Dan's fanciful digest

Herni Cartier-Bresson The modern century a new exhibition at the museum of Modern Art in New York City

2010-04-25T22:29:00.000-07:00

Outlets are the bright spot going into otherwise dim retail season

2009-11-24T13:04:00.000-08:00

on an overcast English morning,two women from middle england are out shopping.They duck first into the Gucci boutique,fingering discounted handbags and rifling through racks of last season's fashion lineup.Dolce&Gabbana is next,folllowed by Armani.The outlet boutiques among 136 clustered along a cobblestone outdoor shopping center called Bicester village about an hour's drive from London-are mobbed with bargain-seekers even at an early hour.You get value for money here,who pauses to chat only briefly before her friend hustles her off to Valentino.My husband is in businesss.so it's hard for us just now,but i don't mind paying for quality.Luxury outlet malls are the one bright spot of brisk trade going into the holiday shopping season.In recent weeks,retailers have reported small but still rather anemic signs of recovery.Yet sales numbers show that consumers have been flocking to discount outlets all year long,depsite the recession. Value retail.the london based compay that owns the largest string of luxury outlets in Europe,including Bicester village,has seen sales rise 20 percents to just over one billion euro in the first theree quarter of 2008,that compares with predictions of flat or at most a two percents increase in spending across the retail sector over the holiday shoppping period.value retail,whose major investor also owns part of the sprawling woodbury common outlet mall outside of new york city,has seen its growth this year double the average over the past 14 yeats ,when sale increased at a rate of about 10 percents annually,according to scott malkin,valure retail chairman.it's human nature to indulge,i think we've gone away from i need more for the sake of more and more,to people being more discerning in what they purchase.that sentiment has benefited luxury outlets in a year when full price luxury sales have been forecast to fall as much as 10 percents ,rather than view outlet shopping as cannibalizing from their high sterrt or madison avenue sales,luxury retailers in fact have welcomed the oppotunity to sell excess merchandise in a slow time ,while reaching a separate segment of customers to whom they wouldn't normally be able to sell.We're service to the brand.the ceo of value retail management .the brands have a lot more stock they want to dispose of ,elegantly,we're a platform for them that is quality,with a customer that is aspirational.

For centuries Serbs have striven with epic fervor to unite their scattered people,define their lands,preserve their unique identity.

2009-11-05T00:26:00.000-08:00

States and most of Europe,To many Serbs,that makes Nakalamic a traitor.After Kosovo grabbed independence,TV viewers worldwide watched radical nationalists storm through Belgrade,Serbia's capital,smashing windows and torching a symbol of arrogant foreign meddling-the U.S. embasssy.The Serbian government views Kosovo's independence as an illeagl dismemberment of Serbia's sovereign territory-It ordered Serbs in Kosovo-many of whom receive cash assistance from Serbia-to boycott elections there,and most obeyed.Without the requisite ballots from his district.Nakalamic lacks a council vote and thus can't fully participate in drafting budgets and ordinances.Yet many Serbs seem resigned to the new borders,and to the prospect of a smaller,tamer Serbia at ease with its neighbors.People are marching and demostrating,but no one believes we will get Kosovo's back,a young woman I met in Belgrade as she and her fiance.A Caribbean American from New York,had a midnight drink with friends on a stylish Belgrade street,A student from Florence,is the kind of liberal,internationally oriented Serb on whom Western governments pin their hopes.After Kosovo independence and the resulting riots.Serbian voters.in the spring of 2008,surprised the world by propelling into power to a pro-european union government that vowed to track down Serbian's war criminals- evidence of a widespread belief that the country's best hope for cultural and economic growth is with the West.But outsiders should never mistake resignation for acceptance.It's Serbian pride,we can't say,sure .take kosovo.Do whatever you want to us.what kind of people would we be?A human rights lawyer who pursues accused Serbian war criminals,says the gulf between unreconstructed nationalists and Western-style democrats,including Serbia's president,Boris Tadic.is not as wide as outsiders may think.To Popvic,all major parties to some extent cling to the ideal of uniting Serbian-inhabited lands-a catalyst for way in the 1990s.It's charitable to say this country is divided between democrats and nationalists.In reality,the nationalist ideal rules.

One late summer day in 1961 a biologist named Sherman Bleakney

2009-09-22T05:53:00.000-07:00

Got a telephone call about a strange sea creature that fishermen had just unloaded on a wharf in Halifax,Nova Scotia.who lived nearby,was captived by what he found there.Sprawled on its back amid a curious crowd was an immense black sea turtle tipping the scale at 900 pounds.
with a soft,rubbery cara-pace.winglike front flippers,and a massive,conical head like an artillery shell.Bleakney recognized it as a leatherback,the biggest of all sea turtles,Leatherbacks,he recalled,were supposed to be creatures of the tropics,as out of place in chilly,gray Canadian waters as parrots in a Halifax park.When Bleakney began asking around,though,he learned that fishermen saw leatherbacks swimming in the waters off maritime Canada regularly enough to call late summer turtle season.The conclusion was inescapable,he wrote in 1965.Evidently there is an annual invasion of our cool Atlantic coastal waters by trutles of tropical origin,Their southern roots were obvious from the few dead trutles he examined.One had a twig from a tropical mangrove tree stuck in its eye.others carried warm-water barnacles.Yet the leatherbacks were surviving,even flourishing,at temperatures that would kill other sea trutles.Stranger still was what he found inside them.Their huge stomachs contained masses of chewed-up jellyfish,stinging tentacles and all,and their gullets were lined with three-inch spines.angled inward to hold in all that slippery prey.

The office of Artur Chilingarov,the beared polar explorer and anointed hero of the Russian Federation,is at the end of a long hall in the Duma

2009-09-17T21:36:00.000-07:00

Russia's Parliament,where he is deputy speaker,Its entrance is guarded by a poster of a nuclear icebreaker,the Yamal,a 492 foot monster with rows of painted-on fangs,and inside is a knee-high wooden penguin and two chicks,a pair of carved warlrus tusks,and eight miniature porcelain polar bears,an iconography of the Arctic and Antarctic.On a wall is a portrait of Vladimir Putin.It was dark,very dark he says of the descent.of course it was risky.Of course we were sacred.he and fellow parliamentarian,a business who had paid half a million dollars for his berth,peered out the portholes.which had one more paying adventurer,A swedish businessman and an Australian tour operator followed,The descent was to take nearly three hours,the return to the surface that long again,meanwhile the ice pack would be drifting.If they could not find the opening,they would be be stuck.The depressing thing,Chilingarov tells me was knowing no one could come rescue us.Just after midday I touched down on the flat, fine clay of the seabed.The sub scraped up samples of ocean floor,then moved to the pole itself,where its robotic arm firmly planted a titanium Russian flag in the muck.The submersibles return was harrowing-following Mir I up from the seabed,Mir II searched for an hour and a half before finding the ice opening-but the drama of the dive was soon drowned out by the supposed politics of it.More than 40 journalists were waiting aborad the surface vessels,and they quickly filed their reports.Russian claims the North pole!!!Chilingarov willingly stoked nationalist flames.The Arctic.he said at a press conference,has always been Russian.The dive soon became something it had scarcely been.an act of expansionism,not exploration-of geopolitics rather than glorified tourism.Observers seemed ready to believe that the Arctic's future would be decide by flags and warships.belligerence and brinkmanship.

mammoth ice-baby the extinctions also coincided

2009-08-28T20:08:00.000-07:00

however,with the arrival of another ecology-altering force.Modern humans arose in Africa about 195000 years ago and spread int o northern Eurasia some 4000 years ago.As time went go,their expanding populations brought increasing pressure to bear on prey speices. In addition to exploiting mammoths for food-a big male killed in the autumn would see a band of hungry hunters through many lean winter days-they used their bones and ivory to make weapons,tools,figurines,and even dwellings.Some scientist believe that these human hunters,using throwing spears fitted with deadly stone points,were as much to blame as climate change for the great die-off.Some say they caused it.The debate over the megafaunal extinction is one of the liveliest in paleontology today,and not one likely resolved by a single specimen,no matter how complete.But Khudi was right that the now missing baby-its flesh,internal organs,stomach contents,bones,milk tusks and other teeth,all intact-would be of enormous interest to the outside world.he also suspected that a person willing handle such a thing would probably turn a nice profit-ivory traders regularly visited the region to buy mammoth tusks,and who knows what they'd pay for an intact mammoth?Khudi's suspicions soon fell on one of his own cousins,whom some local Nenets had seen on the sand-bar and later,riding away on his reindeer sled toward the town of Novvy port.Khudi and Serotetoo set off in pursuit on snowmobile.When they arrived.They found the little mammoth propped up against the wall of a store.People were talking snapshots of it on their cell phones.The shop owner had bought the body from Khudi's cousin for two snowmoblies and a year's worth of food.Though it was no longer quite perfect-stray dogs had gnawed off part of its tail and right ear-with the help of some local police,Khudi and Serotetto managed to reclaim the infant.The body was packed up and shipped by helicopter to the safety of the Shemanovsky Museum in Salekhard,the regional capital.Luckily there was a happy ending,says Alexei Tikhonov,director of the St.Petersburg Zoological Museum and one of the first scientist to view the baby,a female.Yuri Khudi rescued the best preserved mammoth to come down to us from the ice age.Grateful officials named her Lyuba,after Khudi's wife.

On the opposite side of

2009-01-02T08:42:00.000-08:00

The message is complex but ultimately clear. To Protect Borneo's forest and wildlife will require rethinking old ideas,accepting new truths,and adopting new models of conservation.And in the end,the fate of Borneo may be decide far from the forests,in government offices and corporate boardrooms from New York to Genva.Because of the vast amounts of carbon tied up in the plants and soils,the last best hope for Borneo's future may rest not on the emotional appeal of an orangutan's face,but on the hard facts of climate change-and our own determination and ability to protect ourselves from disaster.In the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan,a narrow paved road leads away from Pontianak,a city neat the South China Sea.Crowed with trucks and buzzing motorbikes,the road passes wooden shops and houses in small villages separated by rice fields.The harvest has just began,and here and there people beat sheaves against wooden lattices or toss grains into the air to let the wind carry away the hulls.There's little trace of the forests that once stood here.I'm traveling with Dessy Ratnasari,a scientist from a local research organization,whose animated faced is encircled by a light blue head scraf.Our driver,Harum who like many Indonesians,uses only one name-speaks up as we pass a large building fringed with weeds.This is a sawmill where he worked,Ratnasari translates.It went bankrupt because there are no more trees for timber.It had 13000workers and a payroll 9000.Within a couple of miles we pass two more mills,gated locked,windows broken,parking lots empty.There were several big companies and some smaller mills around Pontianak,Now there's only one big company still operating.

Jordan Farmar vents to Jackson about his role

2008-12-19T09:29:00.000-08:00

Guard Jordan Farmar is confused as to what head coach Phil Jackson wants him to do,the L.A. Times are reporting.
After getting yanked against the Knicks and playing just nine minute,Farmar met with Jackson to discuss what he
should be doing.He didn't call me up there,I asked to talk to him-to vent,Farmar said.Just trying to get some things across.It was as if Farmar popped into the principal's office Jackson said I felt he was frustrated.I asked them what they wanted me to do so I can go out there and do it and not be confused about my job.Farmar said
they are not looking for me to do anything personal-just run our office.It affects my performance and what I do
I'm a guard coming off the bench playing limited minutes so I got to make those minutes count and do what
the coaching staff and the organization wants.Jackson is not trying to stifle Farmar's creativity,but he wants the 22 years old to be a better decision-maker.I think there are some things about playing his game kind of thing and comforming to our style,Jackson said.

Topsy-Turvy.Amid the U.S. financial crisis,globalization is standing some conventional wisdom on its head

2008-11-03T02:36:00.000-08:00

Stocks around the world have been tumbling in reaction to the dramatic news on Wall Street.In doing so,financial markets are trashing one of the fashionable economic theories of the past couple of years,that the rest of the world can decouple itself from the U.S. and keep on growing storngly.But that may not be the whole story.Just ask Stephen Lussier,an executier director at De Beers,the huge diamond group.His London office is in the same hulking concrete building as the firm's diamond-sorting operation,so getting in to see him requires navigating through a maze of locked doors and red security zones worthy of Fort Knox.But it's worth the effort if you want to glimpse how globalization is upedning a lot of conventional wisdom these days.If history were a guide,Lussier should be a worried man.The U.S. is easily the biggest market for diamond jewelry in the world,accounting for about 50% of the total,and whenever the American economy has hot a rough patch in the past,the diamond industry has quicky felt it.But not this time-or,at least,not yet.U.S. diamond sakes have been dropping,but worldwide demand for rought diamonds has been stronger than ever,especially for the largest and most expensive rocks,and that has enabled De Beers to continue raising prices this year.Normally we would be in a state of battening down the hatches,but so far that's not happening,Lussier says.This is different from every economic cycle we have seen for the past 25 years.The state of the diamond market is just one glittering example of a world that,to all appearance,has gone topsy-turvy.It is a world in which the biggest and most sophisticated finanical markets,in the U.S. and U.K.,are struggling to confront the sort of meltdown more normally associated with underdeveloped economies and feeble banking systems.The only difference is that,in this case,the International Monetary Fund isn't coming to the rescue with loans and tough policy prescriptions.It is a world in which consumers for years benefited from bargain prices for everything from T shirts to flat-screen televisions thanks to ultra-low-cost producers in Asia-but now suddenly discover that skyrocketing consumption in those same Asian countries is pushing up the prices of staples such as wheat and milk.It is an increasingly interdependent world in which two countries with McDonald's restaurants were never again supposed to go to war-but one in which old-style geopolitics,in the form of Russian muscle-flexing,has suddenly intruded.Both Geogians and Russians,it turns out,enjoy Big Macs with fries,even as they slug it out on the battlefield.As he looks around the globe and tries to assess what to make of it all,Jagdish Bhagwati,a senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City,can't resist quoting the British economist John Maynard Keynes,The inevitable never happens.It is the unexpected always.

Two cheers for free trade in such unpredictable times,the big questions are the extent to which the finanical and economic woes in the U.S. will continue to spill over into the world economy-and whether this poses a threat to the onward march of globalization itself,as people lose faith in free markets and open trade.The demage is already considerable,the IMF world economic growth to drop to 4.1 this year,its lowest since 2003,after a run of years at around 5%.Much of Europe and Japan seem particularly vulnerable,with Britain and Spain already teetering on the edge of recession.China and India,the huge growth engines of the past few years,also are facing slowdowns.It's still unclear just how far the contagion could spread.Certainly the demise of Wall Street titans Merrill Lynch and Lehman Bros,.and the U.S. government bailouts of insurance giant AIG as welll as mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,sent shock waves around the world. Sagging growth means even the biggest boosters of free markets and free trade are being a lot quieter these days.While the U.S. government refused to step in to save the Lehman Bros.,it did intervene to rescue AIG,Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,in moves that,in ideological terms,amount to a significant retreat from the sort of market liveralism that Washington has long embraced.And skepticism about the benefits of globalization appears to be rising,an international poll earlier this year by Globescan shows that,while majorities in most of the 18 countries surveyed to support the notion of free markets,there has been a significant eroion of support in Turkey,South Korea,Chile,Britain,Mexico,Russia,Brazil and China.That's not surprising ,says Andrew Watt,an economist at the European Trade Union Institute in Brussels.It's hard to sustain the idea that markets are perfact and should be left to work against the background of what has happened in the last year.What's less clear is the extent to which this skepticism will feed into national politics and provoke a new bout of international protectionism.Watt and others point out that while globalization has created substantial wealth around the world,its benefits have been distributed disproportionately.

Pocket of Resilience the good news is that lower growth in emerging markets is relative.Even at an 8-9% annual growth rate,the lower end of economists predictions for this year and next,China's economy would still be racing ahead,just not at the feverish double-digit rates of recent years.In fact,a cooler international climate could prove beneficial if it helps Chinese authorities to get a grip on inflation and minimize other problems of an overheating economy.There are still only scant signs of a slowdown in other fast-growing countries.Russia's economy is expected to cool this year to about 7% growth,and some highly leveraged businesses there are experiencing the beginning of a liquidity squeeze.But Brazil this month reported that its economy actually accelerated in the second quarter,with growth rising to an annual rate of 6.1%.Meanwhile,the Gulf states and other countries in the middle East are in the midst of a petrodollar-driven consumption boom that shows little sign of slowing,even though oil prices have fallen below$100 per barrel.

Puzzling patterns this resilience helps to explain why De Beers diamond sales are still thriving.Americans may be less willing to splurge on fancy rings.but from Abu Dhabi to Shanghai,bling is still very much in-and the bigger the better.This is hardly proof that U.S. economic growth and free-spending American shoppers are no longer important to the global economy.Economists at French bank Societe Generale have calculated that consumption in the bric countries-Brazil,Russia,India and China-would have to rise by almost 25% to fully offset the effects of a U.S. recession,an increase that's beyond even their dynamic capacities.But the linkages of the past no longer seem to be reliable indicators of the director of individual economies.Clearly,we're in a period of uncertainty and volatility,and we'll have to get used to it.Says Mark Spelman,a globalization-strategy specialist at consulting firm accenture in London.The pattern are more confused,says Spelman,who describes the current economic situation as two steps forward and one step backward.

Zimbabwe If you can't beat Em....After six months of political chaos in a nation facing an acute economic crisis,

2008-09-28T10:05:00.000-07:00

Rivals Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangriai have reached an agreement to share power.While the terms of the deal are vague,it raises hope fro stability in a country where inflation is estimated at more tham II million percent.Half the population is malnourished and 8 out of 10 people are unemployed and live on less than $2 a day.Western economic sanctions on the country remain in place.

Pakistan Border dispute the Pakistani government warmed the U.S. that it would use deadly force on American troops who crossed the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in search of Taliban and al-Qaeda members.The order came in response to a Sep.3 Raid carried out by American ground forces that killed more than a dozen civilians.Owais Ahmed Ghani,governor of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province,also accused U.S. force of launching a second raid on Sept 15,an allegation that was denied by Pakistani and U.S. military officials,who said the attack was a mistake made by an errant helicopter.

Tainted Baby-food shock In a widening scandal,at least three babies have died and more than 6200 have become sick after consuming milk contaminated with the nonfood substance melamine.Beijing is investigating at least 22 companies that packaged tainted milk and yogurt sold in mainland China and Hong Kong.Melamine,a plastic compound that shows up as protein in some food tests,has been used by certain manufacturers in China to make their products appear more nutritious.In 2007,thousands of pets in the U.S. died after eating pet food contaminated with Chinese melamine.Melamine a chemical composed of nitrogen,carbon and hydrogen that is often mixed with formaldehyde to make plastic.

the moment 9/15/2008 New York

2008-09-28T02:35:00.000-07:00

So much for masters of the universe.The Lehman brothers staffers trickling out of the firm's meltdown Manhattan headquarters on Sep 15 looked like prisoners on a perp walk.Overnight,the 158 years old financial behemoth had field for Chapter II bankruptcy protection,an implosion that presaged a day of calamity in the markets-the nadir of what former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan has called a once in a century crisis.As media crews hovered,some of Wall Street's best and brightest staggered out onto the pavement.Their faces crestfallen and their ties yanked askew.Reporters buttonholed employee on their way out the door,asking how they would feel if they lost their jobs.The really top execs screwed up very badly,said an analyst who had arrived at work on Monday morning without any idea of what might happen beyond what he read in the Wall-Street Journal.They wouldn't admit defeat.Another pur it more succinctly.It's over.Executive recruiters bustled around,extending business cards to anyone who resembled a banker,while a man leaning aganist the building's facade hoisted a printed sign on white,letter-size paper.Looking to hire say admin.A few feet away,Geoffery Raymond,a painter,unveiled The annotated Fuld-a large canvas of embattled Lehman brothers chairman and CEO Richard Fuld rendered with sunken eyes in yellow brush-strokes-and invited employees and passersby to adorn it with personal messages.The scrawlings ranged from angry missives You are a coward,Learn to respect the dollar to gallows humor.This sucks!I'm going kiteboarding,Hakuna Matata Means No Worries.A day later,Raymond hawked the painting for $10000.

In a crisis born of greed and recklessness,pity is in short supply.Jason L.Cohen,a psychiatrist,made the 1-hr,40-min,drive from freehold,N.J.,with the intention of ofering counsel to shell-shocked employees.But after wintessing the scene unfolding on the sidewalk,he decided to hold back.I don't have the heart to approach people carrying boxes out of their offices,he said.

A fresh look.From the campaign to the financial crisis.

2008-09-28T01:29:00.000-07:00

In print and online,Time is taking new approaches to meet a familiar goal,giving you the truth.These days,the press can't help but be a player in the U.S. presidential campaign.We're the moderator-for better or for worse.The candidates talk to the public through the media,and the public talks to the candidates through our polls.The 24/u7 news cycle-cable television,the internet,the blogosphere-has the effect of trivializing big stories and making big stories out of trivial ones.It's disingenuous to say the press is just the messenger,because we're often the message itself too.There comes a time in every presidential campaign when the political parties attack the media.The high water mark of that thus far was the Republic convention.And while our approval ratings may not be as that of congress.we're far from beloved either.But I want to tell our readers that no matter the criticism,we strive to get it straight,to get it right.Our job is to tell the truth,as we see it,and if the facts don't match up with the campaign rhetoric or commercials,we tell you.We know what our job is,we work for you.

Speaking of being of moderator,last week seven million viewers turned in to watch the Service Nation Presidential Forum Columbia University,which I co-moderated with broadcaster Judy Woodruff.Time was a co-sponsor of the forum and the summit the following day,which included First Lady Laura Bush,Caroline Kennedy,and Senators Hillary Cliton and Orrin Hatch.It was there that senator Hatch announced his bipartisan national service bill,co-sponsored by Ted Kennedy.I'm proud of Time's continued leadership on this front.Last week Time.com unveiled a brand-new look.Conceived by the site's design diretor,Sean Villafranca,and executed by our director of development,Shivani York,the idea was to being the magazine's look and feel into the digital world while allowing our editors more flexibility for news,analysis,and video.It looks great,have a look yourself.This week's hard-hitting cover on the Wall-Street meltdown was penned bt two of our favorite colleagues from fortune,Andy Serwer,the magazine's dynamic managing editor,and Allan Sloan,one of American's premier business journalists.We're pleased to have them in our pages,and you will be too.And finally I'm delighted to announce the debut of our new cartoon page,Drawing room,which is edited by Matthew Diffee.Diffee is one of the most talented and original cartoonists around,and his work appears frequently in the New Yorker and elsewhere.He'll be curating and contributing to the page,tapping the minds and pens of the best cartoonists.

Nowdays,with Russian prospering the laboratory is humming with top secret work.

