the African market,says Ecobank microfinance head Rotimi Nihinlolamand, is a good opporitunity to grow our business.
Yet marking loans to poor people,while an important tool,is hardly a poverty cure-all.Proverty right,the rule of law,these things mater too.You cannot overidealize what microfinance alone can do.Most outfits started with lending simply because local laws prohibited nonbanks from offering deposit accounts.When people do have the option to save instead of borrow,saving is often what they prefer.
With marketing savvy introduced into the equation,poverty-alleviation experts are concerned that people will be talked into loans they wouldn't otherwise wnat.Most genuinely poor people are not happy with carrying debt,the danger of all this new money is that microcredit institutions will feel compelled to go out and generatemore borrowers.But the new money is also expanding the scope of microfinance beyond small loanmarking.As institution compete for customers,they are rolling out other services.In Mexico,Citigroup has written more than 1 million life-insurance policies in conjunction with compartamos, and in India it offers customers savings accounts and ATM access in partnership with microfinancier BASIX.Not everyone will be an entrepreneur,but most of us have to save for something.Microfinanciers around the world are racing to offer the first real micromortagages.That we are now talking about creating financial systems that include the majority of people in developing countries is a real departure form what has existed for centuries.
Global business The big trouble in small loans.As large banks pile into microfinance,will profits get ahead of people?
Rafael Llosa's company has been lending money to some of the poorest people in Peru for 30 years.It used to be a fairly lonely endeavor.Giving tiny loans to impoverished women to make ceramics to farmers to buy milk cows was hardly seen as a great business.
In 1998 the organization Llosa runs,now called Mibanco,converted from a nonprofit into a bank,demonstrating what other microfinance institutions around the world knew too,that the poor are good risks who repay loans on time,get enough of then together,you can not chip away at poverty but also turn a profit.
Today Lloas has a very differnet marketplace to contend with.Success at Mibanco has piqued the interest of the commercial banks,which historically have shunned the 45% of Peruvians below the poverty line.Now big banks are going after Mibanco's clinets with low-rate loans and-realizing it takes special know how to work with the unbanked-hiring away Mibanco's employees as well.They are very good competitions.
And he's getting more of them,from directions he never could have anticipated,Last year the Spanish multinational BBVA raised some $300 million to invest in microfinance,then reached across the Atlantic to snap up two Peruvian firms.Everyone want to do this now,and it's not only Peru.This change is everywhere.Everywhere microfinance is working,it's happening.
What's happening? To be blunt about it.The pinstripes are chasing the poor.Microfinance,once a relative cottage industry championed by antipoverty activists and development wonks,is on the verge of revolution,with billion dollars of from big banks,private-equity and pension funds pouring in,driving growth of 30% to 40% a year,Financiers are convinced that there's huge money to be made in microfinance.
That would seem to be a fantastic turn of events,tranforming microfinance institutions into more sophisticated operations that can reach millions more people.In the dusty village of Veeravelly,in the state of Andhra Pradesh,for example,loans from SKS Microfinance have led to a spate of small business and,in turn,money for onetime luxuries like refrigerators and solid roofs.A more competitve,more developed industry means lower loan rates and new services like saving account,mortgages and insurance.Clients are coming into our offices and saying.OK,if I go to another microfinance institution,I can get a longer term or a lower interest rate,one of the world's most competitve microlending markets.
But alarm bells are going off too.The emergence of players who are out purely for profit has raised the possibility that,far from nurturing the poor,microfinance schemes could end up milking them,especially in countries where lenders don't have to clearly disclose interest rates.When the Mexican microfinancier Banco Compartamos went public last year,revealing its loans carries rates of about 86% annual,the development consortium Consultative group to assist the Poor(GGAP) and others scorned it for having put shareholers ahead of clients.There is some risk that the mainstreaming of microfinanace will threaten the very essence of microfinance
s core mission,to help poor people lead better lives.At a time when governments,financial institution to the developing world,the microfinance revolution illustrates the benefits and costs of marrying profitmaking with poverty relief.
Thinks money-making and good works can be mutually beneficial.Akula runs SKS Microfinance,India's largest microfinancier,which is at the forefront of the new-money trend.Last year SKS sold an 11.5 million stake to the private-equity shop Sequoia Capital in a first-of-its-kind deal.Talk of a projected 23 % return of equity snapped many financiers to attention.