2008-09-25T12:45:00.000-07:00

Obtaining permission to enter proved impossible.But Vadim Simonenko,the deputy scientific director,and experimentalist Nikolay Voloshin agreed to meet at a sanatorium in nearby Dalnyaya Dacha.In a cool,dim,and empty dining hall,Voloshin opens a bottle of cognac,and over salmon canapes,and cold cuts,and sliced cucumbers,the two weapons scientists discuss how their bomb could save the world.In Edward Teller is the father of the hydrogen bomb,Simonenko is the father of the asteroid bomb.In the mid-1960s the superpowers dreamed of using their nuclear arsenals for peaceful purposes,such as leveling mountains and digging canals.Simonenko,a new recurit to the lab,was asked to study the effect of a torpedo-shaped charge that would explode laterally,ideal for earthmoving.It occured to him that such a device could also be used to deflect an object in space.He told his boss,who laughed and ordered the eager young physicist to get back to work.Though nuclear excavation never became a reality,Simonenko went on studying nuclear asteroid deflection.He and Voloshin concluded that the best way to deflect an asteroid up to a mile or so wide would be to detonate a nuclear charge nearby.The intense radiation would fry the surface,driving off a sacrifical layer of rock.The expanding vapor would act as a rocket motor,nudging the asteroid onto a new trajectory.For a smaller,Tunguska-size rock,Simoneneko says,it would be simpler.We vaporize it.

Simonenko has a brother-in-arms in nuclear physicist David Dearborn of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in northern California.Dearborn's day job is determining whether the aging weapons in the U.S. nuclear stockpile are reliable.In his spare time,he ponders asteroid defense.He,too,favors a stand off nuclear blast.No too close-then the blast is too intense.and things shatter too much.And not too far,or you don't get enough energy.Although it may be technically straightforward to dust off a few warheads and sling them at an asteroid,deciding whether to press the red buttom-and which nation gets to press it-could be excruciating.First,the nation with its finger on the trigger would have to withdraw from the outer space treaty,which bans the use of nuclear weapons in space.But if catastrophe looms,says Dearborn,people would really have to say,Can we be brighter than the dinosaurs?Apophis may pose that the first real test of our collective intelligence.For now,scientists can give only a range of probabilities for its future trajectory.As it swings past Earth in 2029,ducking under dozens of high-flying communications and spy satellites and appearing as a bright star lumbering across the night skies over Europe,there's a slim chance that Apophos will pass through a keyhole.In this narrow corridor of space,maybe a few hundred yards wide,Earth's gravity would deflect the asteroid just enough to put it on a certain collision course with our planet on the next pass,in 2036.The odds that Apophis will pass through this fatal corridor are currently estimated at 1 in 45000.Continued tracking will almost certainly deliver an all clear a few years from now.If now,we might have to wait until weeks after its close approach in 2029 to learn whether Apophis has squeezed through a keyhole,leaving us precious little time to avert calamity in 2036.In the prophesies of the Hopi of the American Southwest,the arrival of a spirit called Yellow Star Kachina will herald the end of the world.When Hopi elder heard about Apophis in 2004,they worried that Yellow Star Kachina was on its way.Carolyn shoemaker tried to reassure them that it was not.Let's hope she was right.

Asteroids and comets in nearby space pose a constant threat to our planet. Can we avert catastrophe the next time around?

2008-09-23T07:28:00.000-07:00

About 140 million years ago,a comet or an asteroid smashed into the Australian outback,blasting a hole in 14 miles in diameter.Today,Gosses Bluff is the two-mile-wide central remnant of the crater.The first sign of the threat was no more than a speck on a star-streaked telescope image.Just after 9 p.m. on June 18 2004,as twilight faded over Kitt Park Observatory in Arizona,David Tholen was scanning for asteroids on an astronomical blind spot,right inside Earth's orbit,where the sun's glare can overwhelm telescopes.Tholen,an astronomer from the university of Hawaii,knew that objects lurking there could sometimes veer toward Earth.He had enlisted Roy Tucker,an engineer and friend,and Rabrizio Bernardi,a young colleague at Hawaii,to help.As they started at a computer,three shots of the same swath of sky,made a few minutes apart,cycled onto the screen.Here's your guy,said Tucker,pointing at a clump of white pixels that moved from frame to frame.An estimate ten million rocky asteroids and ice-and-dirt comets pirouette in outer space,and once in a while their paths fatefully intersect our planet's.One such encounter took place a hundred miles from present-day Washington D.C.,where a 53 miles wide crater lies buried beneath Chesapeake Bay-the scar left when a two miles wide rock smashed into the seafloor 30 million years ago.More notorious is the titan,six miles in diameter,that barreled into the Gulf of Mexico around 65 million years ago,releasing thousands of times more energy than all the nuclear weapons on the planet combined.The whole earth burned that day.says Ed Lu,a physicist and former astronaut.Three quarters of all life-forms,including the dinosaurs,went extinct.

Astronomers have identified serveral hundred asteroid big enough to cause a planetwide disaster.None is on course to do so in our lifetimes.But the heavens teem with smaller,far more nerberous asteroid that could strike in the near future,with devastating effects.On June 30,1908,an object the size of 15-story-building fell in a remote part of Sibera called Tunguska.The object-an asteroid or a small comet-exploded a few miles before impact,scorching and blowing down trees across 800 square miles.The night sky was so bright with dust from the explosion.or icy clouds from the water vapor it blasted into the upper atmosphere,that for days people in Europe could read newspapers outdoors at night.On Tunguska's hundredth anniversary,it's unsettling to note that objects this size crash into Earth every few centuries or so.The next time the sky falls,we may be taken by surprise.The vast majoriity of these smallish bodies,capable of wiping a city off the map,are not yet on our radar screens.Ignorance is bliss,in that if you don't know about these things,you just go about your merry way,says Lu.Over the next decade,however sky surveys like Tholen's should begin filling that gap,cataloging asteroids by the thousands.Every couple of weeks,says Lu,we're going to be finding another asteroid with like a one-in-a-thousand chance of hitting the Earth.

The goal is not just to foretell the date and time of a potential catastrophe.The goal is to forestall it.With years or decades of warning,a spacecraft,using its own minuscule gravity,might nudge a threatening asteroid off course.For objects requiring a bigger kick,a kamikaze spacecraft or a nuclear bomb might do the job.Vexing dilemma would attend this showdown in space.How will governments decide to act?This is a class of problem that the world isn't set up to deal with,says physicist David Dearborn,an advocate of a nuclear strike against an incoming asteroid.Two facts are clear,Whether in 10 years or 500,a day of reckoning is inevitable.More heartening,for the first time ever we have the means to prevent a natural disaster of epic proportions.Everydays dozens of tons of detritus from other space-dust from comets,tiny shard of asteroid-burn up in the earth's upper atmosphere,leaving bright meteor trails at night.Most days a chunk or two of rock or metal,fist size or bigger,survives the fiery plunge.

Yet the odds of seeing a meteorite hit the ground,let alone being struck,are phenomenally low.Only one is knwon to hit a person.Around 1 p.m. on November 30 1954,a meteorite tore through the roof of a house near Sylacauga,Alabama,across the street from the Comet drive in Theatre.The rock,about the size of a softball,caromed off a console radio and clipped Ann Hodges as she snoozed on her couch,bruising her left hip and wrist.She was hospitalized to recover from the shock.Since then there have been spectacular near misses.On Auguest 10 1972,an object around 15 feet across and weighing 150 tons skipped off the upper atmosphere.Hundreds of eyewitnesses saw the glowing streak,dazzling on a sunny afternoon,as it traversed the sky from Utah to Alberta before whizzing back out into space.On March 22,1989,a rock as much as a thousand feet across came within a few hundreds thousands miles of Earth-an uncomfortably close shave.Erosion and vegetation have erased most of the scars left by impacts in the geologic past.Perhaps the best preserved lies about half an hour east of Flagstaff,Arizona.On a late autumn morning Carolyn Shoemarker and I pull off Interstate40 and wind through scrubby desert toward a low rise marking the rim of the crater.Fifty thousand years ago this was a forested plain inhabited by mammoths,giant ground sloths,and other ice age animals.Shoemaker,an asteroid expert with the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff,image the day the sky fell.Suddenly,there's a terrific,brilliant light,she says.In a flash,a searing hot iron nickle mass,150 feet wide and weighing 300000 tons,tears into the Coconini sandstone,flinging boulders and molten iron for miles.A blast of wind more powerful than any earthly tornado scours the landscape.

All that's left of the catalysm now is a chasm three-fourths of a mile wide and 570 feet deep,fringed with Mormon tea bushes.At the turn of the 20th century,an engineer named Daniel Moreau Barringer was convinced that a massive iron meteorite lay beneath the crater and obtained the mining rights to the land.But after a series of shafts revealed nothing,many prominent geologists concluded that a volcanic eruption,not a meteorite,had formed the crater.Carolyn's husband,Gene,made Meteor Crater one of America's most recognizable landmarks.In the late 1950s he mapped the overturned rock around the crater and pointed out similarities to the Teapot Ess crater in Nevada,formed by a nuclear test.His date showed that Barringer was right.A meteorite had gouged the crater,although most of the iron had melted into tiny droplets.Several of Barringer's shafts can still be seen from the rim,along with a full size cutout of a waving astronaut-a nod to NASA,which once used the crater as a training ground.Some visitors whisper and point at Carolyn,and one man plucks up the courage to come over and request her autograph.Carolyn is famous in her own right.She discovered a comet that,in 1994,vividly demonstrated the cosmic threat we face.

In 1980,their children grown and out the door,Gene suggestes that Carolyn start a career as an asteroid hunter.I'm a morning person.She says.I had never stayed awake all night in my life.I don't know if I can do that.But she decided to give asteroid hunting a shot.Gene had access to the Palomar Observatory near San Diego.After a couple years,I learned how to discover things.She says,modestly.She has 32 comets and 367 asteroids to her credit.Some are more interesting than others.

Three station part two Sasha and I took the pedestrian underpass from Kazan Station because the more distance between us and the Cat in the Hat better

2008-09-22T06:12:00.000-07:00

And it was reassuring to find two uniformed security men sitting in the walkway,even if one was reading a comic book and the other was asleep.The shop stalls in the tunnel were shuttered except for one window displaying mobile phones.We emerged in front of Yaroslavl Station.It was 3 a.m.,and all the civilians had retreated to the waiting rooms and ceded the night to vodka zombies,prostitutes,and teenage gangs too spaced from huffing glue to notice us.Incredibly,with one step into the waiting hall we reentered the normal world.There were cafes,a bookshop,a playpen,closed,to be sure,but evidence of normal life.Normal people were asleep in chairs.Healthy babies curled up on their mother's laps.In some parts of the world people share a river with crocodiles.You just had to be careful.But there was more.Returing through the underpass we came upon two men robbing a drunk.One lifted the victim by the neck while the second went through his pocket,although the way the drunk flopped back and forth made the task difficult.We had to get around them to the action and me.The security men stayed seated and watched with mild curiosity,they were paid to protect the window of mobile phones,nothing else.What happened took ten seconds.Essentially,the thieves took the money and ran.They wrested a roll of bills from the drunk inside jacket pocket,let him drop,and vanished up the stairs to the street.The drunk spat blood and sighed.He rolled to a sitting position and waves off any help.At night?At three Stations?Nothing happened.

Diaghilev Amid clouds of smoke,strobe lights,and the deafening beat of house music,the new lords of oil,nickel,and natural gas arrived at Diaghilev with women as mute and beautiful as cheetahs on a leash.In this cacophony a millionaire could expand and relax.For one thing,no guns are allowed inside Diaghilev.The club had a 40 man security force,and any customer who felt in drive need of protection was assigned a personal bodyguard.A bomb dog had sniffed the chairs,and a security briefing had alerted the staff about special needs,such as guests from Iran who did not want to be photographed drinking champane with scantily clad models.I had followed Yegor through a back door.How Yegor arranged my visit I did not know,but the chief of security was not pleased.The club incorporated relentless sound,color,and motion.Psychedelic visions splashed across screens and vodka bars.A UFO and a crystal chandelier contested air space,and a contortionist added a touch of Cirque du Soleil.It was a simple system.Face control admitted more women than men and only enough guests to achieve critical mass.The more people who were turned away the more people who wanted to get in.The real Diaghilev was the fur-trimmed impresario who founded the Ballets Russes a hundred years ago.First of all,he was a showman.He would have loved this.

New Russians climbed to their VIP tables,waving to fellow New Russians and Celebrities.Television personalities and Eurotrash leavened the mix,and soon the floor was so crowded people could only dance in place,something six-foot models in six-inches heels managed gracefully.Yegor kept asking a question I finally understood over the din,Are you happy?Did you get what you came for?I didn't knwo.Was this what millions of Russians died for in wars and prison camps?Had they foced down a KGB coup and dismantled an empire so a few gluttons could party through the night?Gogol had likened Russia to a troika of speeding horses,not a Bentley in a ditch.Suddenly,the speakers went silent for a booming,I love Moscow!On the runway an American singer had taken over the microphone.She was black-not many in Moscow-and she sang the blues.The boys on the VIP tier went on chatting at a shout and pouring each other cognac.Then the entire crowd joined in one refrain in English,What are we supposed to do afrer all that we've been through?I had no idea what song it was.They sang it over and over.What are we supposed to do after all that we've been through?Soon after Diaghilev was,in a time-honored tradition of nightcluns,gutted by fire.Now it is better than hot,it is legend.

On my last night in Moscow Yegor showed me the future.We drove beyond the Garden Ring and followed the river to the dark industrial area,where we parked and walked along the chain-link fence.If this was the future.I wasn't impressed.Look up.Yegor said.I don't see anything.Look higher!Aganist the night stood a ladder of lights so high I couldn't be sure where it stopped,until a red beam crawled to the edge of an open floor somewhere near Mars.Moscow City he said.A cith within a city.It was a magic beanstalk,a complex of 14 building,including the Russian Tower,at 113 floors projected to be the tallest skyscrapper in Europe.A giant crane performed a pirouette at the top of what will be the Moscow Tower,A mere 72 stories high.Work was going on day and night.A floodlight revealed figures in yellow vests clambering over the load the crane had delivered.From what the seemed an incredible distance we heard the stutter of a rivet gun,the clap of metal plates,even voices,creating a curious intimacy.Buildings were in very stage of construction.Those already completed resembled silver spaceships about the depart.The scale was enormous.The excavation alone could swallow the pyramids of Giza.The complex is planned to house City Hall,offices,and luxury apartments with views halfway to Finland.This is the advantage of being in Moscow after dark.In the daytime you see only architecture.At night you see blazing ambition.

Soberity It was late in the afternoon,the sun dissolving into afterglow by the time I arrived for lunch at Alexi's apartment not his real name.Alxei

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and Andrew were halfway through a second bottle of vodka,and the best I could do was try to catch up.I was outclassed.Thin as a drinking straw,Alexei was an art critic,scholar,and collector of fine porcelains,an intellectual who became more animated with each round.Andrew was British but did business in Russia and stayed in practice vodka-wise,so to speak.Right off the bat Alexei swore he had seen a video that caught the President of the United States as he stuck a wad of chewing gum under a table of inlaid stones at the Hermitage Museum.Alexei was sure that Geroge.W.Bush had declared war on Russian culture.It turned out he had just gone through the humiliating experience of being denied an American visa.He said the State Department as good as accused him of trying to sneak into the United States was invading Russia through gentrification.There was even a neighborhood in Moscow that had banned Russian cars,he'd heard.Only foreign cars were allowed!Anyway,why would he want to be American,he asked?Moscow was safer at night than New York.He could walk around the center of Moscow at any hour,drunk or sober.

Alexei gave an example,A week ago he had visited an artist's studio.This artist had an interest in Nazi art,in its narcissism and banality.It was a deep discussion,and around two in the morning they ran out of vodka.They were nearly drunk,but Alexei knew a shop across town that was open.They walked blocks and blocks discussing Fascist paintings,sculpture,and architecture.At the shop they bought a few bottles,turned to leave,and found their way blocked by four skinheads tattooed with swastikas and porttaits of Hitler.The biggest of the lot demanded to know why they were bad-mounthing the Fuhrer.Alexei expected to suffer a beating,at least a little kicking and stomping,when the artist,although nearly drunk,opened a bottle,tossed aside the cap,and invited the skinheads to his studio.On the way they passed the bottle around while the artist held forth on modern art,starting with Cezanne.The lecture was so boring and the skinheads became so inebriated they couldn't walk unaided.So Alexei and the artist dumped them one by one in various countryards,and that was the difference between being drunk and being nearly drunk.What this had to do with the safety of Moscow's streets escaped me,but I was in no condition to give chase.Somehow it had gotten dark.Alexei opened a window to the background din of the city,which prompted me to ask if he'd ever heard about late-night racing of cars and motorcycles in Moscow.It was stretch,but I asked.On the Garden ring?Alexei said.That he knew even that much surprised me.Yes.The record time for a car to go completely around is six minutes.Five minutes,he corrected me.Have you?Nine minutes.He signed for the glory that might have been.I stopped for red lights.

Casino Andrei Sychev looked out over the 220 slot machines,30 gaming tablets,sport bar,and VIP hall and confided that he felt like the captain of a sinking ship.As an employee of the Ukarnik Casino he did not understand why city hall wanted to shut it down and kill a goose that lays nothing but golden eggs.Each slot,for example,generated a generous profit every month,and yet the government accused casinos of moral damage,having closed some already and vowed to relocate others to Las Vegas zoness on the far borders of the Russian Federation by the end of next year.To some,a Moscow night without the bright lights of casino marquees may seem like a year without spring,but officals have already closed hundred of gaming sites large and small.Who would be mext?Some of Sychev's dealers had already jumped ship for employment with better security.This created a ripple effect because regular customers like to play with a favorite dealer.Was the Udarnik Casino a criminal enterprise?Abosolutely not,according to Sychev.That is,no more than any other enterprise.Maybe 10 percent.For their own protection everybody had a roof.Don't think of it as the mafia,Think of it as alternative police.Alexei had told me that Americans would never understand Russia because Americans saw things as black or white,nothing in between,while Russian saw a gary area of perhaps 80 percent.Which bring us to...The mayor Not since Stalin has anymore left his stamp on Moscow as much as mayor Yuri Luzhkov.A sawed-off colossus,he raises skyscrappers with one hand and flattens histroic neighborhoods with the other.The floodlights that illuminate Moscow's classical palaces at night are under his command.He garnishes the cith with statues that infuriate the critics,whom he ignores.He is what Russians call a muzhik,a man of the earth,although he and Vladimir Putian have been rivals in the past,they seem to agree that gaudy casinos are out of step with Moscow's new maturity and dignity.Even if Putin reportedly complains that he never knows that what the skyline of Moscow will look like when he gets out of bed in the morning.The feeling in Moscow is that Luzhkov may be corrupt,but he gets things done.When construction funds ran short for the behemoth Cathedral of Christ the Savior,the story goes,he didn't hesitate to shake down businessmen and mafia alike to finish the job.According to one estimate,in 2005 Russinans shelled out $316 billion in bribes.Why not a donation for a worthy cause?It was a happy coincidence that a company owned by the mayor's wife,Yelena Baturina,laned so many construction contracts in the city.In fact,Baturina is the only woman among Moscow's billionaires.

Three stations-part one If Diaghilev is Moscow's Mount Olympus,Three Stations is its lower depths.

2008-09-19T11:29:00.000-07:00

Officially Three Stations is Komsomol Square,but the locals know it by the railway terminals that converge there.Yaroslavl and Leningrad Satation on the north side and Kazan Station on the south.A statue of Lenin stands on a side plaza.The firebrand of the Russian Revolution holds the label of his coat with his left hand and with his right reaches for a back pocket,He appears to have just realized his wallet is gone.That's Three stations.Everyday day thousands of commuters arrive and pour out onto the wide pavement against a counterflow of traders dragging in suitcases stuffed with clothes and shoes for resale in the provinces.Street vendors offer rabbit fur hats,Soviet kitsch,roses wrapped in cellophone,pirated CDs.Tourists stagger under backpacks.Women from Central Asia brush by in voluminous skirts the colors of poppies,while soldiers search for game arcades.

Every kind of face surfaces.Blue-eyed Ukrainiams,hawklike men from the Caucasus,Uzbeks in caps,Mongolians,and especially Tajiks.A demographic time bomb facing Russia is its declining population and the influx of Tajiks.Who are known to be sober,hardworking and willing to do jobs Russians won't.But at 2 a.m.the square was vast and still.The misty light of streetlamps revealed what the traffic of the daytime,the coming and going of travelers and peddlers,had hidden.The drunks around Kazan Station were difficult to see at first because they were as gary as the pavement.These were not casual drunks or men on a bender but dedicated alcoholics literally pickled in vodka.So many were bandaged or bloody they could have been a battlefield tableau.One held up a cardboard sign that said Give us money or We'll die.Behind the station lay a dark alley of shuttered kiosks and homeless people wrapped in rags and newpaper.Those capable of standing staggered sideways.In the faint light a women dressed in rags tied a bouquet of lavender.The one kiosk that was open sold vodka,of course.Shadows dashed by.Street kids.There are free people,Sasha said.You man homeless.No,there are shelters.They choose this.Free people.We watched prostitutes in tight pants grind by.They have a reputation for breaking clonidine pills into soluble powder.Clonidine is a powerful blood pressure medication.One spiked vodka and the customer passes out,ready to be stripped.When the victim wakes in his under-clothes,he probably won't run to the nearest militia officer.Drunk or not,he should know that at Three Stations the police are the pimps.As we moved farther into the shadows behind the station,we came upon a scuffle between two gangs,Russian versus Tajik,about eight on each side,ages from 10 to 20.No knives were in sight,although a Tajik had a Russian down and was pounding his face into the concrete.

Moscow never sleeps A shopper scythes through bitter cold to reach a boutique on Red Square.

2008-09-18T08:26:00.000-07:00

These materialistic days,Max and Lenin can't compete with Dior and Armani for the hearts of Moscow's consuming class.The dance floor heats up at Propaganda,one of hundreds of clubs throbbing until dawn in liberated Moscow.Elite clubs parctice ruthless face control admitting only the beautiful and the connected.Darkness falls as a building rises along the Moscow River.Laborers,most from former Soviet republics,toil round the clock in a new business district that will boast the tallest skyscraper in Europe.Friends Yevgeny,Anatoly,and Viktor polish off an evening with fistfuls of beer and smoked fish at the 200 year old Sanduny baths,traditional gathering place for Moscow's workaday crowd.In the opulent Turandot restaurant,Mozart is merely background to conspicuous consumption that has fueled Moscow's abrupt ascent to the ranks of the world's most expensive cities.

Moscow at night is a fairy tale with menace.A Cinderella who doesn't leave the Kremlin by midnight could lose more than a glass slipper.At midnight the city is a brilliant grid of light that includes the gilded dome of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior,the Stalinst horror of the Ukraine Hotal,and a dark loop of the Moscow River.Downstream the lights of round the clock construction hang in the air while steel and concrete disappear.The clutter of the day is gone.The night brings clarity,and lights trace the future.On Sparrow hills,however,all eyes were on an unsanctioned really of motocycles.Japanese bikes as bright as toys,dour Russian Vostoks,monster Ducatis,Harlets with exhaust pipes of polished chrome.Hundreds of bikers and admirers filled the vista terrace to see machine that posed on their stands in the negligent fashion of movie star.A Harley merely had to clear its throat to thrill the crowd.Some bikers were so customized it was difficult to determine what they started us.A ural that usually hauled sacks of potatoes in its sidecar had been transformed into a stealth-black predator bristling with rockets and machine guns.As the machine-gun barrels were chair leg and the handlebars were crutches,the effect was more theatrical than threatening.Despite the displat of leather and studs,the same could be said of the bikers.I ask an ogre with a shaved head and bandanna what his day job was.In a growl,I sleep.To which his girlfriend added.Fievel's a computer programmer.Geek by day,bandit by night.My friends Sasha was along.Sasha is so soft-spoken he seems shy,when in fact he is homicide detective who weighs his words.In the army he competed in biathlons,the sport of racing on skis with a rifle and then stopping to shoot at a target as his heart pounded against his ribs,He still has that calm.

We first met years ago in an Irish bar in Moscow.My highly intelligent colleagye Lyuba and I were celebrating the end of two weeks of on the ground research and interviews for one of my novels.Sasha had just dragged some dead mafiafrom a swamp and was in no mood for fitional heroes.Now that he is married to Lyuba,he is forced to endure my constant questions,although he gripes that my Investigator Renko should be a regular detective like him.Racing began across the boulevard.Compettiors were a blur between spectators,the smaller bikes accelerating with a whine while the heavy-weights produced a roar that made the ground tremble.The final line was negotiable,anywhere from a hundred meters to a circut of the Garden Ring,the peripheral road around the center of Moscow,where bikes could reach 120 miles an hour,depending on traffic.Car races also took place,or did until the crackdown after Youtube feature videos of drivers weaving in and out of Ring Traffic at three times the speed limit.A biker in a padded leather outfit-more a belief system than actual protection-mounted a Kawasaki,maybe 750cc.What did I know?I once rode a Vespa scooter from Rome to the south of Spain,that's the extent of my expertise,and I worried when a teenage girl wearing little more than a helmet hopped on behind.As soon as she had a grip,they glided toward the race lanes.The girl looked so frail I had to ask,who is in charge?Where are the police?Sasha pointed at a group of militia officers who stood bashfully to one side.Its out of their control.The bikes blasted off the mark.In seconds the kids were taillights that faded away.Who is in charge?Vladimir Putin?His successor,Dmitry Medvedev?The legendary oligarchs?The KGB disguised as a kinder FSB?There does seem to be an active or former secret agent on the board of every major company.Well,as they say in Russia,Those who know,know what is certain is that Moscow is afloat in petrodollars,there are more billionaires in Moscow tha in any other city in the world.More than New York,London,or Dubai.Millionaires are as common as pigeons.Together the rich and mega-rich constitute a social class who were loosely called New Russians when they first appeared in the 1990's.Half of them are survivors of industraial shake-ups like the alumium war of ten years ago,when executive were killed left and right.Half have discovered that starting a bank is more profitable than robbing one.Half are young financial trapeze artists swinging from one hedge fund to another.You can have three halves in Russia.

But what a change.When I first visited Moscow in 1973,the entire population of the city seemed a retire to a crypt as soon as the sun went down.The few cars on the street were small,dyspeptic Zhigulis.A shop window display might be a single dried fish.Res Square was empty except for the honor guard at Lenin's Tomb,and billboards featured the stony visage of General Secretary Brezhnev.Banners delcared,The Communist Party is the Vanguard of the Working Class!That was the world that today's New Russians grew up in,and it is no wonder that their repressed energy and frustration have erupted with a passion.Russians are over the top.They're not old money hiding behind ivy-covered walls.In fact,they often refuse old money.It's new money,crisp American $100 bills flown in daily and spent almost as fast.Think about it.A billion dollars is a thousand million dollars.How do you celebrate success on such a scale?How much caviar can you eat?How much bubbly can you drink?Et cetera.That's why clubs were invented.Clubs give the rich the chance to flaunt it,baby , flaunt it,assured that face control will stop undesirables at the door.Face control is executed by men who in a glance can determine you finanical profile and celebrity status.And whether you are carrying a gun.The first sign that the GQ bar was hot was the number of Bentleys and Lamborghubus linted up at the curb.I was visiting with writer Lana Kaprizbaya and journalist Yegor Tolstyakov.Lana is dark haired,petite,about a hunderd ponds,including cigarette smoke.She is an acerbic chronicler of the follies of New Russians.Yegor has a voice meant for a dirge,but see him,and he's smiling.Think of the GQ as a body's club,Lana said.A boy's club with bodyguards. New arrivals were greeted by women who were beautiful on a surreal level.Big air kiss.Big air kiss.The GQ bar is licensed by the magazine publisher Conde Nast International,which provides a steady supply for models who sip water at $20 a bottle and pick at Kamchatka crab,a giant crustocean served with six sauces.The interior design is out of Somerset Maugham,all dark woods and lazy ceiling fans.Not hungry?Nyet problem.GQ's VIP lounge is a watering hole for lions only.Here a man can sip Johnnie Walker Blue,light a Cuban cigar,sip a brandy,unwind,and make more money.New Russians are social animals,they squeeze business and pleasure together the way Russian drivers squeeze five lanes out of four.The office is full of petty distractions,meetings,phone calls,endless details.Billion-dollar deals await the cool hours of the evening.There is a Russian tradition that you can't trust or do business with a man until you have been drunk together.Food,vodka,money,they go hand in hand.More astonishing than the grooming of men is the transformation of women.In the few years since the collapse of the Soviet Union,Russian women have metamorphosed from hefty builder of socialism to tennis stars who stand a head taller than the general population.During the day,clones of Maria Sharapove move from spa to spa.At night,they go from club to club in the giddy hope of meeting their own millionaire.

While a GQ deputy director named Sergei gave us a tour,Lana described the buy list of a New Russian,a flat in Moscow,a town house in Belgravia,a villa in St-Tropez,a ski chalet in Courchevel,foreign schools for his children,foreign banks for his money,and,finally,a private jet to fly away in.This is a sore point in Russia.Even in the worst days under Stalin there was a general sense of classlessness.People didn't have money,they had perks,a larger ration of sausage,an extra week at a sanatorium,access to foreign films.The New Russians have emerged in a cloudburst of dollars,and they are,in the eyes of most people,thieves.Their lifestyle is both envied and abhorredmand since Moscow is the center,there are imitations of its club scene across the country.It is fair to say that for many young Russians,clubs define the night.Sergei described the clubbing schedule,10 to 12 is for pre-party socializing in the restaurant,12 to 4 for partying in the clubs,4 to 6 for post-party cooling off.He informed me that when Mickey Rourke is in Moscow,he parties at GQ.I can imagine Rourke partying until dawn.I imagine myself in bed,my haed on a pillow.We flet GQ and hit a club that was launching either a new BMW or a new Vodka or both.Then to a club in Gorky Park for a more democratic crowd where,besides playing Whac-A-Mole with a rubber mallet,you can walk on a man-made beach.Nice place.Nonetheless,I felt that I was missing something.What was the very best club in Moscow?Which was the most fantastic?Well,Lana said,there's Diaghilev.What makes it so populat?No one can get in.

In the year 1551 a strange male animal was put on public display in Augsburg Germany.

2008-09-17T04:34:00.000-07:00

He had humanlike fingers on his hands and feet,observes noted,and a cheerful creature,although he also had a tendency to turn his backside to viewers.Based on an illustration of the creature,biologist think it was most likely a drill,a baboonlike primate,Even today,more than 450 years later,drills are studied so infrequently in the wild that when a samll team of biologist recently spotted a troop of them on Equatorial Guinea's Bioko Island,they collectively gasped,then sat down on the rain forests floor to watch.The drill,the largest primates on Bioko,were climbing and feeding in a fig tree at the floor of the island's 70000-foot-high Gran Caldera.Earlier that morning the scientists had spotted troops each five thirty strong of chattering monkeys,red eared,black colobus,and red colobus,the latter one of the most threatened of all primates.Biologist regard Bioko Island as a living laboratory for studying how plants and animals evolve in isolation.It lies in the Gulf of Guinea,20 miles off the west coast of Africa,one of four islands in an archipelago.The three others-Sao Tome,Principe,and Annobon-are deepwater isles formed tens of millions of years ago and colonized by plants and animals from Africa that arrived on their shores by chance.

Bioko however,was connected to the Africa mainland during each ice age,most recently about 12000 years ago.Like an exclusive ark,the island shelters an isolated set of subspecies evolved separately from those on the mainland.There are seven species of monkeys,including the drills,four galagos bush babies,two small antelopes duikers,one species of porcupine,one species of tree hyrax,one species of pouched rat,and three species of scaly-tailed squirrels.There are catlike linsang but no lions or leopards.The roster once included forest buffalo,but they were hunted to extinction a century ago.Add orchids,land snails,freshwater fish,amphibians,spiders,and inspects-all evovling apart from their mainland relatives.In the island's interior,grasslands,woodlands,and rain forest remain much as they were when the first Portuguese explorers stepped ashore in the 15th century,largely untouched and beautiful.It's as closely to prisine as any place I've seen,said Gail Hearn,one of the researchers leading the expedition into the Gran Caldera-her 13th trip into its forested depths.A primatologist at Pennsylvania's Drexel Univeristy,Hearn made her first trip here in 1990,intending to start to a long term study of Bioko Island drills.Instead,I just fell in love with the whole place.she said We've done so much damage to this planet.Here it's undamaged and impossibly beautiful.It feels like a place where one person could make a difference.Hearn organized the Bioko Biodiversity Protection Progarm BBPP.Each January she brings together teams of scientists and American and Equatorial Guinean students for comprehensive biodiversity surveys.This year a team sponsored by National Geographic magazine,Conservation International,and the International League of Conservation Photographers joined her for a 12 day RAVE Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition to document as many monkeys as possible,along the rest of Bioko's stunning variety of other speices-a richness protected by the island's history but now threatened by rampant hunting.Bioko's flora and fauna so impressed the first European visitor,15th century Portuguese explorer Fernao do Po,that he named the island Formosa,beautiful.European who followed wanted to plant their first American colony here.

They can't control what's inside us

2008-09-15T06:57:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Ferdowsi,the Iranians always had their language to unite them and keep them different from the outside world-and they also took pain to safeguard their cultural touchstones.Take the new year.Nowruz,a 13-day extravaganza during which everything shuts down and the people eat a lot,dance,recite poetry,and build fires that they jump back and forth over.It's a thankgiving of sorts,celebrated around the spring equinox,and a holdover holiday from Zoro-astrianism,at one time the state religion of the Persian.Zoroastrianism's teachings-good and evil,free will,final judgement,heaven and hell,one almightly God-have influenced many religions,including the world's three main faiths,Judaism,Christianity,and Islam.By the time the Arabs arrived,bringing what was for them the new idea of worshipping a single God,Persians had been doing it for more than a millennium.Oil was at the root of a 1953 event that is still a sore subject for many Iranians,the CIA-backed overthrow,instigated and supported by the British government,of Iran's elected and popular prime minister,Mohammad Mossadegh.Mossafegh had kick out the British after the Iranian oil industry,controlled through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company late BP,was nationalized,and the British had retaliated with an economic blockade.With the Cold war on and the Soviet bloc loacted just to the north,the U.S. feared that a Soviet-backed communism in Iran could shift the balance of world power and jeopardize Western interests in the region.The coup-Operation TP-Ajax-is believed to have been the CIA's first.Kermit Roosevet,Jr,Teddy's grandson,ran the show,and H.Norman Schwarzkopf,the father of the Persian Gulf war commander,was enlisted to coax the shah into playing his part.Its base of operation was the U.S. embassy in Tehran,the future nest of spies to the Iranians,where 52 U.S. hostages were taken in 1979.After ward,the shah,Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,was returned to power,commercial oil rights fell largely to British and U.S. oil companies,and Mossadegh was imprisoned and later placed under horse arrest until he died in 1967.To Iranians like Shabbam Rezaei,who has created the online magazine Persian Mirror to promote Iran's cultural identity,Operation TP-Ajax set the stage for later decades of oppression and Islamic fundamentalism.I think if we had been allowed to have a democratic government.she said we could have been the New York of the middle East-of all of Asia,frankly a center for finance,industry ,commerce,culture,and a modern way of thinking.The shah had his own uses for Persian identity.He was big on promoting Persepolis and Cyrus while at the same time pouring Western music.dress,behaviors,and business interests into Iran.One attempt to instill nationalistic pride,which backfired and helped turn public opinion against him,was the ostentatious celebration he staged in 1971 to commemorate the 2500th anniversary of Persian monarchy.It featured a luxurious tent city outside the entrance to Persepolis,VIP apartments with marble bathrooms,food flown in from Paris,and a guest list that included dignitaries from around the world but few Iranians.

To shah's vision apparently involved too much modernizing too fast,and many Iranians bristled.We were getting westernized,said Farin Zahedi,a drama professor at the university of Tehran.But it was superficial,because the public had no real understanding of Western culture.Iranians experienced it as a cultural attack and rebelled in the press and with street demonstrations.The more paranoid the shah became,the more heavy-handed were his secret police-Savak,created in 1957 with the help of America and Israeli advisers.At least hundred of poeple are believed to have been executed by SAVAK,many others were imprisoned,tortured,and exiled,and more than a thousand were killed by the army during demostrations.So when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini spoke in late 1970's of liberating the people from this latest yoke,they were moved by his eloquence and moral rectitude,and for a time the reemergence of religion after the shah's relentless modernism felt like a cleansing.Yet many Iranians by nature are not particularly religious,in the sense of being mosque-goers and fasters.They have a powerful soul and spirit,said carpet salesman named Arsha,but that is not the same.There's a tendency to follow more of a Zoroastrian model from antiquity,with its disdain for rules and for the presumption that an intermediary,such as a mullah,is required to know Allah.The spiritual journey has tended to be more inward,in keeping with the Persian proverb knowledge of self is knowledge of God.So while Iranians at first were open to the idea of an increased role of Islam in public life,they weren't prepared for it to be forced on them with such rigor,especially given the Koran's specific instruction that there should be no compulsion in religion.They certainly didn't expect the clerics to take over commerce,government administration,the courts,and day to day life,down to and including how to go to the bathroom abd how to have sex.Punishments reminiscent of the Dark Ages-public stonings,hangings,the cutting off of fingers and limbs-were put into effect.The central government now discourages some of these archaic practices,but stubborn conservative mullahs out in the provinces cling to the old ways.Beneath it all is the spiritual aim to serve Allah and prepare for paradise.

They're forcing heaven on me!Ali said,sat in a circle and confided how awful it was to be trapped in an environment of fear and secrecy,not knowing if a friends or a loved one has been put in a position to make reports on what you're thinking and saying and doing.The ayatollahs and the ordinary people-everyone has to pretend,said a sofe-spoken locksmith with a huge mustache name Minister D.You don't know who is telling the truth,you don't know who is really religious and who isn't.The Persians have a saying.The walls have mice,and the mice have ears.You can't trust your own eyes,Ali said,If you breathe in or breathe out,Master D said they know.As for the revolution's effect on Persian identity?A typically Iranian thing seems to have happened.For ten years the doors to the West were closed,and conservative clerics running the government went about trying to minimize any cultural identification that was pre-Islamic,a period refered to in much of the Muslim world as Jahiliya,age of ignorance.In offical documents,where possible,references to Iran were replaced with references to IsIamic.Zoroastrian symbols were replaced with Islamic symbols,streets were renamed,and references to the Persian Empire disappeared from schoolbooks.For a time it seemed that Ferdowsi's tomb-a big,pale-stone mausoleum ousside the holy city of Mashhad,with a beautiful reflecting pool leading up to it and chirping birds racing about the columns-might be destoryed.Even Persepolis was in danger of being razed.But they realized this would unite the people against them Ali said,and they had to give up.

The people had welcome the removal of cultural junk from the West,said Farin,the drama professor,as we sipped tea in her tasteful Tehran apartment.But we soon realized that the identity the government was introducing also was not exactly who we were.In the cultural confusion.elements of the old culture-traditional music,Persian paintings,reading from Ferdowsi-were rekindled.We call it the forgotten empire.A young underground Persian rap singer named Yas joined us then,He had black spiky hair,stylishly long sideburns,handsome eyebrows shaped like two black bananas,and around his neck he wore a silver fracahar,the Zoroastrian winged disk that signifies the soul's upward progress through good thoughts,words,and deeds.He's part of the Generation of the Revolution,who grew up after 1979 and account for more than tow-thirds of the country's 70 million people.Variously described as jaded and lacking belief in their futures-a burned generation,as Kurdish filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi put it-they are increasingly leaving for Europe and elsewhere.Some have a rich consciousness of their Persian past while at the same time supporting the idea of Islamic unity,some feel only Persian or only Islamic,and others immerse themselves in Western culture through television programming received on illegal satellite dishes.Farin said They are schizophrenic.Yas raps about Persian poets,grandparents,and the history of Iran.One of his most popular cut,My identity,was in response to the movie 300,about the famous battle at Thermopylae between the Spartans of Greece and the so-called Persian immortals.The Greeks were portrayed as heroic,innocent,and civilized,Yas said.The Persian were shown as ugly savages with a method of fighting that was unfair.The movie set off a tirade from Iranians here and abroad,who experienced it as a cultural attack.In defense,Yas rapped about Persepolis and Cyrus but also chastised his fellow citizens for resting on the laureals of greatness past.

An irony is that the Islamic revolution-at times refered to here as the second Arab invasion-appears to have strengthened the very ties to antiquity that it tried so hard to sever,it has roused that part of the national identity that remains connected to the idea,memorialized in places like Persepolos and Pasargadae,of Iranians as direct descendants of some of the world's most ancient continuous people.A civil engineer named Hashem told me of a recent impromptu celebration at Cyrus's tomb.People text messaged each other on their cell phones,and a couple of thousand coincidentally showed up,buying multiple entrance tickets to support restoration of the tomb.The celebration was informal.No speeches,no ceremony.Just to honor Cyrus and show solidarity.As farin put it,shaking her lowered head with an air of world-weariness,there has been this constant onslaught on our identity,and the reaction has always has been to return to that deepest identity.Inside every Iranian there is an emperor or an empress.That is for sure.

The cult of Feedowsi The Iranians spoke Farsi anyway.Tha national languages has been Arabized to some extent

2008-09-15T03:35:00.000-07:00

But Old Persian remains at its root.The man credited with helping save the languages,and the history,from oblivion is a tenth-century poet named Ferdowsi.Frerdowsi is Iran's Homer.Iranians idolize their poets-among many,Rumi,Said,Omar Khayyam,Hafez whose works are said to be consulted for guidence about love and life as much as,if not more than,the Islamic holy book,the Koran.When the people were oppressed by the latest invader and couldn't safety speak their minds,the poets did it for them,cleverly disguised in verse.Sometimes they were executed.said Youssef the archaeologist,but they did it anyway.So today,although Iran is home to many cultural denominations and languages other than Persian-Turkman,Arab,Azeri,Baluchi,Kurd,and others-everyone can speak Farsi,he said,which is one of the oldest living languages in the world.The people hero-Ferdowsi,a sincere Muslim who resented the Arab influence,spent 30 years writing,in verse with minimal use of Arabic-derived words,an epic history of Iran called the Shahnameh,or Book of kings.This panorama of conflict and adventure chronicles 50 monarchies-their accessions to the throne,their deaths,the frequent abdications and forcible overthrows-and ends with the Arab conquest,depicted as a disaster.The most heralded character is Rostam,a chivalrous figure of courage and integrity,a nation savior and trickster hero,according to Dick Davis,a Persian scholar at Ohio State University who has translated the Shahnameh into English.The stories of Rostam are their myths,he said.This is how the Iranians see themselves.

The tales involve feuding kings and hero champions,in which the latter are almost always represented as ethically superior to the king they serve,facing the dilemmas of good men living under an evil or incompetent government.The work is haunted by the idea that those ethically most fitted to rule are precisely the ones mose relcutant to rule,preferring instead to devote themselves to humankind's chief concerns,the nature of wisdom,the fate of the human soul,and the incomprehensibility of God's purposes.The original Shahnameh is long gone,and all that's left are copies,including one in Tehran's Golestan Palace museum.Its caretaker,a sweet-faced young woman named Behnaz Tabrizi,cleared a large table and covered it with a green felt sheet.She retrieved a black box from a safe in an adjoining bulletproof room equipped with fire and earthquake alarms and climate control and laid a red velet cloth on top of the green felt cloth,because the Iranians like to make little ceremonies out of everything,if they can.I had to wear a sirgical mask to protect the manuscript from stray saliva and the condensation from my breath,and Behnaz put on white cotton gloves.She gently lifted the book,which dates to about 1430,out of its box and gingerly turned the pages with the tips of her fingers while I examined its illustrations with a magnifying glass.They depicted scenes the collective cultural memory is steeped in- someone tied to a tree while awaiting his fate,Rostam unwrittingly killing his own son,Sohrab,in battle,men on horseback with spears fighting invaders on elephants-all precisely drawn and vibrantly colored,using inks that were made from crushed stones mixed with the liquid squeezed from flower petals.

It is said that just about anybody on the street.regardless of education,can recite some Ferdowsi,and there are usually readings going on at colleges or someone's apartment or traditional Persian teahouses,like one in south Teharn called Azari.The walls were covered with scenes from the the Shahnameh,among them the one of Rostam killing Sohrab.A storyteller did a one man dramatic reading, and afterward musicians played traditional music and sang about yearning for the love of a women or for the love of Allah.People sat together at long tables or stretched out on platforms covered with Persian rugs,smoking their tiny Bahman cigarettes and clapping to the music,while waiters brought dates and cookies and tea in delicate little glasses with little spoons,followed by kebabs,yogurt milk,pickles,and beet salad.Children danced on the tabletops as the patrons cheered them on and took pictures with their cell phones.