This year SKS plans to reach 4 million customers like those in the village of Veeravelly,who have been using loans for projects like buying buffalo and opening a welding shop.Unless we have capital markets interested in microfinance,there's no way we could get to that many borrowers.A deal in which Citigroup will buy 44 million in loans off SKS's books,for instance,is expected to help SKS reach 200,000 people across 7,000 villagers.Among the beneficiaries are women like Parajata,a window in Veeravelly who was working as a day laborer and barely earning enough to feed her children before a 50,000-rupee($1,200) loan let her open a grocery shop and start earning enough to periodically buy her kids new clothes.There has been a dramatic change in my life.
In 1998 the organization Llosa runs,now called Mibanco,converted from a nonprofit into a bank,demonstrating what other microfinance institutions around the world knew too,that the poor are good risks who repay loans on time,get enough of then together,you can not chip away at poverty but also turn a profit.
Today Lloas has a very differnet marketplace to contend with.Success at Mibanco has piqued the interest of the commercial banks,which historically have shunned the 45% of Peruvians below the poverty line.Now big banks are going after Mibanco's clinets with low-rate loans and-realizing it takes special know how to work with the unbanked-hiring away Mibanco's employees as well.They are very good competitions.
And he's getting more of them,from directions he never could have anticipated,Last year the Spanish multinational BBVA raised some $300 million to invest in microfinance,then reached across the Atlantic to snap up two Peruvian firms.Everyone want to do this now,and it's not only Peru.This change is everywhere.Everywhere microfinance is working,it's happening.
What's happening? To be blunt about it.The pinstripes are chasing the poor.Microfinance,once a relative cottage industry championed by antipoverty activists and development wonks,is on the verge of revolution,with billion dollars of from big banks,private-equity and pension funds pouring in,driving growth of 30% to 40% a year,Financiers are convinced that there's huge money to be made in microfinance.
That would seem to be a fantastic turn of events,tranforming microfinance institutions into more sophisticated operations that can reach millions more people.In the dusty village of Veeravelly,in the state of Andhra Pradesh,for example,loans from SKS Microfinance have led to a spate of small business and,in turn,money for onetime luxuries like refrigerators and solid roofs.A more competitve,more developed industry means lower loan rates and new services like saving account,mortgages and insurance.Clients are coming into our offices and saying.OK,if I go to another microfinance institution,I can get a longer term or a lower interest rate,one of the world's most competitve microlending markets.
But alarm bells are going off too.The emergence of players who are out purely for profit has raised the possibility that,far from nurturing the poor,microfinance schemes could end up milking them,especially in countries where lenders don't have to clearly disclose interest rates.When the Mexican microfinancier Banco Compartamos went public last year,revealing its loans carries rates of about 86% annual,the development consortium Consultative group to assist the Poor(GGAP) and others scorned it for having put shareholers ahead of clients.There is some risk that the mainstreaming of microfinanace will threaten the very essence of microfinance
s core mission,to help poor people lead better lives.At a time when governments,financial institution to the developing world,the microfinance revolution illustrates the benefits and costs of marrying profitmaking with poverty relief.
Thinks money-making and good works can be mutually beneficial.Akula runs SKS Microfinance,India's largest microfinancier,which is at the forefront of the new-money trend.Last year SKS sold an 11.5 million stake to the private-equity shop Sequoia Capital in a first-of-its-kind deal.Talk of a projected 23 % return of equity snapped many financiers to attention.
This year SKS plans to reach 4 million customers like those in the village of Veeravelly,who have been using loans for projects like buying buffalo and opening a welding shop.Unless we have capital markets interested in microfinance,there's no way we could get to that many borrowers.A deal in which Citigroup will buy 44 million in loans off SKS's books,for instance,is expected to help SKS reach 200,000 people across 7,000 villagers.Among the beneficiaries are women like Parajata,a window in Veeravelly who was working as a day laborer and barely earning enough to feed her children before a 50,000-rupee($1,200) loan let her open a grocery shop and start earning enough to periodically buy her kids new clothes.There has been a dramatic change in my life.
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