Welcome to Aratta The earliest reports of human settlement in Iran go back at at least 10000 years,

2008-09-14T05:18:00.000-07:00

And the country's name derives from Aryans who migrated here beginning around 1500 B.C. Layers of civilization tens of thousands of archaeological sites-are yet to be excavated.One recent find quickening some hearts was unearthed in 2000 near the city of Jiroft,when flash floods along the Halil River in the southeast exposed thousands of old tombs.The excavation is just six seasons old,and there isn't much to see yet.But intriguing artifacts have been found including a bronze goat's head dating back perhaps 5000 years,and Jiroft is spoken of as possibly an early center of civilization contemporary with Mesopotamia.Youssef the archaeologist,an authority on the third millennium B.C.,directs the digs.He used to run the archaeology department at the University of Tehran but lots his job after the revolution and moved to France.Over the years,he said,things changed.Interest in archaeology revived,and he was invited back to run Jiroft.Youssef thinks it may be the fabled lost Bronze Age land of Aratta,circa 2700 B.C.,reputedly legendary for magnificent crafts that found their way to Mesopotamia.But thus far there's no proof,and other scholars are skeptical.What would be have to find to put the matter unequivocally to rest?He chuckled wistfully.The equivalent of an engraved arch that says,Welcome to Aratta.Prospects for more digs at the thousands of unexplored sites seem daunting.In Iran the price of meat is high,there aren't enough jobs,the bureaucracy is inscrutable,bloated,and inefficient,and state corruption-as described to me by three different people-is an open secret,worse than ever,and institutionalized.The country has many needs,Youssef said,and certainly archaeology is not the main subject.But since Jiroft,all the provinces are interested in excavating and every little town wants to be known around the world like Jiroft.They're proud,and there are rivalries.Youssef was slouched happily in a fauxl-eather chair in the offices of his publisher,munching tiny green grapes while musing about why Iranians are the way they are.As much as anything else,he thought,it was the geography,for when the Iranians were being overrun time after time,where could they go-the desert?There was no place to run and hide.They stayed,they got along,they pretended and made taarof.The tree here are very deep roots.The legacy from anitquity that has always seemed to loom large in the national psyche is this.The concepts of freedom and human rights may not have originated with the classical Greeks but in Iran,as early as the sixth century B.C. under the Achaemenid emperor Cyrus the Great,who established the first Persian Empire,which would become the largest,most powerful kingdom on Earth.Among other things,Cyrus reputedly a brave and humle good guy,freed the enslaved Jews of Babylon in 539 B,C,sending them back to Jersalem to rebuild their temple with money he gave them,and established what has been called the world's first religiously and culturally tolerant empire.Ultimately it comprised more than 23 different peoples who coexisted peacefully under a central government,originally based in Pasargadae-a kingdom that at its height,under Cyrus's successor,Darius,extended from the Meditterrannean to the Indus RIver.So Persia was arguably the world's first superpower.We have a nostaligia to be a superpower again,said Saeed Laylaz,an economic and political analyst in Tehran,and the country's nuclear ambitions are directly related to this desire,The headlines are familiar.A consensus report of key U.S. spy agencies-the National Intelligence Estimate-concluded last December that a military-run program to develop nuclear pwoer weapons in Iran was halted in 2003.Iran continues to enrich uranium,insisting that it wants only to produce fuel for its nuclear power plants,but highly enriched uranium is also a key ingredient for a nuclear bomb.As a deterrent,the UN has imposed increasing economic sanctions.But Iran's president Mahmoud Ahamadinejad,a conservative hardliner,is giving no ground while at the same time making frequent threatening remarks about nearby Israel,denying the Holocaust,and,according to the U.S. government,sending weapons and munitions to extremist militias in Iraq that are being used against Iraqis and U.S. forces there.

At one time the area of the country was triple what it is now,and it was a stable superpower for more than a thousand years,said Saeed,a slender refined man in glasses and starched shirtsleeves rolled to three quarter length,sitting in his elegant apartment next to a lamp resemnling a cockatoo,with real feathers.The empire once encompassed today's Iraq,Pakistan,Afghanistan,Turkmenistan,Uzbekistan,Tajikistan,Turken ,Jordan,Cyprus,Syria.Lebanon,Israel,Egypt,and the Caucasus region.The borders have moved in over the centuries,but this superpower nostalgia,so in contradiction to reality,he said,is all because of the history.At the foundation of which,again,is Cyrus,and in particular something called the Cyrus Cylinder-perhaps Iran's most exalted artifact-housed at the British Museum in London,with a replica residing at UN headquarters in New York City.The cylinder resembles a corncob made of clay,inscribed on it,in cuneiform,is a decree that has been described as the first charter of human rights-predateing the Magna Carta by nearly two millennia.It can be read as a call for religious and ethnic freedom,it banned slavery and oppression of any kind,the taking of property by force or without compensation,and it gave member states the right to subject themselves to Cyrus's crown,or not.I never resolve on war to reign.To know Iran and what Iran really is,just read that transcripition from Cyrus,said Shirin Ebadi,the Iranian lawyer who won the 2003 Nobel Peace Price.We were in her central Tehran apartment building,in a basement office lined with mahogany-and-glass bookcases.Inside one was a tiny gold copy of the cylinder,encased in a Plexiglas box that she held out to me as if presenting a newborn child.Such greatness as the cylinder has been shown many times in Iran,but the world doesn't know it,she said.When I go abroad,people get surprised when they realize that 65 percent of the college students here are girls.Or when they see Iranian paintings and Iranian atchitecture,they are shcoked.They are judging a civilization just by what they have heard in the last 30 years.The Islamic revolution,the rollbacks of personal freedoms,particularly for women,the nuclear program and antagonism with the west.They know nothing of the thousands of years that came before,she said-what the Iranians went throught to remain distinct from their invaders,and how they did it.For instance,she said,after the Arabs came,and Iran converted to Islam,eventually we turned to the Shiite sect,which was different from the Arabs,who are Sunni.They were still Muslims,but not Arabs.We were Iranian.In fact,the first thing people said when I asked what they wanted the world to know about them was,We are not Arabs! followed closely by we are not terriorists!!.A certain Persian chauvinism creeps into the dialogue.Even though economically they're not performing as well as Arab states like Dubai and Qatar,they still feel exceptional.The Arabs who conquered Iran are commonly regarded as having been little more than Bedouin living in tents,with no culture of their own aside from what Iran gave them,and from the vehemence with which they are still railed against,you would think it happened not 14 centuries ago but last week.I met a woman at a weddingwho gave off the air of an aging movie star,her dapper husband beside her wearing his white dinner jacket and smoking out of a cigarette holder,and it wasn't five minutes before she lit into the Arabs.

Everything went down after they came,and we have never been the same!she said,wringing someone's neck in the air.And a friend I made here,an English teacher named Ali,spoke of how the loss of the empire still weighed on the national consciousness.Brfore they came we were a great and civilized power.he said,as we drvoe to his home on the outskirts of Shiraz,dodging motocycles and tailgaters.Echoing commonly started though disputed lore,he added,they burned our books and raped out women,and we couldn'd speak Rarsi in public for 300 years,or they took out out tongues.

What's so striking about the ruins of Persepolis in southern Iran,an ancient capital of the Persian Empire that was burned down after being conquered

2008-09-13T04:12:00.000-07:00

by Alexander the Great,is the absence of violent imagery on what's left of its stone walls.Among the carvings there soliders,but they're not fighting,there are weapons,but they're not drwan.Mainly you emblems suggesting that something humane went on here instead people of different nations gathering peacefully,bearing gifts,draping their hands amiably on one another's shoudlers.In an era noted for its barbarity,Persepolis,it seems,was a relatively cosmopolitan place-and for many Iranians today its ruins are a breathtaking reminder of who their Persian ancestors were and what they did.The recorded history of the country itself spans some 2500 years,culminating in today's Islamic Republic of Iran,formed in 1979 after a revolution inspired in part by conserverative clerics cast out the Western-backed shah.It's arguably the world's first modern constitutional theocracy and a grand experiment,Can a country be run effectively by holy men imposing an extreme version of Islam on a people soaked in such a rich Persian past?Persia was a conquering empire but also regarded in some ways as one of the more glorious and benevolent civilizations of antiquity.and I wondered how strongly people might still identify with the part of their history that's illustrated in those surviving friezes.So I set out to explore what Persain means to Iranians,who at the time of my two visits last year were being shunned by the international community,their culture demonized in Western cinema,and their leaders cast,in an escalating war of words with Washington,D.C.,as menacing would be terrorists out to build the bomb.You can't really separate out Iranian identity as one thing or another-broadly speaking it's part Persian,part Islamic,and part western,and the paradoxes all exist together.But there is a Persian identity that has nothing to do with Islam,which at the same time has blended with the culture of Islam as evidenced by the Muslim call to prayer that booms from loudspeakers situated around Persepolis,a cue to visitors that they are not only in a Persian kingdom but also in an Islamic republic.This would be a story about those Iranians who still,at least in part,identify with their Persian roots.Perhaps some millennial spillover runs through the makeup of what is now one of the world's ticking hot spots.Are vestiges of the life-loving Persian nature wine,love,poetry,song woven into the fabric of abstinence,prayer,and fatalism often associated with Islam-like a secret computer program running quietly in the background? Iran's capital city of Tehran is an exciting,polluted-choked metropolis at the foot of the Elburz Mountains.Many of the buildings are made of tiny beige bricks and girded with metal railings.giveing the impression of small compounds coming one after the other,punctuated by halted construction projects and parks.There are still some beautiful gardens here,a Persian inheritance,and private ones,with fruit trees amd fountains,fishponds amd aviaries,flourishing inside the brick walls.

While I was here,two Iranian-born American academics,home for a visit,had been locked up,accused of fomenting a velet revolution against the government.Eventually they were released.But back in the United State,people would say,wasn't I afraid to be in Iran?-the assumption being that I must have bee in danger of getting locked up myself.But I was guest in Iran,and in Iran a guest is accroded the high status,the sweetest piece of fruit,the most comfortable place to sit it.It's part of a complex system of ritual politeness- that governs the subtext of life here.Hospitality,courting,family affairs,political negotitations,taarof is the unwritten code for how people should treat each other.The word has Arabic root,meaning to know or acquire knowledge of.But the idea of taarof-to abase oneself while exalting the other person-is Persain in origin,said William O.Beeman,a linguistic anthropologist at the university of Minnesota.He described it as fighting for the lower hand,but in an exquisitely elegant way,making it possible,in a hierarchical society like Iran's,for people to paradoxically deal with each other as equals.Wherever I went,people fussed over me and made sure that all my needs were met.But they can get so caught up trying to please,or seeming to,and declining offers,or seeming to,that true intentions are hidden.There's a lot of mind reading and lighthearted,meaningless dialogue while the two parties go back and forth with entreaties and refusal until the truth reveals itself.Being smooth and seeming sincere while hiding your true feelings-artful pretending-is considered the height of taarof and an enormous social asset.You never show your intention or your real identity.said a former Iranian political prisoner now living in France.You're making sure you're not exposing yourself to danger,because throughout our history there has been a lot of danger there.

Indeed,the long course of Iranian history is saturated with wars,invasions,and martyrs,including the teenage boys during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s who carried plastic keys to heaven while clearing minefields by walking bravely across them.The underlying reason for all the drama is location.If you draw lines from the mediterranean to Beijing or Beijing to Cairo or Paris to Delhi,they all pass through Iran,which straddles a region where East to West.Over 26 centuries,a blending of the hemispheres has been going on here-trade,cultural interchange,friction-with Iran smack in the middle.Meanwhile because of its wealth and strategic location,the country was also overrun by one invader after another,and the Persian empire was established,lost,and reestablished a number of times-by the Achaemenids,the Parthians,and the Sassanids-before finally going under.Invaders have included the Turks,Genghis Khan and the Mongols,and,most significantly,Arabian tribesmen.Fired with the zeal of a new religion,Islam,they humbled the ancient Persian Empire for good in the seventh century and ushered in a period of Muslim greatness that was distinctly Persian.The Arab expansion is regarded as one of the most dramatic movements of any people in history.Persian was in its inexorable path,and ,ever since,Iranians have been finding ways to keep safe their idenity as distinct from the rest of the Muslim and Arab world.Iran is very big and very ancient,said Youssef Madjidzadeh,a leading Iranian archaeologist,and it's not easy to change the hearts and idenity of the people because of this.They like to say,for instance,that when invanders came to Iran,the Iranians did not become the conquerors were said to have gone Persian,vanquished Persian,adopted its cultural and administrative practices,took a Persian wife Roxana,and ordered thousands of his troops to do the same in a mass wedding.Iranians seem particularly proud of their capacity to get along with others by assimilating compatible aspects of the invaders ways without surrendering their own-a cultural elasticity that is at the heart of their Persian identity.

Dead-end road it clings to the Andes,a winding dirt path about ten feet wide and 22 miles long,descending 6500 feet.

2008-09-13T00:47:00.000-07:00

Cliff loom,chasms gape.Few guardrails.Lots of landslides.Welcome to what some call the world's most dangerous road.Built in the 1930s by Paraguayan pows,Bolivia's Nor Yungas Road was once the only way from La Paz to Coroico.Drivers poured brooze on their tires to appease the goddess Pachamama,chewed coca leaves to stay alert.But prayers went unanswered,corss dot ledges where hundreds have perished.The worst accident,the 1983 crash of a produce truck carrying socres of people.Most died.My lord.I regret even takin a peek.I still have nightmares.Since 2006 a new road has offered safe passage.The old way now draws mostly bikers and tourists-but is still not safe.with cyclists dying this year. Says biking-company owner Alistair Matthew.People were more cautions when there were more cars.A truck negotiation Bolivia's Road of Death,from high plains to cloud forest.

How bees wing it.Don't tell the bees,but they aren't fit for flight.At least that's what a French mathematician concluded in 1934,so one story goes.of course.Bees fly just fine.early researchers simply had no way to gague the insects complex wing movements.Caltech biologist Michael Dickinson and colleagues report that while honeybee don't have it easy-their small wing to small size ratio means they must work harder to fly than other insects.Their unorthodox flapping method lets them hover,fight wind,evade predators,and get lift even when loaded up with nectar or pollen.Beat generation Studies show that many inspects move their wings in long,sweeping strokes 145 to 165 degrees at roughly 200 beats a second.But honeybees flap in short arcs about 90 degrees,so they have to compensate with speed.How much?Up to 240 beats a second-nearly twice what you'd expect given their size.Wind beneath and above their wings.To beat gravity,you need to generate an upward force.Fast flapping plus wing flipping does the trick for honeybees.Wings flap forward,creating a vortex above the bee and generating lift.Wings begin to rotate and slow down in preparation for the backward stroke.Wings finish rotating and start sweeping backward,utilizing the previous stroke's wake.Wings flap backward,creating a new vortex in the process.The cycle then repeats.

The shard war blame it on plastic.Sea glass-the bright bits of old bottles scoured by sand and salt water-is getting increasingly difficult to find.We're at the end of the sea glass window.Notes Mary Beth Beuke,president of the North American Sea glass association.There is less glass packaging now and more recycling.Much of the glass consigned to the waves decades ago,she says,is tumbled so tiny it's almost not worth picking up.Of course.it started out as something not worth keeping.Trash tossed off ships or washed from dumps must spend years in the water to become good sea glass.Wave churn,shore terrain,water acidity,and composition of the glass itself all play a part in creating the smoothed shards characteristic matte texture.Beuke,who finds sea glass all over the world,offers these tips for fellow beachcombers.Search at low tide and after a storm.Rocky shores are better than sandy.And leave clear,jagged pieces where they lie,she says.They are not finished yet.Sea glass is found worldwide.Red and orange are rare.White-which once was clear glass-is most common.

Golden fleece fabulously expensive and buttery soft sweaters may help save the vicuna.

2008-09-12T11:36:00.000-07:00

Millions of the llama kin once capered in the Andes,warmed by fluffy coats ideal for high altitudes.The Inca clipped the wool for royal garments,but after the Spanish conquest vicunas were killed for their pelts.By the 1960's only a few thousand survived.As countries protected their herds and international laws banned vicuna products,the animal began to rebound.Vicuna couture is the latest boost.In 1994 Italian luxury clothier Loro Piana started a line using fleece sheared from Peruvian vicunas.Styles are classic.The fabric,usually undyed to preserve its softness,makes even cashmere seem harsh.Other fashion firms have jumped im.The result is a boon for Peru's vicunas-they now number about 150000 up from 62000 in 1981-and for villagers who sell wool from animals they've guarded and sheared.But some wild vicunas are being fenced.Feeding and inbreeding are concerns,poaching is on the rise.Putting vicuna on the runway has its costs.The making of a sweater Starting at age two,a vicuna is sheared every two years or so,yielding seven to eight ounces of fleece-the finest and softest used commercially.

In 1958 marchers carried their new signs to the Unite Kingdom's Atomic Weapons Establishment

2008-09-12T05:48:00.000-07:00

Sign Language on a rainy Easter weekend 50 year ago,a crowd of protester set off from on a four day march for the fledgling cause of nuclear disarmament.A new movement need a new symbol,so they waved signs bearing a simple logo that has since gone on to become a universal emblem for peace.The peace symbol is neither the track of a dove nor a chicken,as hawks have sneered.Artist Gerald Holtom based it on the sema-phore initials for nuclear disarmament,although he later said that it also represented himself in despair,palms out and down.Purposely never copyrighted,used in everything from Vietnam War protesters to cigarette ads,the symbol is easy to recognize-and to misdraw.Pat Arrowsmith,78 helped plan the 1958 march and still goes to antinuclear and antiwar events.A common mistake-leaving out the middle leg-turns a peace sign into the Mercedes-Benz logo .She fixes that I get out my ballpoint immediately.

Pedigreed Pizza There is pizza,and there is pizza Napoletana.The two,connoisseurs say,have as much in common as a premier cru Bordeaux has with the plonk in a screw-top jug.Soon pedigreed Napolitan pizza will join the pantheon of European Union-certified edibles like Spanish serrano ham and English blue Stilton cheese.Warning.It takes longer to read the EU spacs for Neapolitan pizza than to bake one.To bear the imprimatur of Guaranteed Traditional Specialty,pizza must not stray over35 centimeters in diameter nor the crust exceed two centimeters in thickness.ingredients must inculde type 00 flour and up to 100 grams of tomatoes preferably Marzanos applied in a spiraling motion.The word pizza first appeared in an AD 997 manuscript from Gaeta,a southern Italian town.A millennium later,in 1997,separatist militans in northern Italy tried to boycott pizza-the icon of their southern nemesis.Neapolitans responded to the effect let them eat polenta,referring to the cornmeal-based mush dear to the wealthier.but alleagedly culinarily impoverished north.If only Naples had patented pizza,food writer Burton Anderson observed,It would be among Italy's wealthier cities instead of one of its poorest.

End of a Beginning Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf has faded away,but not the country's many troubles.

2008-09-10T01:31:00.000-07:00

As a Pakistani,pleased though I am by Pervez Musharraf's resignation as President,I cannot but feat that this week's celebrations could prove to be short-lived.Yes,his departure will make Pakistan more democratic and was long overdue.But it will not in itself cure the myriad ills facing the country.Musharraf's legacy is a mixed one.Like many Pakistanis,I was appalled when he seized control of Pakistan in 1999.Pakistan had stagnated in the 1990s under the bickering and incompetent elected governments of Benazir Bhutto and her rival Nawaz SHarif.But I recalled the damage done by the oppressive dictatorship of General Zia ul-haq in the 1980s and had no desire to see Pakistan revert to military rule.I began to revise my opinion of Musharraf after 9 11.The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in response to terroism,and the terrorist attack on its parliament later that year led India to threaten to do the same to Pakistan.Musharraf seemed to offer firm leadership in this time of crisis,managing to reverse Pakistan's policy of support to the Taliban and embarking on a normalization process with India.By the midpoint of Musharraf's nine-year rule,a combnation of sound economic policies and foreign aid had resulted in rapid growth for Pakistan.Optimism was in the air,and Pakistani friends of mine who had lived abroad for years-artists,bankers,architects,professors-were flocking back home.

Musharraf spoke in favor of tolerance,women's rights and moderate interpretations of Islam.He liberalized the media,allowing dozens of private television channels to operate and freely criticize the government.And at first he seemed prepared to allow the judiciary to challenge the government.Unfortunately,Musharraf seemed unable to accept the logical conclusion of the project he had begun,his own departure.He spent the second half of his rule battling the very democratic forces that he had helped unleash.As he became more isloated and focused on self-preservation,his government took its eye off the economic management of the country.Poor policies eventually resulted in crippling electricity blackouts,dangerous food shortages and rampant inflation.His autocratic leadership style and refusal to share power with country's two biggest democratic parties also meant that the fight against religious militants in Pakistan came to be seen as Musharraf's war,utterly lacking in popular support.Large swathes of territory were overrun by Pakistani Taliban,army morale crumbled and the once unheard-of tactic of suicide bombing became commonplace in Pakistan.Now that Musharraf has goine,the country need to come together.Too much time has been spent blaming Musharraf rather than finding solutions to Pakistan's pressing problems.Pakistan must look to the future and break decisively from its past.For Sharif and Bhutto's parties,this means avoiding a return to the vindicticeness and squabbling that characterized relations between their parties in the 1990s and undermined Pakistan's previous experiment with democracy.Their first test will be the selection of a new presidnet,where it is essential that a nonpartisan,mutually acceptable candidate be chosen.Both sides must recognzie that building a stable democratic system will better serve their interests in the long run than engaging in a zero-sum conflict that sets the stage for another coup.Beyond that,they will need to work together to develop a plan for reviving the moribund economy and have a public debate on the unpopular war on terror.Pakistanis should not blindly follow America's lead,but they must recoginze the self-delusional nature of claims that the struggle against militancy is not their fight.Last year along more Pakistanis were killed in terrorist attacks than the number of Americans who died in 911.As for the army chief,General Ashfaq Kayani,he has done an admirable job of pulling the army out of politics.But the instinct will remain to focus on India as the main threat to Pakistan and to treat religious militants as asserts for projecting Pakistani Power,His challenge will be to recognzie that the army helped create the terroirsts who are now the country's biggest security risk,and to reverse the ambiguity that has characterized the military's commitment to confronting this menace.Democracy brings responsibility.With Musharrag gone,Pakistan's leaders would do well to remember that the public now has only them to blame.

Exploring Inner spaces

2008-09-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

The streets of London are lined with architectural gems,futuristic towers,quickly homes,historic facades.But behind their door is an inner beauty that few get to see-expect for one weekend a year.On Sept 20 and 21,London holds its annual Open house,when hundreds of the city's most exciting buildings-many usually closed to the public-invite you to step inside.Here are four places worth a peek.Portcullis house built to hold new offices for members of parliament at a cost of $440 million,Portcullis house was the most expensive office block in Britian when it was finished in 2000.Imposing and elegant,it surrouds an airy courtyard,and seamlessly incorporates the ultramodern Westminster Underground station below.The foreign office This Victorian government building in whitehall is a picture of neoclassical grandeur and extravagance.The high-lights include the Grand Staircase with its marble columns and lavish murals,and the magnificent Durbar Court,three generous stories of granite arches and intricate friezes,capped by a glass roof.City Hall completed in 2002,the seat of London government is one of the more striking structures along the Thames.Designed by Foster and Partners,it resembles a giant steel-and-glass egg tilting in the wild.Inside,the spiral staircase at its core seems to float in midair,and the meeting chamber offers breathtaking IMAX-like views of the river.On the roof,solar pannel provide power and the building's green credentials.Crossness engines house Designed by Joseph Bazalgettem19th century creator of the London sewage system,the Crossness Engines house waste water pumping station is a feat of Victorian engineering.Inside is a rare marriage of brute power and beauty,four of the world's largest rotative beam engines,surrounded by ornate castiron work that has been carefully restored to stunning effect.

Magical mystery tour poeple say that John Keat's Ghost haunts his house below Rome's Spanish Steps.And,according to legend,a dragon lurks beneath the columns of Castor and Pollus's temple in the Forum.There are just a few of the tidbits to be found within the new Rome edition of the Ruyi,a series of guidebooks that turn visits to Italian cities into intriguing treasure hunts.Springing from the fertile imagination of Venetian writer Alberto Toso Fei,this game as guide centers on a hunt for the Ruyi of the title,a mythical magical scepter stolen from Kublai Khan by Marco Polo.In the story,the explorer takes the scepter back to Venice-where Toso Fei's first Ryui game is set-before it is donated to the Vatican.During the sack of Rome in 1527,the Pope commissions Florentine goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini to transform the Ruyi's appearance to keep it out of enemy hands.Players use clues to find the scepter,taking in a tour of the city as they search.To make the quest more challenging,each entry in the book has been sliced up and jumbled.The only way to reassemble it- and identify the site it describes-is to use a code sent to you by text.Then another text arrives with a question that can only be answered by visiting the site itself.Send the correct reply,and you get a new code to move on to the next site.The clues can lead to any of 60 landmarks and monuments throughout Rome,ranging from the obvious-the Colosseum-to the more obscure,such as a shrine marking the spot where Joan,the legendary female Pope of the 9th century,is said to have given birth.The game lasts from two to nine hours and can be played alone or in teams.Ultimately,the Ruyi always evades discovery.But the real treasures is in experiencing a fun new twist on sightseeing in the Eternal city.

Afghan researchers found the remain of 16 clay bodhisattvas arranged in a circle.

2008-09-08T07:21:00.000-07:00

Only their feet and the bottom of their robes were intact,and the Buddha statue they'd once surrounded was gone,probably demolished in the first Islamic invasions a few centuries later.Also gone,except for its bare feet,was 20 foot-tall upright Buddha that has towarded over the site,beckoning the monks to prayer,Perched on an arid hilltop,overlooking the plains where today the city of Kabul stands,the site gives a rich sense of the Buddhist ideals of quiet contemplation and remove. If this had been discovered during the Taliban's day,it might well have been destoryed,says archaeologist Najib Sedeqi.A few guards keep a close eye on the site with cooperation from neighbors.Every period in the country's history is opening up to exploration.Afghan and French archaeologists will soon start excavating one of the oldest known mosques in Afghanistan,the No Gonbad nine domes,which stands outside Balkh amid mighty columns and thick walls,now wall-buried in soil and debris,the mosque expresses power and permanence.When Islam came to Afghani-stan,it clearly came to early.Despite the progress,huge challenges remain.Crime,looting,and the threat posed by Taliban insurgents could snuff out Afghanistan's nascent cultural revival at any movement.At Tillya Tepe villagers looking for antiquities and building material have partically leveled the golden hill.At Ai Khanum,where Alexander the Great built a city on the banks of the Amu Darya,archaeologists found baths,Hellenic lettering,and other traces of an outpost of Greek culture on the doorstep of China.Since then,unemployed fighter for local warlords have started to pillage the site,turning it into a lunar landscape of pits and tunnels.At Begram,looters who were once moonlight scavengers have become bolder and better equipped.We were patrolling the site one evening when we heard a gunshot,and then I realized that we were the target,said Aynadin Sodeqi,the mustachioed commander of the Begram unit of a new police force charged with protecting Afghan archaeological site.He and his man stambled upon a group of looters who were digging treasures to sell in the antiquities trade.The looter escaped,but Sodeqi and his men found at least part of their stash.28 ancient coins and a stone tablet decorated with lutus flowers.Sodeqi also found a piece of equipment that the looters presumably planned to use that evening.What kind of equipment?He answersed with a pantomime,holding out his fists and vibrating them up and down ,a jackhammer.The looters know the value of the things they pillage,says Nadir Rassoili,director of the Afghan government's Institute of Archaeology,which has final authority over the country's 1500-plus known ancient sites.They are armed,and no matter how many officers we place at sites,they attack them and drive them off.Then they loot.At Rassoili's prodding,the Afghan government created the archaeology police force in 2004,starting with about 200 men.It has grown to 500,but Rassouli says it would take many times that number to cover the entire country.Most lack training and weapons.The first sustained attack on the new force came in Auguest 2006 at the legendary Silk Road outpost of Balkh,whose towering walls protect the remains of millennia of history.Four officers were killed by antiquities hunters in that incident,and at least six more have since have been murdered in the line of duty.Tons of Afghan loot are believed to be circulating globally.Coins have a particularly avid market,and Begram has long been known for huge caches embedded in its soil,attesting to its role as a major trading point in antiquity.A British traveler in 1833 reported that local people dug up 30000 coins every year.He carried off 2000 for himself.Today it is land mines that stud Begram's fields,as members of Sodrqu's police unit know.Among protruding sherds of Kushan-era pottery,lines of red stones mark the dangers,a closer look reveals innocent-looking plastic disks lurking in the grass like discarded toys.Such is the pottery and desperation-and such are the profits to be gained fron antiquities-that not even land mines deter looters.

Afghanistan's Hidden Treasures

2008-09-06T10:34:00.000-07:00

Concealed from invading Soviets,later from the Tailiban,and feared lost,a trove of precious antiquities reveals the rich cultures that came togother at one of history's great crossroads.For a country shattered by decades of war,evidence of a glorious past inspires a renewed sense of national pride.A gilded silver plate from the Greek colony of Ai Khanum unites classical deities and local designs.Watched by the Greek sun god Helios in his crown of rays.Cybele and Nike ride in a Central Asia-Style chariot pulled by Lions.The plate's creation followed Alexander the Great's fourth-century B.C. march into Asia.A sinuous sculpture in ivory resembles Ganga,India's river goddess.Hunderds of such ornate carvings in tusk and bone were found at Begram,along with Chinese lacquer,Egyptian glass,and other exotic goods that establish Afghanistan as a vibrant commercial center in the ancient world.Officals from Kabul guard a crate of artifacts exhibited in Paris,Turin,and Amsterdam before heading to U.S. museums.These are national treasures,says curator Fredrik Hiebert.They're not going anywhere without the Afghans.The collection includes a miniature mask of a Greek god top right.

Omara Khan Massoudi knows how to keep a secret.Massoudi is director of the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul.Like the French citizens during World War II who hid works of art in the countryside to prevent them from falling into Nazi Hands,Massoudi and a few trusted tahiwidars-key holders-secretly packed away Afghanistan's ancient treasures when they saw their country descend into an earthly hell.

First came the Soviet invasion in 1979,followed about ten years later by a furious civil wat that reduced much of Kabul to ruins.As Afghan warlords battled for control of the city,fighters pillaged the national museum,selling the choicest artifacts on the black market and using museum records to kindle campfires. In 1994 the building was shelled,destorying its roof and top floor.The final assault came in 2001,when teams of hammer-wielding Taliban zealots came to smash works of art they deemed idolartous.When they finished,more than 2000 artifacts lay in smithereens.Throughout those dark years,Massoude and a handful of other museum officals kept quiet about the hoard of museum artifacts-among them the crown jewels of Afghanistan,the famed Bactrian gold-that they had hidden in vaults under the presidential palace in 1988,as the Soviet occupation gave away to civil war.Reserachers the world over despaired of ever seeing the objects again,thinking they would been sold piecemeal into the illicit antiquities trade or destoryed by the Taliban in their final,iconoclastic frenzy.By October 2003-more than two years after U.S. led forces toppled the Taliban regime-most of the key holders had disappeared or had fled Afghanistan.Massoudi felt it was time to see if the objects had survived the war.When a team of locksmiths wrenched open the safes that month,every last piece of the Bactrian gold was there,trussed in the same tissue paper in which the museum staff had wrapped it.Five months later,researchers opened a set of footlockers stashed in the same underground vault and made another jaw-dropping discovery,priceless 2000 year old ivory carvings and glassware that had been excavated in the 1930s from a site known as Begram and given up for lost.Massoudi's staff had cloistered those away too,and they were remarkably well preserved.

If we had not hidden them,the treasures of Afghanistan would have been lost.That is a fact.Those who knew the truth kept silent,says Massoudi,sipping ginger tea in his spartantly furnished office.His museum-Afghanistan's museum-has been rebuilt with help from unesco and other international donors,and it hum with activity now.Exhibit planners stroll from gallery to gallery, taking mesurements for future installations,teachers lecture in Dari to group of schoolgirls in head scarves.At the door,policeman in gary-flannel uniforms keep a close watch.Visitor numbers have inched up to about 6000 a year.Storerooms are filling with looted artifacts intercepted by customs agents around the world and restituted to Afghanistan,including some 5000 confiscated artifacts returned from Switzerland and Denmark.More than four tons of loot seized by British police sit in a warehouse in London's Heathrow Airport awaiting repatriation.In the mesuem lobby,Massoudi demonstrates what it means to build heritage.Standing in a display case is a life-size statue of a bodhisattva,a type of Buddhist deity,dating from the third century A.D.,an era when Afghanistan was a predominantly Buddhist land.Taliben hammers had scattered the fire-clay statue,and mesuem conservators recently finished reassembling the fragments.A jigsaw of cracks is still visible,but the statue's face again glows with rapturous peity.

As we finish the restoration of pieces,we bring them out to show the public,one by one.We will be doing this for many years.says Massoudi.Yet the choicest artifacts-the ones he and his staff concealed for so long-won't be on display in Kabul for some time to come.The museum lacks an adequate security system and remain short on staff,while a series of suicide bombings around Kabul have underlied the continuing risks.Face with these problems,Afghans have gathered their ancient treasures into a dazzling exhibitionand sent it on an international tour.The Afghanistan government asked National Geographic to inventory the artifacts and help organize the exhibition,which is currently at the National Gallery of Art in Washington,D.C.,after a two-years spell in Europe.In addition to safeguarding the treasures,the Afghans hope the exhibit will elevate the image of their country.The history of Afghanistan is one of receiving the art of others,and then turning them into the arts of others,and then turning them into our own way of expression,say Massoudi.He beleives the exhibit will help people see beyond his country's recent history of intolerance and isolation to the open,cosmopolitan spirit that long characterized this creative melting por and hub of the Silk Road trade.Walk through the bazaars in Kabul or Mazar-eSharif and you'll see why,for more than two millennia,people have been calling Afghanistan the crossroades of Asia.One face looks Mediterranean,another Arab-or Indian,or Chinese,or eastern European.Eyes range from pea green to chestnut brown to something approaching orange.Successive invasions and influences wove a tapestry of ethnicities and left behind what the exhibitiion curator,Fredrik Hiebert of the National Geographic Society,calls some of the most remarkable archaeological finds in all of Central Asia.

The ancient city of Begram supplied many of the luminous objects.Today Soviet-era land mines litter its grassy landscape,and American fighter jets from a nearby air base howl overhead.But 2000 years ago this was the opulent summer capital of the great Kushan Empire,which stretched as far as nothern India.Traders brought ivories and art form all corners of Asia.Courtiers stuffed themselves on local figs,pomegranates,and grapes against the majestic scrim of the snowy Hindu Kush.When French archaeologists cut into the site in the late 1930s,they found a cache of luxury goods suggesting a vibrant,trade-based economy that flourished while Rome crumbled.Buried under layerof soil were bronze sculptures from Italy,lacquer boxers from china,plaster medallions of muscular Greek youths,and a group of exquisitely painted Egyptian glass vessels depicting,among other things,the Alexandria lighthouse,an African leopard hunt,and a scene from the Ilian.Most strikingly,the diggers found stacks upon stacks of carved ivory and bone sculptures,more than a thousand in all,featuring placidly smiling women and mythical river creatures associated with the art of India.Someone left this impossibly eclectic mix inside two rooms that,around A.D 200,were bricked shut and abandoned.Dazzled by the find,archeologists compared it to the discovery of King Tut's tomb 15 years eariler,believing it to be the remains of a royal residence.Researchers now think the structure may have been a warehouse for luxury goods being transported across Asia on the Silk Road or marketed to local elites.Like Begram,the site of Tillya tepe golden hill in Afghanistan's northwestern corner yielded trasures-most famously the Bactrian gold-whose legend was only heighted when they disappeared from view.Found by Russian archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi in the 1970s,the hoard tells a uniquely Afghan story of how nomads rode off the Central Asian steppes around the time of Christ,crossed the Amu Darya River,and created a civilization whose art reflects an amalgam of East and West,transience and settled life.From the wilds of Siberia come the animals,such as bear depicted on a knife handle,dancing and holding a grapevine in its mouth.Greek and Hindu influences merge in a golden Aphrodite with wings and an Indian-style circle on her forehead.

Many objects show a strikingly Western naturalism,such as a ram sculpted in gold that decorated a nomad noblemans headdress.Only under a magnify glass can the masterpiece's splendid workmanship be fully appreciated.And a delicate,golden crown tells of a refined culture that had not given up its steppers roots.The crown can be disassembled into six pieces for easy transport,perhaps in a leather satchel on a two-humped Bactrian camel-a perfect accessory for a nomadic princess.Archaeology is slowly returing to Afghanistan,promising more discoveries and deeprt knowledge.New sites are being excavated,and well-known ones are being mapped for reexploration.In the past.American or European researchers played key roles,these days,Afghan archaeologists often lead projects on their own.On a steep hillside outside Kabul,at a well-preserved Buddhist site from about A.D. 400 called Tape Maranjan,Afghan researchers found the remains of 16

Meet the press.Forget the stereotypes.A new book offers a warm,frank amd realistic depiction of Chinese journalists

2008-09-05T05:00:00.000-07:00

Two caricatures have defined the international view of China journalists.The first is that of the Orwllian mouth-piece-the unquestioning apparatchik feeding the cowed masses their daily dose of newspeak.The second is that of the dissident author,imprisoned,beaten and tortured for railing against corruption and human-rights abuses,or forced into lonely exile and doomed forevermore to wander the Western lecture circuit.There is some truth in both images.But the 20 Bejiing-based journalists interviewed by University of Iwoa Journalism professor Judy Polumbaum in China ink fall somewhere in the middle.Caught between a free market that rewards investigative reporting with increased readership and a fearful government that does its best to discourage whistle-blowing,there astute professionals-most land their field as top editors,columnists or foreign correspondents-are forced to adopt new definaitions of success.The values that they strive to maintain-avoiding bias,exposing wrongdoing and captivanting an audience-will be recognized by journalists everywhere,however.Censorship is always,of course,the elephant in the back corner of the Chinese newsroom.Certain topics,like Taiwan,Tibet and the Falun Gong,go conspicuously unmentioned.But grand controversies are not the focus of the book.China Ink instead tells the story of the everyday fight to sidestep propaganda and produce a serviceable publication or program.A famous radio host tells of how she convinced a murderer who confessed on air to turn himself in.A magazine writer tells of the story she penned-and of how bad she smelled- after taking a three-day train journey to southern China

The Missouri Compromise American history

2008-09-05T03:18:00.000-07:00

The politics of 19th Century America were drastically divided along sectional lines. The southern states had a smaller population and relied heavily on slavery for their economy and their way of life. The northern states were more populous, more industrial, and a larger proportion of the people were against slavery. While not all northerners were abolitionists, most did not want slavery to expand into the western territories.
By 1820 the number of slave states matched the number of free states, so the senate was equally represented. When Missouri wanted to join the Union as a slave state, this balance would be lost, and the slave-holding states would have more power than the north, allowing the possibility that slavery would spread into previously free land. In addition, Missouri would be the most northern slave state, which threatened the free north states.
To resolve the debate, a senator from Kentucky, Henry Clay, who would later be known as the Great Compromiser, proposed a solution. From that point forward states would enter two at a time, one slave, one free, to keep the balance in the senate. To allow Missouri to join, Maine would join as a free state. To limit the spread of slavery, Missouri would be allowed to enter the Union as a slave state, but west of Missouri the furthest north slavery would be allowed was the line 36°30', which is the southern border of Missouri, or the northern border of Arkansas. The line stretched west only as far as the western edge of Arkansas, as at this time, the land west and south of this point was in the possession of New Spain.
The Missouri Compromise was overturned by the Kansas Nebraska Act in 1854. The Act was proposed by the Illinois senator Stephen Douglas, who wanted to see the proposed transcontinental railroad built in the north, connecting Chicago with the east and west. The southern politicians wanted the railroad to reach from New Orleans to southern California. In exchange for the southern politicians' support, Douglas introduced the Kansas Nebraska Act. This Act would organise the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and allow the residents to decide whether the territories would become free or slave states when they applied for statehood. This idea had been proposed in the Compromise of 1850 with regards to the New Mexico territory, and was now referred to as 'popular sovereignty'. Douglas believed that the two territories would eventually enter the United States as free states, as the land was not conducive to typical southern slave plantations. He was eventually proven right, but not until after Kansas was inundated by pro-slavery 'border ruffians', who deliberately moved to Kansas specifically to vote in the coming referendum. Anti-slavery 'Free-Staters' opposed the border ruffians in a series of incidents that became known as 'Bloody Kansas', 'Bleeding Kansas', or the 'Border War'. Nebraska became a free state after the Civil War.
The Missouri Compromise was the first precedent allowing for congress to stipulate the designation (free or slave) of territory gained since the adoption of the Constitution. Previous to this there had been debate as to whether the federal government was constitutionally allowed to ban slavery in areas of the country which had not existed when the Constitution was written. Slave-holders felt that the government could not ban slavery in federal territories because that would be tantamount to depriving citizens of their property (slaves), which was unconstitutional. The Missouri Compromise also established that the policy of prospective states3 could not be dictated by the federal government.

The way of sa.Never heard of Sa Dingding and her buddhist electronic?It's time you have enlightened

2008-09-05T00:18:00.000-07:00

Sa dingding has made a tremendous impression on the West.It could be the 24 year-old Chinese singer's florid costumes.Perhaps it's her music videos,which feature psychedelic graphics and monks striding to fashionable breakbeats.Or maybe it's her songs,which incorporate Buddhist mantras,traditional Chinese instruments and electronica.At any rate,the U.K.'s Sunday Times has anointed her the Asian Bjork.The Guardian gave her debut album,Alive,four stars upon its U.K. release last October,adding,Sa dingding deserves to be the first Chinese singer-songwriter to become a celebrity in the west.In April,she flew to London to recevice a BBC radio 3 Award for world music.And in late July,Alive got its U.S. release.Her record company naturally expects great things.It's taken something unique to crack the world market and we believe Sa Dingding is that unique article,says Iain Snodgrass,international marketing director for University Music.

If universal's best talent scouts and marketing execs had locked themselves in a boardroom to brainstorm the next world music star.they would have been high fiving each other for coming up with something even half as marketable as the strikingly beautiful Sa-or Zhou Peng,as she was known before making a stage name out of her mother's Monoglian surname and a childhood nickname.With a troubles in Tibet and Xinjiang generateing plenty of international interest in China's ethnic minorities,her orgins are pefectly calibrated to appeal to the liberal,middleaged and mostly Western buyers that make up world music's fan base.Bron to Han-Chinese father and Mongolian-Chinese mother,Sa was raised as a real-life nomad on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia.There,she learned how to sing and play the guzheng zither and the horse-headed fiddle,as well as speak Mongolian. Today she not only sings in Madarin and Mongolian but also Tibetan,Sanskrit and a language of her own invention-the latter being a terrible affectation or a delight,depend on your point of view.Sa's look will engender the same kind of polarized response.She frequently poses like the Buddha in promptional photos,even through she is not actually a Buddhist.Buddhism is a big part of Chinese culture,she says by way of explanation.I'm interestes in learning about it.

You might have thought that many Chinese would be unimpressed by the improbable package that is Sa,and denounce her ethnic borrowings and musical contrivances-but there's not a bit of it.Her big break came in 2000,when she won a singing contest on state-run China Central Television,aged 16.CCTV has bee a supporter ever since,broadcasting her to hundreds of millions at a time.As long as you don't express politically incorrect messages,from the government's point of view these kinds of artists are a very positive phenomenon.says Nimrod Naranovitch,a professor at the University of Haiaf in Israel and the author of China's New Voices,an authoriative survey of chinese popular music from 1978 to 1997.They help the Chinese state show that China is multiethnic and that China does not oppress minority cultures.

Sa is not the first China pop performer to garner world music acclaim.The Guangzhou-bron Zhu Zheqin,better known by his Tibatan name Dadawa,was hailed bt a western media obsessed with drawing parallels as the Chinese Enya when her debut album Sister Drum was released by Warner Music in 1995.But interestingly,neither she nor Sa have presented themselves as mainstream Chinese.To a Western ear,mainstream Chinese pop is too sweet-it sounds trivial,explains Baranovitch.Minority artists offer something different and refreshing.There's a sense of primitveness,spirituality and exoticism-it sells.Or so Univeral is hoping.But it is of course too early to tell whether or not Sa will break out of her rarifed niche and garner mainstream appeal.She appears to approach the subject philosophically. I don't mind people misunderstanding my music,she says.Others really understand it.All that Buddhist chanting must be teaching her a thing or two about detachment.

Techno-impresarios like Lewis have been trying to push 3D movie beyond

2008-09-04T01:31:00.000-07:00

Newfangledness virtually since the beginning of cinema see box.But there's good reason to believe that today's audience will 3D as a quaility that's essential to any blockbuster,like color and sound,even if it does require those retro glasses.Making a 3D movie involves filming an image from two perspectives.one representing the left eye,the other the right.When synchromized and watch through glasses that allow each eye to see only its own movie,the two films create an illusion of depth,Until recently,perfect synchronization was nearly impossible,and prodution and exhibition were cumbersome.Digitization has eliminated many of the flaws of old 3D movies-like nausea and headaches brought on by poor synching-and has motivated studios to push the format on exhibitors and filmmarkers.It's a important part of our business going forward.Says Alan Bergman,president of Walt Diseny Studios,which will release an animated canine-superhero movie,Bolt,in the 3D in the U.S. this November,as well as all its future Pixar films.

Studios have plenty of reasons to back the format.Screening in 3D create an experience that audiences can't get on sofa-or private.At least not yet.The 3D capable home entertainment systems widely available in three to five years won't replicate theaters either,because giant screen size is key to creating the sense of depth.The first batch of film released in both regular format and 3D made nearly three times as much money in the U.S. on 3D screens,thanks to higher demand and ticket prices 3D movies cost $1 to $5 more.However,only about 1000 U.S. screens are currently equipped to show digital 3D movies,not nearly enough to fuel a blockbuster like the Dark knight,which opened in America on more than 9000 screens.By 2010,industry analysts expect more than 7000 digital 3D screens in the U.S.. To persuade more cinema owners to make the switch,studios are relying on an early crop of films to show the medium's potential.

The new pioneers Today's digital 3D directors are flaunting what they've got,which is the power to make a bodily,almost primarl impact on audiences.You react to a film intellectually with your head and emotionally with your heart,say Ben Stassen,director of fly me to the moon,a tale of three tween-age houseflies who hitch a ride on Apollo II. But in a 3D film,you have a very strong physical component,you can actually make your audience duck.When Stassen's houseflies buzz over a field,it's like riding in a bug-size roller coaster,weaving between giant blades of grass.Playing to those expectations,Journey to the Center of the earth director Eric Brevig booby-trapped his movie with zooming yo-yos,flying fish and skittering bugs.I felt I had to do things I wouldn't do if I were making the same film in five years,say Brevig,whose experience creating films for theme-park rides reveals itself here.People putting on 3D glasses or paying a little extra to see a movie in 3D at this point in cinema are expecting to have things blatantly launched into the audience.But in a scene in which incandescent birds appear to flutter out of the screen,Brevig shows 3D's subtler potential,the effect transplants viewers from their theater seats to the lush core of Jules Verne's earth.

Such transporting moments make it tempting to imagine what directors outside the action and animation genres might do with 3D.Would the Parisian courtesans in Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Royge.cancan off the screen?Could the leaves of Terrence Malick's Edenic New World brush our cheeks?3D can be intimate,scary,claustrophobic,expansive,says Charlotte Huggins,who produced both Journey to the center of the earth and fly me to the moon,sp far,most of 3D movie makers agree on one criterion.If the movie takes you somewhere that you dream about going to and probably aren't going to get to,it belongs in 3D,says Gerg Foster,president of IMAX filmed entertainment,which transfers regular-format movies like polar expressinto 3D and is rolling out a new digital 3D system this year.On the other hand,says Foster,If someone decides they want to do my dinner with Andre in 3D,it's not for us.It's estimated that 3D increases a film's below the line production costs 25-30 %,and for some actors,the notion of wrinkles and love handles in 3D adds considerable anxiety.Then,too.At this point only a small niche of Hollywood has the technical know-how for the process.What worries some 3D trailblazer is that studios might see the format as a way to punch up a mediocre story.That shortcut may work for a while,but eventually the hope is that 3D will become just another weapon in a filmmarker's arsenal,as useful and unremarkable as the color yellow.

Don't dock New 3D movies are coming at you as the retro format is reborn for the digital age

2008-09-04T00:46:00.000-07:00

The brick road wasn't just yellow.It was school-bus-parked-on-the surface-of-the-sun yellow.That's because when the Wizard of Oz permiered in 1939,Hollywood was still testing its newest toy,three color Technicolor,and studios wanted to astonish audiences with supersaturated hues.Today Hollywood is looking to 3D movies-now enjoying a digitally fueled renaissane-to make an impression as lasting as Dorothy's ruby slippers.The first feature films shot and shown in digital 3D-bugs-in-space toon fly me to the moon,Brendan Fraser's volcano-diving journey to the Center of the earth and concert movie by U2 and Miley Cyrus-leaped into moviegoers' laps this year.In 2009 at least 10 more 3D movies will arrive.including James Cameron's sci-fi epic Avatar,Dream Work's Monster vs Aliens and Pixar's up.Over the next couple of years,we get our gone with the wind and our citizen Kane says Michael Lewis Ceo of real D ,a company that equips movie theaters with digital 3D technology.

Dating Monsieur Cupid.A frenchman has lured hundreds of thousands to his matchmaking website in the pursuit of love-or fun

2008-09-02T23:45:00.000-07:00

Armelle met her prince charming on meetic,Europe's largest dating site,shortly after it opned for business in France in 2001.She divorced him in 2006.She and the prince-his name is Eric-are still good friends,and they're both hanging out on meetic again we've used their real names to protect their online identities.I'm always looking for Prince Charming,and I've already met seceral,says the slight,dark eye,38 years-old Parisienne,who work in production for one of the big fashion houses.Some of them become the friends,some of them become the lovers.None of them will even become my husband,I'm no longer look for that.

Barry Diller's Match.com is the internet dating world's two-ton Cupid,dominating online romance in the U.S.,where two-thirds of its 1.3 million paid subscribers live.Match is all business,and that business is landing a mate.On Meetic,the cyber chestnuts are always in bloosm,and love is as much a game as a goal.In 2005,a French cad named Lewis Wingrove published a blog and later a book graphically cataloguing a year's worth of Meetc conquests of which finished sous la couette-under the quilt.Meetic founder and chief executive Marc Simoncini went ballistic and briefly considered suing.The young women in Meetic's modest office in Boulogne-Billancourt found the whole thing amusing and told Simoncini to lighten up.He now concedes that it's some of the best publicity Meetic has ever had.

Meetic has clearly scratched an itch.More than 30 million people now have a free personal profile on one of its sites.Since the firm hit the dating sece in 2002,its picked up around 650000 paying subscribers in 15 countries,and is the leading dating site in almost all of them.Last year,Meetic earned 36 million before taxes on revenues of $166 million-almost exclusively from subscription fees that range from $47 to $85 a month.When I looked around at the other dating sites,they were all so boring and sad says Simoncini,45,a suave,slightly somber Frenchman.I said,my site's going to be much more fun.People aren't going to meet someone.Everyone hopes it's the one,But if it isn't,that's maybe not so bad.Meetic is like a bar-the biggest bar in the world.

Not that Simoncini was looking to become a bartender to the world.He had already founded an Internet portal called IFrance,and made a killing when he sold it to Vivendi for $200 million in 2000 amid a mad spending spree by then CEO Jean-Marie Messier.A year working for Vivendi convinced Simoncini he wasn't cut out for corporate life.At dinner with his three closest friends-all recently divorced-the light dawned.They all complained they couldn't meet anybody-they worked too hard,they didn't go out anymore,they were too old,recalls Simincini,who met his wife the old-fashion way,at a night-club.I said to myself,I don't know that many people,so if I know three people like this,there must be millions.Growth was exponential,and Simoncini expanded rapadily beyond France.first conquering the Latin-lover markets of Spain and Italy,then turning toward the colder climes of northern Europe.He learned a lot.It truns out that in love,everybody's the same,but different.For instance,Meetic advertising theme.The rules of the game have changed,worked brilliantly in France,but bombed in Italy,where courtship rituals remain more traditational.Speak to Italian man about women making the first move,says Simoncini and he doesn't even understand what you're talking about.

In Denmark,There were howls of protest that women got to use the site gratis-and it was women who were doing the howling.They said,What exactly are you getting at,making it free for women!says Simocini with an I don't get it shrug .We said,Excuse us-we'll bill you.Since last year,women pay everywhere.England?Who knows.For one thing,it's the only country where historically more women than men pay for dating sites.England's a mystery,says Simoncini.We're not sure if they're American or European.The marketplace may clarify that mystery as Meetic and March do battle for the English heart.Match.com does a big chunk of its European business in the U.K.,where it's in a dead heat with Meetic.Last year,Meetic acquired a large British site called Dating Direct as part of a new frontal assault on its chief competitor.Still,Match CEO Thomas Enraght-Moony claims he's not threatened by his rival in love.Match is about people looking for an enduring relationship.It's a more poetic,romatic sensibility.Meetic is a lot of more casual.It's a different proposition.Simoncini says bring it on.Now we'll see who the English really are!

Meetic may be flighty in matters of the heart,but it's serious when it comes to business.Nielsen Media Research rated it the U.K.'s biggest Web advertiser in the first four months of 2008.Elsewhere,Meetic was similarly aggressive,buying a big dating site in Germany last year,as well as sites in the Netherlands,China and Brazil.Simocini is also moving beyond the dating game by launching two new media portals.VIOO is a kind of online women's magazine,while peexme is a social networking site for adolescents.The idea is to use Meetic to cross-promote the new sites,hopefully snaring some of the heavy traffic that flows through it toll-free.

The reasoning is sound and Meetic has committed at least $15.5 million to strategic endeavors like these.But while the French love a lover,they're less enamored of enterpreneurs.Meetic's stock price has halved since last Januray,slashing its market value to $280 million-quite a haircut for Simoncini,who owns nearly a third of the company.It's far and away the wrost side of France-they're always telling you that whatever you do,it won't work,he says.I'm sad for everyone who's lost money,but I'm not going to let it stop me from doing what I think is right-after all,it's my money in there too.

The snore Wars That rumbling can put your health,sanity and marriage at risk.Here's what you can do

2008-09-02T06:35:00.000-07:00

I have always been happy that I'm not a snorer-or at least I was until recently,when my wife told me otherwise.After a few days of adament denials,I decide to place a tape recorder on the bedside table.When I hit play the next morning,I was surprised to hear a rhythmic,rumbling noise that was enough to disturb my wife's sleep.In my case,the problem was transient,caused by a recent bout of allergies and sinus trouble.When my breathing cleared up,so did the snoring.Yet for millions of other couples out there,snoring is a cause not just of health worries but also of marital woes.

According to recent study,nearly 1 out of 4 people married to a snorer will eventually be driven out of the bedroom rather than spend another night battling for sleep.Sometimes even that's not enough.I see a lot of patients whose spouses can't just go to another room.They have to escape to a whole other area of the house.says Dr.Marc Kaye,medical director of the Snoring and Apnea Center of California,in Los Angeles.Snoring is caused by a few things,but the biggest culprit is a vibration of very relaxed muscles and tissues in the throat,which rattle against narrow breathing passages.Symptoms are wrose when you are overweight,have a short neck or still have your tonsils.It's almost like trying to sleep with a straw in your mouth,says Kayem.As you might guess,snorers should refrain from sleeping on their back,as gravity will pull muscles toward the back of the throat.Sleeping on your side is best.It's also helpful to cut back on relaxants like alcohol and certain medications before bed.Nasal strips,which adhere to the bridge of the nose and widen airways,are popular,but I have always been dubious about them.Kayem recommends them but only for people whose snoring is due to sinus blockage.They won't help chronic snores with loose muscles in their throats.There are some over the counter sprays that work by coating the soft palate.But if you use the spray,be sure to reapply it after you drink any liquid.Mouth guards customized by a dentist can be useful yet policy.They work by moving your jaw forward,which allows more room in your throat.Similar appliances are sold over the counter,but sleep experts urge patients to pass up such noncustomized options.

Weight plays a key role too.For many people who have noticed their snoring symptoms worsening,the answer may be as simple as dropping five or 10 extra pounds.But many people need to lose a lot more than that.For these folks,snoring is more than a nuisance,it can literally be a matter of life and death.Two-third of chronic snorers develop a serious condition known as obstructive sleep apnea.In between snores,the breathing passages get completely blocked,resulting in no air at all for 10 seconds or more.In those 10 seconds,your brain isn't getting oxygen and your blood isn't pumping to your heart.This can cause hight blood pressure,fatigue and decrease in productivity.In severe cases,it can lead to stroke or heart attack.

Many patient experience dramatic improvements when their doctors prescribe nighttime breathing masks,which gently force air past obstructions.A relatively new,minimally invasive solution called the pillar procedure may fix the problem permanently with the aid of three to five implants inserted into the soft palate.The idea is to stiffen the tissue and provide a wider opening for breathing.Small studies show a 75% success rate.The procedure takes only about 15 minutes and is said to be virtually painless.The downside is that it costs from $1500 to $ 3000 and isn't usually covered by insurance.No matter what method you choose,the key is not to brush off symptoms.If you catch them early,you can protect both yourself and your marriage.So thanks,honey,for telling me I snore.

This gun's for hire.Will work for gold

2008-09-02T05:02:00.000-07:00

It might have seemed like patriotism gone wild when the two members of Georgia's man's beach-volleyball team stitched the nicknames Geor and Gia onto their uniforms,spelling out the name of their besieged nation.But there's a twist,neither of the players is really Georgian.Renato Gomes and Jorge Terceiro are towering Brazilian imports recruited by Georgian President Mikhel Saakashvili for the sole purpose of representing his country in the Olympics.More athletes than ever are competing in Beijing under flags and in some cases,names different from the ones under which they were born.While some see this border-jumping as a symbol of how sport transcend nationality,giving some worthy athletes a chance to escape hardship in their home countries,others see it as a potential violation of the Olympic spirit.What is not legtimate,Jacques Rogge,the International Olympic Committee chief,has said,is when an athlete sells himself as a mercenary.The gold medalists in recruting foreign-bron athletes are Qatar and Bahrain,tiny oil-rich Gulf states that have shelled out million of dollars to persuade top African runners to change their citizenship.But many other nations play this game.Russia,for example,recruited two Americans cans to lead its men's and women's basketball teams.The strategy can pay off.Moroccan-born Rashid Ramzi gave Bahrain its first-ever track and filed gold at Aug.19 when he won the men's 1500-m.In globalized era,even athletic excellence can be outsourced.

High voltage.At the Beijing Olympics,a flamboyant sprinter named Bolt proves emphatically that lighting really can strike twice.

2008-09-02T00:56:00.000-07:00

There's cocky,and then,in a whole other realm of selfconfidence,there's Usain Bolt.Just before his 200 meter final on Aug 20,the Jamaican sprinter mugged for the cameras,sending mimed lighting bolts into the Beijing Sky.Four days eariler,Bolt proved himself the fastest on the earth when he clocked a world record 9.69 seconds in the 100-m dash.But the 6 ft.5 in runner,whose prepare fuel includes chicken nuggets,boasted that the 200-m was actually his stronger race.Bolt wasn't kidding.In the final,his time of 19.30 seconds set another world record,and capped a historic streak for Jamaica in Beijing,which saw its women sprinters sweep all three medals in the 100 meter.The secret to Jamaica's success,according to gold medalist Shely-Ann Fraser?Reggae power.

Finest Hour?Britain's wild ride in Beijing British Olympic athlete Rebecca Romero could easily have felt like she had missed the boat.Four years ago in Athens,Romero was part of her country's sliver medal winning quadruple-sculls team.But a back injury after Athens meant she wasn't at the oars on Aug 17,when four compatriots splashed to another second-place finish,this time on Shunyu lake,site of the Beijing Olympics rowing events.Fortunately Romero had a plan B.She started racing bikes in 2006,and just few minutes after the British crew took silver,Romero was across town inside the Laoshan Velodrome,riding to a remarkable victory in cycling's 3000-m individual-pursuit event.Having ditched the boat for a bike,Romero became the first British woman to bag medals in two Olympic sports.Only a handful of Olympians have ever reached the podium in different disciplines.German Christa Luding-Rothenburger,for example,medaled in the winter Olympics in speekskating and in bicycle-racing in the summer Games that same year.But what made Romero's gold medal shine brighter was the speed of her midcareer switch to cycling.Most elite athlestes train for at least eight years before they are ready to challenge for a place on the Olympic podium,says Andy Borrie,head of performance sport for the sport development center at Loughborough University in central England,a training ground for many of Britian's Olympians.Romero,28,took less than two years.Her swift success represents a huge amount of learning in a very short space of time,Borrie says.

The same might be said for Britian's over-all Olympic effort.In Athens,the country's medal total was 30,which was fewer than nine other countries.But in Beijing,the empire has bounced back.By Aug 20,the 12th day of the games,British athletes had captured a total of 36 medals,including 16 golds-the country's best haul in a century.Only China,with 45 gold medals,and the U.S.,with 26,had done better in Beijing.This suddenly muscular showing augurs well.London will be the site of the 2012 summer games,and the hosts-to-be want so much their athletes to distinguish themselves at home that funding for competitve Olympic training programs-already greatly improved over the last decade-is set to increase further ahead of the event.According to Romero,it is Britain's world-beating cyclists-winner of half of the country's Beijing gold-who hold the key to success in 2012.If other British sports don't learn from us.Romero said after taking gold,we're not going to dominate at the London games.

This the Afghan people understand.But they don't understand why for six years the Afghans have been saying to their allies that the war against

2008-09-01T07:25:00.000-07:00

Terrorism will not be won unless and until we go to the sanctuaries,to the training grounds,to the financiers,to the motivators of hatred that come acoss the border to kill us all.And yet the allies have not heard us.If we see the fight against terroism as an effort aimed at the right target,spoken about with us,with a proper identification of the problem areas,then we can go along,and in the situation if we suffer civilian casualties,all right,we will accept it.You can't have casualties and no end in sight.

Some of your closest aides are suspected of stealing land,smuggling drugs and running illegal militias.Yet you balk at bringing them to trial.One of our biggest sources of contention with the international community has been their use of militias as private security companies.That's one of the reasons for insecurity on our highways.This is something that we do not support,that we are publicly and officially very much against.It is something with which I have called on all members of the international community,on all the ambassadors.Yet the militia commanders are still in your government as advises,minsters,even governors.They are not funded by us.We are against this,we have been clear about this.Why will the international community not listen to you?Why can you not say Stop?Stop is not the solution.I have to run this country.I have to take it forward with all the problem that it has.If someone in the international community is backing the warlords,and I say stop and they don't stop,what is the next option?I tell them to leave this country?Pack up and leave Afghanistan?Take their money away,take their troops away?Then what?Will we we be better off?I came to power when there was no government,no institutions,no laws.Six years on,it's not like that,The overall sitution is,we act and defend and bring offenders to justice and put them in jail.Even government offenders.

Last week I want to Jowzjan province where I met an 11 year-old girl who had been raped about six months ago.Her family had to pay bribes to pursue the case in the courts.Her sister told me that under the Taliban that man would have been executed.We want the Taliban back,she said because they gave us justice.The Taliban did provide that sort of justice.They were much better in that way.Yes,that's true.So you are falling behind in a competition for hearts and minds with a regime that was one of the most horrific in recent history?Unfortunately yes.One reason why the Taliban is gaining ground is because people are rapidly losing faith in your government.They see it as ineffective and corrupt.I don't think the Afghan people would prefer the Taliban to the current government.They have reduced faith in the government,yes,definitely.But if you ask them if they have an alternative to this government,they will say no.The Taliban will never be in the eyes of the Afghan people an alternative to this government.Corruption is different,this government is doing its best on corruption.

Two years ago you had a governor in Herlmand province accused by the British of smuggling drugs.Sher Muhammad Akhunzada.The British forced you to remove him.Yes but do we have more drugs now in Helmand,or then?He was found with nine tons of opium and heroin in his basement.So what?Now there are hunderds of tons of heroin in basemnets across Helmand...Drugs were three times less than they are today.The province was in our hands.Schools were running,women's associations were running,clinics were running,hospitals were running,girls and boys were going to school.There was space.We removed Akhunzada on the allegation of drug-running and delivered the province to drug runners,the Taliban,to terrorists,to a threefold increase of drugs and poppy cultivation.To the closing of schools,to women being killed in the street.To complete lawlessness,and complete lack of sovereignty in Helmand for Afghanistan.Which condition is better?So you are going to let these people you have to let Afghanistan determine its own ways.The methods and ways that are developed in offices in the West don't work here.That is the problem.Somebody sits there behind the desk,gets a few reports from English-speaking Afghans and they say,Well,this is what we want to do in Afghanistan.And then things go down the drain.OK, let's take someone else facing allegations of corruption and drug-manufacturing and smuggling...You mean my brother Wali Karzai.He was accused in 2004,after I refused to allow aerial spraying of poppies by foreign counternarcotic forces.My brother can also easily be accused so as to put pressure on me.Regardless of that,I took this seriously.I called the Americans,the British and the Europeans,and I repeatedly said ,Anything you have,let me know.four,five,six times-nothing.Allegations have been there,but never have they come to me with proof,Privately they say,President,we have nothing.You are expected to run for a second term in office in 2009.I have a job to complete.Why do you think you are the best person to complete this job?I hope there is someone who can do a better job than me.I very much hope so.One of my duties for Afghanistan is to find the next leadership of this country.I am not going to be happy to be known as the only man,that is no good.That is shortcoming,not a plus.Afghanistan will be a good strong country if it has leaders.That is my goal.

The state of Afghanistan In a exclusive interview,Afghan President Hamid Karzai talks about how far his embattled country has come

2008-08-31T22:53:00.000-07:00

And how far it still has to go,It has been a rough few weeks for Afghanistan's president,Himid Karzai.Violence in his insurgency-wracked nation reached new level on Aug.18 when the Taliban attacked French troops belonging to the international Security Assistance Force just 30 miles from the capital Kabul,10 Frenchmen died and another 21 were wounded.The next day,militants massed against one of the biggest US bases in the country,launching a coordinated attack that included six suicide bombers.Just a week earlier,militants had killed three aid workers and Afghan driver,prompting international aid massions to reconsider how,and even if,they should be dilivering assistance to Afghan civilians in the face of a militant surge bent on forcing all foreigners out of the country.Time's Aryn Baker took advantage of a lull in the fighting to sit down with Karzai,50,in the garden of his fortified palace in Kabul to discuss the violence,the Aug.18 resignation of Pakistan's Prevez Musharraf,and widespread accusation of corrution in the Afghan government that are driving a wedge between the people and their leader,Just when unity is most needed.Excerpts from their two-hour conversation.

Time when we last met two years ago,Kabul's first major suicide bomb went off during our interview.Since then the militants have grown ever stronger.There have been many devastating attacks,plus an attempt on your life.The casulities will only get wrose,I fear.And did you see what's happening in Pakistan?Why would someone go and blow himself up in a hospital?Who are they,what are they?It cannot be justified.You can fight people anywhere,anyplace,but you don't kill people in a hospital.It's crazy.So how do you combat a movement that has only annihilation as its goal?In order to fix terrorism at large,we need to remedy the wrongs of the past 30 years.Remedy means to undo.The world pushed us to fight the Soviets.And those who did it walked away and left all the mess spread around.September II is consenquence of this.The bombing in Peshawar today is a consequence.The bombing in Algeria today is a consequence.Afghanistan was once a great place in perfect harmony with the rest of the world.Families sent their girls to university,wearing whatever style they wanted.And that family lived in perfect harmony with another family who was conservation and traditional.Both lived together and socialized.But in the years of fighting against the Soviets,radicalism was the main thing.Someone like me would be called half a Muslim,because we were not radical.The more radical you became the more money you were given,Radicalism became not only an ideological tool against the Soviets but a way forward economically.The more radical you presented yourself,that more money the West gave you.It wasn't just the West,it was Saudi Arabia,Pakistan.Everybody together I call the West,because they were led by the West.The moderates were undermined.Afghan history and nationalism were called atheism.The more you spoke of radicalsim,the better you were treated.That's what we are paying for now.

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf,your longtime foe,stepped down yerterday.What does the mean for Afghanistan?Arrival and departure don't matter much-unless we correct the institutions,unless we change the mindsets that follow an old policy.For example,if Pakistan is using radicalism as a tool of policy for streategic depth in Afghanistan,well,I wish to tell them it won't work.The best strategic depth in Afghistan is friendship,cooperation.Afghanistan is willing to build that kind of relationship.cooperation,not weaponry,not sancturary,not undermining,not seeking a puppet state.That will not happen,period.You have accused Pakistan's Inter-Services Intellignce agancy of supporting terroism in Afghanistan,particularly in the case of the recent Indian embassy bombing in Kabul.Do you think the new civilian government in Pakistan can rein in the ISI?Pakistan prime minister Yousaf Gilani is a good man. He has the right intentions.I hope he gets the tools of control.Today,the army chief of Pakistan was in Afghanistan,at Bagram air-force base.I called Kayani on the telephone to welcome him to my country,and to tell him that Afghanistan cannot achieve peace or prosperity without friendly relations with Pakistan.I hope he recognizes that what they are doing in terms of supporting militancy in Afghanistan is casuing immense damage to Pakistan itself.What will it take for this to happen?A proper analysis of the Pakistan national interest.A proper analysis of the course to be followed into the future.A different thinking about life itself.How do I want to live with my neighbor?Do I want to live a life undermining it or pushing it around,or do I want a neighbor who is prosperous and good and with whom I can work well?Afghanistan wants that life.And Pakistan will benefit from that life,too.

Pakistan has to recognize that Afghanistan has been in this part of the world for a long,long time.It's a good,old,sage man.It will not go away.Empires have tried and failed to conquer this place.And Afghanistan will guard its independence and sovereignty and its right to a relationship with others very jealously.We will have relations with India.We will have relation with Iran,with China,with America,with Russia,too.Strategic ones,strong ones,deep ones.There are relationships that will not be used against our neighbors.Not against Pakistan,not against Iran.We are not shadowy.Recently there has been a spate of incidents of ISAF troops causing civilian casualties.The Afghan Senate is trying to bring foreign forces under Afghan law so they can be tried for civilian casualties.Is that what you want?Afghanistan is grateful to our allies for having brought us liberation from terrorists,alQaeda and the Taliban.Their taxpayer money is being spent here in Afghanstan.It is money that the America and European people have worked hard to earn.The sacrifice in life by the men and women of America and our other allies-that is all recognized with immense appreciation by the Afghans.But the Afghan people have given a lot ,too,in this war against terroism.On a daily basis we are losing out lives,police,army engineers,teachers,even our children.

We've got to make sure that people understand the choices that are at stake.

2008-08-30T08:20:00.000-07:00

Your speeches seem to be getting far tougher.Well,it's getting to be crunch time.Now is the time where people are going to start pay attendtion,leading up into the convention,and we've got to make sure that people understand the choices that are at stake....I think what we've been getting from John McCain has been nonstop attack against me and my character,which have distracted people from the issues.What I want to do is make sure the people understand that here are the choices,that you've got a candidate who is presenting policies that are identical to what George Bush has been doing for the last eight years,you've got somebody who intends to fundamentally change those policies so that they work for the average American family.And if people understand what those choices are,I think we will win.

There are Democrats who are nervous that you are not tough enough for the general election.I don't think that's just about me.I think they are congenitally nervous because we lost a bunch of presidential eletion where people felt that we should have won.But keep in mind that whatever concern people have about me,my campaign in particular,we heard those all through the primaries.And the reason-as I said the town-hall meeting-that I think we're going to be successful is,it's not about me.It's about the American people,It's about the fact that their wages and incomes have flatlined,their costs have gone up.Their costs have gone up,they are losing their health care.They are worried about the future.And the Republicans are going to want to try to focus this election on me.What I want to do is focus this election on the American people and who can actually deliver for them.

There has also been some criticism that you've helped fuel that idea that the election is about you-for example,with the huge rallies.I give full credit to the Karl Rove acolytes who are working for John McCain,and one of their general strategies is to try to turn strengths into weakness.The enthusiasm and involvement the grass roots that we've seen in my campaign,I consider a strength.That's one of the reasons we are able to compete in 18 battleground states.But those crowds and those rallies,those poeple have not come out bacause of my speechmarking.They've come out because they understand what's an stake in this election.And that's not going to change,and when when we have small town halls or we have roundtables like we had this morning,whatever the venue,the message is going to be the same,that somebody needs to be fighting for America's families in Wasington.We've got to stop haveing the agenda set by special interests and lobbyists,and I'm the person who's best quipped to bring that change about.

A work-class hero? Obama needs to win over voters who don't drive hybrids.It could be a long uphill fight.

2008-08-29T06:36:00.000-07:00

Nothing makes me feel sorrier for the once powerful local bosses of each political party than the spectacle of a modern nomination convention.In their glory days,these wily neighborhood sloggers would listen to speeches,size up the appeal of each candidate against hometown tastes,wheel,deal and finally make the thousands of individual decisions that would eventually choose the nominee.Today there is only one big decision to be made,and the job belongs to be TV programmer,not a political boss.Conventions are little more than soundstage now.Everything from the backdrop to the musical choices asks the question,Who is the convention trying to reach?

For Barack Obama and the Democrats,It all comes down to this,Should Obama try to win by running up big numbers among the young liberals and well-off-independents who cheer his hip style of designer politics?Or should he concentrate on recapturing the older and decidedly unhip working-class voters who rejected him in droves during the primaries?It's not an easy puzzle.From its beginning,Obama's impressive campaign has reached upmarket.His tone is perfectly middlebrow,which has made him irresistible to the wine and cheese lovers of the self-consciously snesible center.Republicans saw troubling signs of this way back in January's Iowa caucues,when they discovered,to their shock,that Obama was actually pulling some moderate Republican voters away from the GOP caucus.His success in Iowa has been so complete that it may abandon its swing-state tendencies and move firmly into Obama's column.And it's not just Iowa.Last month I saw a poll showing Obama with a surprisingly strong lead in Detrioit's wealthiest suburban county.If he can ride the Democratic surge this year while scoring big with independents,the race will be his.

Still there are risks.John McCain will make his own claim on those independents.While Obama is likely to pick up the votes of almost everybody who voted in the Democratic primaries,there are plenty of older white working-class voters who are still far from sold on him,if not downright suspicious.Democratic strategists often make the mistake of assuming that these white,economically downscale voters will automatically make their ballot choices on the basis of class.In fact,many vote on culture.Obama's academic style is much of his problem.For many,Obama reminds them of the Ivy League whiz kids they've dealt with at work during the latest downsizing.They look at him and see another bloodless young achiever coming down from the top floor to fix the ailing machine-tool company.They listen to his polished pitch in the employee cafeteria,and he wins some converts.But after he is finished,a few old-timers exchange knowing glances and mutter to one another about how young this hot shot is.Somebody makes a cynical and unkind remark about affirmative action.Deep down,they think he'd rather hit the executive gym for a cardio workout during lunch hour than share a cheesesteak and beer with the hourly workforce.And they ask one another,why did he change his name in college back to Barack?What's wrong with Barry?

Unless Obama can break down the wall between him and these Barry-cratic voters,it will be very hard for him to seize the game-winning eletion prizes of Michigan and Ohio.The convention message and optics would be very good place to start.To that end,many of the old-school party regulars now assigned to loyally wave hope and change signs for the TV cameras in Denver would dearly love to see Obama switch out some of his together we can endive salad for a big populist pile of economic red meat.Last week Ohio governor Ted Strickland called for Obama to speak more clearly and specifically about the kitchen-table,bread and butter issues.While Obama has to be careful not to delve too far into Strickland's brand of Stone Age union economics,reconnecting with basic Democratic ecomonic issues is good advice.Obama cannot reclaim the lunch-pail wing of the Democratic Party simply by treating Hillary Cliton like a monarch at the cinvention,These voters are not hers to deliver,Obama has to earn them back on his own with a convention that reaches out to those hardworking Americans who don't drive a Prius,don't listen to NPR,don't buy syrah-and assure them that it is still very much their Democratic Party too.

The Novice Obama's critics tend to paint him two ways-related portraits but subtly different.The first is a picture of an empty suit

2008-08-28T07:44:00.000-07:00

A man who reads pretty speeches fill of gossamer rhetoric.Just words,as Senator Hillary Clinton put it.And it's ture that Obama doesn't have a thick record of businesses he has built or governments he has run.For one thing,he has moved around too much.The restless-ness in his resume is striking,two years at Occidental College,two years at Columbia University.a year in business,three years as a community organizer and then law school.Obama's four two-year terms in the Illinois state senate are his version of permanence,but in two of those terms,he was busy running for higher office.

Voters accustomed to evaluating governors and generals may have a hard time deciding what value to place on a stint of organizing.But it was surely real work.Reading Obama's account of his efforts to organize the residents in a single Chicago neighborhood,with weeks of toil going into staging a single meeting,is like watching a man dig the Panama Canal with a Swiss Army knife.
As for his conventional training,friends of Obama's like to point out that 12 years as a lawmaker is more experience than Abraham Lincoln,the original beanpole from Illinoismhad in 1860.They note that the is sues Obama is most drawn to-health-care reform,juvenile justice,poverty-aren't the easiest.They tell the story of his artful arm-twisting and cajolery in the Illinois senate on behalf of bills to reform campaign-finance laws and require police to videotape interrogations.Obama worked his colleagues one by one,on the floor,on the basektball court,at the poker table,and managed to pass some difficuly legislation.He's unique in his ability to deal with extremely complex issues,to reach across the aisle and to deal with diverse people one Rebublican colleague,McCain supporter Kirk Dillard,told the Wall Street Journal.

That wasn't enough to impress Clinton in the primaries.She enjoyed nothing that Obama was chairman of a Senate subcommittee yet had never convened a substantive hearing.John McCain's campaign will not be any more dazzled.In a sense,the question of Obama's preparation hinges on data that are still being gathered,because his greatest accomplishment is this unfolding campaign.For a man given to Zen-like circularities-We are the change we seek-the best proof that he can unite people to solve problems might be his ability to unite them to win an election.

The radical others believe obama is like the clever wooden offering of the Greeks to Trojans,something that appears to be a gift on the outside but is cunningly dangerous within.They find in his background and in what he leaves unsaid telltale signs of a radical.Obama has worked on education issues in Chicago with William Ayers and has visited the home of Ayers and his wife Bernadette Dohrn.Both were leaders of the violent,leftist Weather Underground.But the indictment of Obama framed by his opponents starts years earlier in Hawaii,with the black man who told Obama that a ture friendship with his whit grandfather wasn't possible.The man's name was Frank Marshall Davis,and in the 1930s, 40's and early 50's he was a well-known poet,journalist and civil rights and labor activist.Like his friend Paul Robsen and others,Davis perceived the Soviet Union as a staumch foe of racism as he later put it in his memoirs,and at one point he jointed the Communist Party.I worked with all kinds of groups,Davis explained.My sole criterion was this.Are you with me in my determination to wipe out white supremacy?

The conservative group Accuracy in Media is eager to paint the radical picture.In press releases and website articles,aims calls Davis Obama's Communist Mentor,although by the time they met,Davis had been out of politics for decades,and mentor may exaggerate his role in the young man's life.Still,it's clear that Obama did seek advice from the old man and that what he got was undiluted.You're not going to college to get educated.You're going there to get trained,Davis once warned Obama.They'll train you so good.You'll start to believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the America way and all that's _?Did the future candidate take this to heart?Not according to him.It made me smile.Obama recalls,thinking back on Frank and his old black power dashiki self.In some way he as incurable as my mother,as certain in his faith,living the same 60s time wrap.

Obama's memoir displays more familiarity with the idea of the far left than most America politicians would advertise.His interest in Afraican independence movements led him to the seminal work of Frantz Fanon,a Merxist Sociologist,and he speaks in passing of attending socialist conferences at the cooper city in New York City.But as Obama told,this was inthe Reagan years,and he was also reading works by conservative giants like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek.He browsed among the ideologues but never bought in,he said, I was always suspicious of dogma and the excesses of the left and the right.Not all Obama critics see red,of course.Some merely believe he is more liberal than he claims to be.They cite a National Journal Study,which Obama disputes,that rated him the most liberal member of the U.S. senate,and they aren't dissuaded by the candidate's recent positions in favor of gun owners and an electronic-surveillance bill loathed by civil libertarians.There is another Trojan-horse interprentation just below the radar.It is the idea that a man named Barack Hussein Obama might be hiding a Muslim identity.Obama has tackle this dozen of times.His Keyan grandfather was indeed a Muslim,his father enpoused no faith,Obama attended a Muslim school in Indonesia for a time as a boy because that's where he lived-Indonesia is a Muslim country.He believed in no religion until he moved to Chicago as a grown man and was baptized Christian by Wright.As campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs puts it,His Christian pastor and this Muslim thing-how can he have problems with both at the same?Pick one.

But that the problem with having five faces.There's more than one to choose from.The secret Muslim rumors about Obama may be scurrilous,but they survived the sudden fame of Obama's card-carrying Christian pastor.A recent poll found that 12% of Americans believe them.

The message doesn't work for everyone,so far,Obama's number in the national polls average below 50%.

2008-08-28T04:45:00.000-07:00

But his enormous and enthusiastic audiences are evidence that many people are intrigued,if not deeply moved.Yes we can!turns out to be a powerful trademark at an time when 3 out of 4 Americans believe the country is on the wrong track.Many Democrats placed their political bets on anger in recent years,anger at the war,anger over the disputed election in 2000,anger at Bush Administration policies.Obama doubled down on optimism,beginning with his careermaking speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention.Hope in the face of difficulty,hope in the face of uncertainty,the audacity of hope.In the end,that is God's greatest gift to us,the bedrock of this nation,a belief in things not seen,a belief that there are better days ahead.

If you click deeply enough into Obama's website,you can find position papers covering enough issues to fill Congressional Quarterly.He has a specific strategy to refocus the military on Afghanistan.He backs a single payer health-care system.But it wasn't some 10-point plan that turned Obama into a politician who fills arenas while others speak in school cafeteria.He knows that detailed policies tend to drive people apart rather than bring them together.People arrived to hear him out of fervor or mere curiosity,and they stayed for the sense of possibility.They heard rhetoric like this ,from his speech claiming victory after his epic nomination battle.If we are willing to work for it and fight for it and believe in it,then I am absolutely certain that generation from now,we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless,this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal,this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last,best hope on Earth.

That's a pretty quick step from an eletion to nirvana,and Obama's opponents would like to turn such oratory againt him.No one does it more effecively than radio host Rush Limbaugh,with his judo-master sense for his foes vulnerabilities.Limbaugh rarely refers to Obama by his name.Instead,he drops his baritone half an octave and calls him the messiah.

The Healer

2008-08-28T01:08:00.000-07:00

Dreams from my father is the story of a request-not for honor or fortune but for meaning.The book presents a wounded young man who has never felt entirely at home-not among whites or among blacks.neither in slums nor in student unions-and is haunted by the constant,crippling fear that I didn't belong.He wants to know how feel rooted and purposeful.At the end of his odyssey,he decides to take a leap of faith.For the young Obama,faith in other people becomes his home.

This is what he preaches,the seemingly unlimited power of people who are willing to trust,cooperate and compromise.Bring people together for action,what he calls organizing,holds the promise of redemption.And without exactly saying it,Obama offers himself as the embodiment of his own message,the one-man rainbow coalition.You don't believe white and black can peacefully,productively co-exist?Think the gulf between Chicago's South side and the Harvard Law Review can never be bridged?Do you fear that the Muslim masses of Africa and Asia are imcompatible with the modernity of the west or that cosmopolitan America and Christian America will never see eye to eye?Just look at me!It's not unusual to meet Obama supporters who say the simple fact of electing him would move mountains,changing the way the world looks at America,turning the page on the nation's racial history and so on.He is the change they seek.

If identity politics might gain some black vote for obama,it can also cost him votes elsewhere.

2008-08-28T00:04:00.000-07:00

SO how many American will agree with Wright that race is still front and center?The number is notoriously slipery,because voters don't always tell pollsters the truth.At the weekly Standard,a magazine with a neocon tilt,writer Stanley Kurtz rejects Obama's postracial message because he suspects it isn't sincere.Probing the coverage of Obama's career as an Illinois legislator in the black-oriented newpaper the Chicago Defender,Kurtz concluded,the politician chronicled here is profoundly race-conscious.Though Kurtz's message is aimed primarily at whites,it's not so different from one angrily whispered by Jesse Jackson.I want to cut his nuts off.Jackson fumed-because he believes that Obama's race ought to determine which issues the candidate raises and how he discusses them.Either way,whether an opponent claims that Obama remains race-conscious or a supporter says he ought to be,both are rejecting the foundation of his campaign.

Figures like Jackson and Wright have invested a lifetime in the politics of black identity.Obama's success,whether it culminates in the White House or not,signals the passing of their era.So it is no wonder that younger voters have been key to his candidacy.Having grown up in the era of Oprah Winfrey,Denzel Washington,Tiger Woods and ,yes,Henry Louis Gates Jr.,they are better able to credit Obama's thesis that there's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asia America,there's the United States of America.

When you look at this photo,what do you see?Black man. Healer .Novice. Radical .The Future. All of the above

2008-08-27T03:12:00.000-07:00

If Barack Obama had not chosen a life in politics,he might have made a fine pshchotherapist.He is a master at taking what you've told him and feeding it right back.What I hear you saying is...Open his book the Audacity of Hope to almost any page and listen.On immigration,for example,Obama first mirrors the faces of this new America he has met in the ethnic stew pot of Chicago,in the Indian markets along Devon Avenue,in the sparkling new mosque in the southwestern suburbs,in an Armenian wedding and A Filopino ball.Then he pivots to give voice to the anxieties of many blacks and as many whites about the wave of illegal immigration,adding.Not all of these fears are irrational.He admits that he knows the frustration of needing an interpreter to speak to one's auto mechanic and in the next breath cherishes the innocent dreams of an immigrant child.

In other words,he hears America singing-and griping,fretting,seething conniving,hoping,despairing.He can deliver a pitch-perfect expression of the racial anger of many American blacks-as he did in his much discussed speech on race relations earlier this year-and,just as smoothly,unpack the racial irritations gnawing at many whites.To what extent does he share any of those emotions?The doctor never exactly says.Consciously or unconsciously,Obama has been honing this technique for years.During his time at Harvard Law School in the 1980s,the student body was deeply divided.In one heated debate,Obama so adroitly summarized the various positions without tipping his own hand that by the end of the meeting,as Professor Charles Ogletree told one newspaper,everyone was nodding,Oh,he agrees with me.

He has been called a window into the American psyche.Or you might say he's mirror-what you see depends on who you are and where you stand.Obama puts it this way.I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.But those metaphors all suggest that he is some sort of passive instrument,when in fact his elusive quality is an active part of his personality.It's how you square the fact that Obama once wrote the most intimate memoir ever published by a future nominee yet still manages to avoid definition.At his core,this is a deeply reserved and emotionally reticent man.Consider this anecdote from Dream from my father,as a young man in New York City,he lived next door to an elderly recluse who seemed to share my disposition.When he happend to meet his neighbor returing from his store,Obama would offer to carry the old man's groceries.Together,the two of them would slowly climb the stairs.never speaking,and at the top,the man would nod silently before shuffling inside and closing the latch...I thought him a kindred spirit,Obama concludes.

2008-08-26T22:31:00.001-07:00

Where's the passion?Obama's measured style worked in the spring but hurt him over summer.It might cost him the election

2008-08-26T22:31:00.000-07:00

A few days before Barack Obama was to announce his choice for vice president,he was asked at a North Carolina town meeting what qualities he wanted in a running mate.He wandered through a derisive.If desultory,critique of Dick Cheney,then switched gears.I want somebody...who shares with me a passion to make the lives of the American people better than they are right now,he said.I want somebody who is mad right now that people are losing their jobs.And I immediately thought,Uh-oh.

Memories of John Kerry in 2004 came flooding back,of how he tended to describe his feelings rather than experience them,of how he suddenly-and unconvincingly-started to say he was angey about this or that when his consultants told him that Howard Dean's anger about the war in Iraq was hitting home with voters.And then,in the general electio,Kerry kept repeating the word strength rather than demonstrating it.Clearly,Obama's consultants have given him similar advice,that he was on the short end of a passion gap-that it was time for emo.A day earlier,he had said wage disparities between genders made his blood boil.

One of the great strengths of the Obama candidacy has been the sense that this is a guy whose blood doesn't boil,who carefully considers the options before he reacts-and that his reaction is always measured and rational.But that's also a weakness,sometimes the most rational response is to rip your opponent's lungs out.On the same day as the North Carolina meeting.Obama spoke to the Veterans of foreign Wars and reacted with carefully prepared passion to John McCain's scurrilous campaign theme that Obama doesn't put America first.Let me be clear.I will let no one question my love of this country,he said,to the best applause he received from that skeptical crowd.It was an effective moment,but defensive.It was not how you win a presidential campaign.

Heading to the crucial moment in this race-his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention-Obama was failing as a candidate in two crucial areas.He had failed to define his opponent,and he was failing,in all but the most amorphous ways, to define himself.He desperately needed to do unto McCain what McCain had done unto him,hammer his opponent in a sustained,thematic way-not just a few tossed-away lines in a stump speech.That shouldn't be too difficult.An argument can be made that McCain is trigger happy overseas and out of touch at home.In fact,Matt Welch made a convincing trigger-happy argument against McCain in Reason magazine-a libertarian publication-cataloging all the times over the past 20 years that McCain has overracted to international crises,down to his recent ridiculous statement that the situation in Georgia was the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the cold war.After the past seven years,Americans are,rightfully,war-weary and McCain is a candidate who can't seem to go a day without proclaiming a crisis somewhere that demands an American military reaction.Indeed,this sould be the natural predicare for Obama's positive argument in this election,that America desperately needs to get its act together at home.

But Obama seems not to have fully assimilated what should be the message of his campaign.It's the economy,egghead.The economy was almost entirely message from his dialogue with Pastor Rick Warren at Saddleback Church-and there were more than a few opportunities to insert it.When Warren braced him on abortion,Obama fumbled around,attempting to sound reasonable.He should have said straight out,We're gonna disagree on this one.I respect your view on abortion.But I'm pro-choice...and you know,Pastor Rick,Jesus never mentions abortion in the Bible.He did say,though,that it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter heaven.Now,that's a metaphor-but it's also good tax policy.Unlike John McCain,I want to make it easier for rich people to go to heaven.

He might have mention that he favored the current biaprtisan energy proposal that would permit offshore drilling and invest in alternative energy,but McCain opposed it because it would raise taxes on the oil companies by closing loopholes.The last question at the North Carolina town meeting came from a homeless veteran who said more than half of the 200 people living in his shelter were veteran,too.Obama gave a solid,substantive answer.What he should have said was,That's outrageous.Why don't we go over there right now- I'd like to thank them for their service and see what we can do to help.That sort of spontaneity-that sort of real passion-is what's missing from this candidacy.I suspect Obama will have a hard time winning unless he finds some of it.

Postcard New Delhi.Protesters come from across the country to make their voices heard in the capital's only designated free-speech zone.

2008-08-26T11:16:00.000-07:00

A tour of India's uneasiest street,the Jantar Mantar observatory,in the bustling heart of New Delhi.was built in the 1720s to monitor the celestical movements that India's royal rulers believed governed their fate.Today,the distinctive red structure is still an observatory of sorts-a vantage point for watching the workings of India democracy,a process every bit as complex,amd as inscrutable,as the progress of heavenly bodies.

For the past decade,the busy thoroughfare overlooking Jantar Mantar has served as New Delhi's officially designated protest zone.All otehr public spaces and government buildings are off-limits.As a result,the area surrounding Jantar Mantar hosts a rich daily marketplace of complaints,ranging from tribal members demanding compensation for lost land and farmers seeking better prices for their crops,to demonstrators demanding greater rights for woman and gays,and everyone in between.The 18th century observatory is now witness to what the writer V.S. Naipaul called India's million mutinies-the dizzying array of fault lines,small and large,that fracture this heterogeneous nation of 1.1 billion.

To stroll around the observatory on any given day is to sample the local grudges and global grievances that draw protesters from across India.A bureaucratic spelling error has brought a group of Dhangars,dressed in the red and yellow colors of their tribe,here for the fourth time from the western state of Maharashtra.We hope this time our voice will be heard,say the group's leader,Gunderao Bansode.Under India law,certain castes and tribes are guaranteed places in educational institutes and legislatures,as well as government jobs.The Dhangars are supposed to share these advantages.But they accuse officals in their home state of deliberately using a transliteration error-in Marathi,the language of Maharashtra,the name of their tribe is pronounced Dhangad-to deny them their due benefits,since Dhangad,unlike Dhangar,is not an officially recognized tribe.

A stone throw from the Dhangars camp stands a tent housing a dozen men dressed all in white.They're representing the Greater Cooch Behar People's Association,which is demanding that eight districts currently divided between the states of Assam and West Bengal be recognized as a separate state of Cooch behar.Our language and culture are different from these states,says Babua Barman,who,along with other COOCH behar activists,has been camping near Jantar Mantar for two years now.

Autonomy is a demand familiar to the Tibetan activists nearby,who have arrived from all over India to join a 24 hour hunger strike.As the protesters use loudspeakers to relay pro-Tibet speeches,a couple of cops stroll by,ogling the rosycheeked Tibetan girls.Police and protesters share mutual disdain.They hate us.Laughs Rachna Dhingra,an activist with the International Campaign for Justice for Bhopal,which has been camping here since March to demand legal action against the corporation responsible for the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster,which killed more than 3000 people.We're making the police earn their keep,Dhingra says,Life at Jantar Mantar isn't much fun,she admits.Public toilets are filthy and demonstrators have to go to a nearby Sikh temple to shower.Distrustful police and civic authorities Just want us to go away,she says,but protesters are buoyed by strangers who offer money and encouragement.

Scattered among the righteously aggrieved are also protesters whose vigils seem downright quixotic.Ramdev Kumar,for instance,claims that his wife left him for someone else and his brother usurped his house.For the past two years,Kumar has been agitating for some sort of recompense.I wnat the government to so something.he says simply.Outsideers might view the cacophony of complaints at Jantar Mantar as a metaphor for India's vital civil society,where even the loneliest petitioners are entitled to a soapbox.But many in the Jantar Mantar crowed are not so sanguine.Dhingra,the Bhopal protester,says that having this space is better than nothing,but sees Jantar Mantar as a symptom of flawes democracy.You must scream within there 500 meters,she says.And even then,you can't be sure you'll be heard.

Ageless,Hip,Erudite,Caustic,lovable,tough and hypnotic.

2008-08-26T07:40:00.000-07:00

Jerry Wexler,who died Aug 15 at 91,was a one of a kind great man of music.Before helping shape the sound of the sound half of the 20th century,he was the billboard reporter who coined rhythm and blues to replace the category race music on the magazine's charts.With Ahmet Ertegun,he co-piloted Atlantic Records,once saying the label made black music for black adults.But that underestimated the impact of the classics he produced-Aretha Franklin's Respect,Percy Sledge's When a man loves a woman,Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour and the Genius of Ray Charles.When I was president of Columbia Records in the late 1960s and early 70s,signing Janis Joplin,Santana and Earth,Wind&Fire,I knew I had some of age after Jerry reached out to spend time with me.We became friends.I would go to his house in East Hampton and listen to records and marvel at his commentary,always colorful,always mesemerizing and always smart.Artists from every genre would join us,but it was Jerry with his laugh,lexicon and turns of pharse who held center stage.He might have been the elder statesman among us,but when the music played,the years swept away and his youthful enthusiasm bubbled over.Music can lift the soul,change the mood,teach the mind and touch the heart.And the music Jerry Wexler produced will live on,affecting future generations in ways he never thought possible.

Former Soviet Repubics

2008-08-25T21:52:00.000-07:00

Since the breakup of the Soviet union in 1991,Its former republics have attempted to take different political directions.Most came together in the Commonwealth of Independent States,which is still led by Russia.The Baltic nations joined NATO and the European Union in 2004-a course Ukraine and Georia have flirted with recently-while resource-rich central Asia republics have remained largely loyal to Moscow.But after the invasion of Georgia,former members of the U.S.S.R face an inescapable truth,you can't run from geography.Try as they might to move closer to Europe,many are now nervously eyeing a resurgent Russia on their borders.

The Baltics 1.Estonia 2.Latvia 3.Lithuania

Thriving,technologically advanced democracies with prickly relationships with Russia.Estonia blames Moscow for major cyberattacks in 2007.

Eastern Europe 1.Belarus 2.Ukraine 3.Moldova

Russia has held a grudge against Ukraine since the 2004 prodemocracy Orange Revoltion.Belarus has kept particularly close ties with Moscow,while Russia troops are currently stationed in a semidetached Moldovan territory.

The Caucasus 1 Georgia 2Armenia 3 Azerbaijan

A vital region for the west,which has high hopes for an oil pipeline through Azerbaijan.George W.Bush visited ally Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia in 2005.Tiny Armenia which borders Iran and Turkey,readily accept Russian protection.

Central Asia 1 Kazakhstan 2 Uzvekistan 3Turkmenistan 4 Kyrgyzstan 5Tajikistan

There states are wedged between Russia and China.Several are resource-rich and endure varying levels of autocratic rule,a few have let NATO use land for bases.

The Mekong's fatal floods

2008-08-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

More than 160 people have died in northern Vietnam as a result of what is being called the worst flooding in a century.Two weeks of heavy rainfall swelled the Mekong River andits tributaries,causing mudslides and innudateing homes and rice paddies throughout Southeast Asia.At certain points of the Mekong-a 2700 mile about 4350km waterway that runs from China through Laos,Cambodia and southern Vietnam before reaching the South China Sea-water levels surged as far as 45 ft.about 14 m above the river's dry-season lows.Meanwhile,in Burma.Which is still covering from a cyclone that killed at least 84000 people in May,torrential rains have forced people to flee their homes-particularly residents of the Irrawaddy delta,one of the area hardest hit by the deadly spring storm.

Vermont Legalize it? College presidents from nearly 100 U.S. universities,including Duke,Tufts and Texas A&M,have signed a petition to lower the national drinking age,saying current laws encourage a culture of clandestine binge-drinking among students younger than 21.Known as the Amethyst Initiative,the coalition plans to run national ads calling for a debate among lawmakers.Members of Mothers Against Drunk Driving,however,say lowering the drinking age would only lead to more fatal car accidents.

Zimbabwe Real victims in a war of words Power-sharing talks between President Robert Mugabe and his politicak rival Morgan Tsvangirai are in danger of breaking down completely almost four weeks after they began,sources inside the negotiations say.Tsvangirai's party has agreed to convene parliament in an attempt to revive Zimbabwe's moribund government but won't allow Mugabe to appoint a Cabinet until an agreement is reached.Meanwhile,hundreds of thousands have fled the country to escape the economic crisis.More than 80% of the population is unemployed,45% is malnourished.The inflation rate topped 11.2 million percent in June-by far the highest in the world.

The ocean Living with Dead Zones According to a report published in the journal Science,the number of dead zones-area of the ocean with oxygen levels so low that marine life can barely survive- has doubled every 10 years since the 1960s as a result of a runoff polluted with nitrogen-rich crop fertilizer.There are now more than 400 such zones-from the Gulf of Mexico to the Black Sea see map above-which,the report's authors say,pose as great a threat to coastal ecosystems as overfishing and habitat loss.

Inbox Capitalism 2.0

2008-08-25T04:52:00.000-07:00

I'm glad that people like bono and Bill Gates are endorsing the practice of spreading corporate profits among the world's disadvtanged and helping convince the business elite that it is in their interest to care about the world's less fortunate.Both individuals have used their influence to do great things and trigger lasting change.But let's forget that our elected representatives must be the ones held primarily responsible for protecting the poor.The mandate of a corporation can never be as binding as that of the state.Since the government must set a minimum wage for justice's sake,perhaps it can set maximums for corporate profits or individual salaries and offer incentives for the rich to give back.

Gate's article made me want to stand up and cheer,As he pharsed it,There are two great forces of human nature.self-interest and caring for others.By using his own wealth and influence to respond to world poverty in a meaningful way,Gates exemplifies the latter force.His initiatives sharing technology,providing small business loans,eradicating preventable disease make measurable differences.Thank you for providing a forum for him to share his ideas.

While Bill Gates does a fine job out-lining his creative capitalism initiative,his exclusive focus on developing nations at the expense of his own is a tremendous oversight.Corporations in developed countries certainly should feel socially responsible for those in developing ones.But if they ever want to be take seriously as agents of social change and as stakeholders in local communities,they need to consider their own domestic markets as well.Gates is fooling himself when he brushes over the U.S's economic woes so lightly,especially when creative capitalism could potentially solve some problems like our own oft-neglected poverty and inner-city urban blight.Only when America proves that capitalism can cure social ills within its own borders should it start looking to prove so abroad.

Hollywood's Ticking Time bomb I agree with James Poniewozik's assessment that Hollywood has yet to demonize China in the same way the news media have.However,one need only look at the parallels between negative new coverage and negative pop-culture depictions of Arabs and the Middle East during the past decade,or similar coverage of the Japanese during World War II, to see how closely one influences the other and how both influence the minds of the American people in different ways.The current political climate suggests that China is next.It may be only a mater of time before the delightful pandas take on a more ominous form.

A state of concern As a lifelong Michigan Resident,I have lived through this state's trials and tribulations.We are hardworking group of citizens who epitomize what it means to be American.This presidential election offers Michiganders an opportunity to seek the change that it so desperately needs.However,given the shenanigans of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpartick and the ineffective leadership of current Governor Jennifer Granholm,their support of Obama might make him guilty by association.I know I would not want the endrosement of any politician who represents regression in a state that needs all the forward-looking help it can get.

Through Agvaantseren,the organization buys there items from herding families and arranges to market them abroad

2008-08-24T09:47:00.000-07:00

Participants must first sign a pledge to preserve snow leopards and their prey and to encourge neighbors to do the same.The arrangement boosts incomes by 10 to 15 percent,which elevates the status of the women and translates into more emphasis on education and health care.If no one in the community kills protected species over the course of a year,the program members receive a 20 percent bonus.In one of Agvaantseren's communities,a winer villege of herders in far northwestern Monogloa.a lively scene of trade took place on the floor of a ger heated by a stove fueled with yak dung.A Khazakh woman named Saulekhan Kekei had brought 17 felt rugs made over 68 days.She had six children and an ill husband to support.Those rugs would bring the equivalent of nearly three months wages in her job as a janitor and guard at the village school .I own only 12 sheep,Saulekhan said.I have to buy wool from neighbors.But I am able to provide for everyone at home now and pay for my eldest daughter to go to college.

An independent review in 2006 found no poaching of snow leopards in areas where SLE operates.Agvaantseren just added eight more communities and intends to expand a microcredit scheme that lets members borrow at a discount to buy items such as spinning wheels or material to improve corrals.People hear good report from neighbors,and they come to us now asking how to join,she said.In our imagination,snow leopards belong to realm beyond the dust and noise of human affairs.In reality,only about a fifth of their range lies within reserves,and many of these contain villages and livestock.Informal protected zones exist around many Buddhist monasteries,but the Western model of establishing nature sanctuaries in landscapes unoccupide by humans simply doesn't fit much of Asia.

Projects like the Homestays program in India and the handicrafts business in Mongolia,however,seem to fit very well.Though they cover only a small fraction of the species homeland so far,they make live leopards more valuable to more people each year,and in doing so they mark a path toward the conservation of high mountain ecosystems. I never minded not seeing snow leopards-not as long as I found plenty of their sign.It was my guarantee that I would soon come across other spectacular wildlife.And it meant that I could still dream of pulling myself up to the spine of a ridge,as Raghu once did,and meeting face to face with a snow cloud colored cat climbing from the other side.

Stanzin Pulit's yaks are his wealth,and in Ladakh's Zanskar Valley.

2008-08-24T06:44:00.000-07:00

Herds are vulnerable to snow leopard attacks.Conservation groups help herders build protective corrals in return for their pledge not to kill snow leopards.Such aid gives locals economic incentive to preserve the predators-good news for the region's ecotourism initiatives,but mixed news for prey like blue sheep.One winter Dashdavaa Khulaa,a park ranger in the Turgen Range,watched a herd of 27 ibex take shelter in a cliff-face cave.A mother snow leopard with two partly grown cubs followed them in.Only 24 ibex made it out.For Khulaa,the tale is part of a large story.Though the Turgen Range,part of the Altay Mountains,saw some heavy wildlife poaching in the past,it has become a stronghold for ibex and their predators.One of the reasons is a grassroots antipoaching patrol in the Altay region known as the Snow Leopard Brigade.Ganbold Bataar,Former director of Mongolia's national park system here in the province of Uvs,is its founder and current chief.

With two employees for this whole province,we couldn't hope to keep up,Battar said.But we have more than 290 volunteers here.They were local herders,and their eyes were everywhere in the countryside.Whoever turned in a poacher stood to gain 15 percent of the fine as a reward.But that wasn't always the main incentive.Toward evening,three horsemen driving their flocks home galloped over to visit our camp.They all considered themselves volunteer members of the antipoaching brigade.They knew the mother snow leopard well,she'd had three cubs the previous year,they said.The two from her earlier little had gone off to establish territories of their own on the mountain slopes just across the river.One had appeared prowling the iron-red ledges there just recently.One of the horsemen said simply,I'm pround to live in a place with snow leopards.A small,soft-spoken woman named Bayarjargal Agvaantseren has found another way to enlist local communities in conservation.Twice every year,this former schoolteacher sets out from the Mongolian capital,Ulaanbaatar,to visit some of the 24 herder communities she has engaged in a handicrafts project tagged Snow Leopard Enterprises,a program of the snow leopard trust.

Most herder families used to sell the soft underfur of goats-cashmere-to middlemen,earning about 600$ a year.Thanks to Agvaantpseren,women in the community now also make an array of products using wool from their goats,sheep,yaks,and camels,skeins of soft yarn,felt and decorative rugs,seat pads,children's booties or Christmas tree ornaments shaped like snow leopards and ibex.My favorites were doll mice with whiskers of stiff yak tail hair-toys for little cats,designed to save big ones.

You can only climb so many slopes before you grow exhausted or encounter sheer cliffs.

2008-08-22T09:02:00.000-07:00

It is just not possible to keep up.So Raghu tried capturing the cats to attach radios to them.He finally collared a female.But,like previous investigators,he was seldom able to monitor a signal for long before the animal dropped behind some ridge that blocked the transmission.Over the years,biologists reported snow leopards covering territories of five to fourteen square miles.But when American biologist Tom McCarthy first placed a satellite collar on one in Mongolia in 1996,he found it roaming 386 suqare miles.My guess is that the more sateillte collars we get out,the larger we'll discover snow leopard territories to actually be,said McCarthy,now the science and conservation director of Snow Leopard Trust.Ten years passed before the next satellite tag was put on,again by McCarthy,this time in Pakistan.By mid-2007 the cat wearing it had revealed its movements over a 115 square mile area and had moved across the border to Afghanistan.

Snow Leopard researchers need to together more than cat facts,because you can neither understand nor save a predator without doing the same for its prey.Snow leopards hunt chiefly Asia's high county array of hoofed wildlife,ibex,argali amd urial sheep,blue sheep,tahr,the goat-antelopes known as gorals and serows,Tibetan antelope,Tibetan and goitered gazelles,musk deer,red deer,wild boars,wild asses,wild yaks,and wild Bactrian camels.Marmots,hares,and mouse hares pikas are on the menu too,along with partidges and turkey-size snow cocks.On top of everything else,snow leopards rountinely add the tall,feathery shurb Myricaria and other plants to their diet.Curious,but then my house cat swallows grass and loves cantaloupe.

As the top carnivore of the alpine and subalpine zones,the snow leopard strongly influences the numbers and whereabouts of hoofed herd over time.That in turn affects plant communities and this shapes the niches of many a smaller organism down the food chain.The leopard's presence-or absence-affects competing hunters and scavengers too,namely wolves,wild dogs,jackals,foxes,bears,and lynx.This cascade of consequences makes Unica uncia a governing force in the ecosystem,what scientists term a keystone species.Since the range of the snow leopard overlaps those of so many other creatures,protecting its habitat also preserves homes for the majority of mountain flora and fauna.While we were exploring part of the Zanskar Range in Ladakh,Raghu and I crossed tracks that sent him racing off to an overlook.A few minutes later,a brown bear-the same species as North America's grizzly-galloped and slid down a high riverbank,swam across surging rapids,muscled halfway up a cliff wall,and finally lay down to dry its silver-tipped fur in the warm morning sun.We had found one of the last few dozen of its kind in that huge section of the Himalaya.Do snow leopards attack humans, as bears sometime do?No,never,Raghu says.He once watched a village girl pulling on one end of a dead goat,unaware that the other end,hidden by a bush,was snagged in a snow leopard's jaws.She came away unscratched.But a single leopard swatfest in a herd of livestock can plunge a family into desperate poverty.

Bound to high,cold,sweep terrain,snow leopards have always remained at fairly low densities

2008-08-22T05:37:00.000-07:00

But became still more sparse during the past century because thousands were turned into pelts for the fashion trade.Though officially protected since 1975 under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species,the spotted cats continue to be killed for their coat,worth a black market fortune.Demand for their bones and penis,hyped as tonics in eastern Asia,is increasing.Conflicts with livestock keep growing too,which leads to more persecution by herders.Bait,snares,pitfall traps,and poisons make it far easier to kill a snow leopard than to see one alive.The current population is estimated at only 4000 t0 7000.While these aren't hard figures,the number may be less than half of what it was a century ago.Some authorities fear that the actual number may already have slipped below 3500.Five of the countries in snow leopard range may have 200 or fewer.

There's no escaping the fact that most of the world's big cats are in deep trouble,from the heavily poached tiger to the last 30 free-roaming Amur leopards.Snow leopards are no exception.But here's some encouraging news,the rise of grassroots conservation efforts in a few locales to halt the snow leopard's downward spiral.Several community-base programs in India and Mongolia sounded especially promising-at least on paper.But how well do they really work?Saving an animal means getting to know it,and scientific information about the leopard is scare.Perhaps no other large,popular land mammal has so many details of its natural history still missing.Raghu,the regional director of science and conservation for the nonprofit Snow Leopard Trust,knows as much as anyone,and he has that sixth sense that researchers with years afield develop,an extra awareness that guides hime to the fragile leg bones of an infant blue sheep here in a ravine,or an ibex skull lying there,high on a slope where wind whips the wildflowers into blurs of color,and lets him say things like.At a fresh carcass,you call tell if a snow leopard with young made the kill.The ears will be gnawed off.Those are all the cubs can get at until she opens up the hide for them.Tall and fit,with a long-legged stride,Raghu is a wizard at trailing faint paw prints across stony ground.Buth the otherwise ghostlike predators also leave behind a surprising amount of more obvious clues.It helps to picture 80 to 120 pound cats in a colossal litter box.Dropping,together with scrapes made by the rear legs,reveal habitual routes that tend to follow ridgelines or the base of cliffs.Scrambling for footing day after day,I gradually realize that there travelers like to mark the same type of features that drawmy attention en route,solitary boulders,sharp corners along gullies,knolls,and saddles.Near tree line,they stripe the occasional trunk with long,vertical claw marks.

If my eyes are too busy taking in scenery to notice a fresh scrape,my nose will still register the acrid tang of leopard pee.Elsewhere,I'll catch a musky aroma sprayed from anal glands up onto an overhanging rock.Frequently used scent posts take on an oily sheen.Passing cats stretch to rub their cheeks against them,leaving white hairs for me to tuck in a pocket for luck scaling the next rock face.Fifteen,sixteen thousand feet,no matter how far up I climb,some villager will have gone higher and left stone cairns bearing prayer flags or stacks of horns.Later,the cats come by and leave their own markings on these offerings.A lot of research on snow leopard movements really tells you more about the limits of human abilities,says Raghu after crossing a cascade swollen with glacial melt.

Out of the shadows the elusive Central Asian snow leopard steps inot a risk-filled future.

2008-08-21T22:39:00.000-07:00

Snow leopard don't care much for company.So to get close,Photographer Steve Winter deployed a series of camera traps that automatically snapped pictures whenever an animal crept near.The result is a set of intimate portraits that expands our vision of a legendary mountain recluse.Rub,scratch,urinate,defecate-a snow leopard marks its trail with often pungent graffti.The scent helps these solitary cats avoid confrontation in territory they share.During mating season.though,the scent is meants as magnet.As few as 3500 of these endangered cats may survive in the wild.To traverse rocky slopes and survive in cold mountain climes-even at altitudes as high as 18000 feet-snow leopards are well equipped.Long hair with thick underful,wide,well-padded paws,and big chest and strong lungs keep these cats running up where the air gets thin.

You almost have to turn away for a minute to tell the animal is going anywhere.If it knocks a stone loose,it will reach out a foot to stop it from falling and making noise.One might be moving right now,perfectly silent and perfectly tensed,maybe close by.But where?That's always the question.That,and how many are left to see?Raghunandan Singh Chundawat has watched snow leopards as often as anyone alive.The New Delhi biologist studied them closely for five years in Hemis High Altitude National Park in Ladakh,the largest,loftiest district of northern India,and carried out wildlife surveys in the region over nine traditional years.We're in the 1300 suqare mile park this evening,setting up camp in a deeply cleft canyon near 12000 feet.It's June,and the blue sheep have new lamps.We keep one eye on a group crossing a scree slope,the other eye on the cliffs at its top.Leopards are are ambush hunters that like to attack from above.While the common leopard of Asia and Africa relies on branches and leaves for concealment,the snow leopard loses itself among steep jumbles of stone.This is exactly the kind of setting one would favor.But I'm not holding my breath.Raghu has sighted only a few dozen in his whole career.

Lengthening shadows coalesce into dusk.Wild roses perfune the Himalayan canyon as passing squalls brush the ridgetops with new now.I imagine a leopard easing down the darkened slopes.It flows low to the ground,with huge gold eyes and a coat the color of dappled moonlight on frost.The body stretches four feet from nose to rump.It's tail,the most striking in the feline family,is almost as long,and so thick and mobile it looks as if the cat is being followed by a fuzzy python.The snow leonpard sometimes uses its tail to send signals during social encounters or to wrap partway around itself like a scarf when bedded down in bitter weather.But the main function of this plume is to add balance in an environment with thousand-foot drops.In Mongolia a park ranger once told me he'd seen snow leopards crouch and sway that plume in the air to lure curious marmots closer,just as hunters do with rags.Possible.But I heard a simpler explanation from Sodnomdeleg Bazarhuyag,a retired doctor in a community of herders in northwestern Mongolia.We went to search out snow leopard sign in a gorge glistening with river ice.When a bend of scimitar-horned wild goats ibex appeared on the skyline,Bazarhuyag scanned carefully around them saying,Snow leopards are good at hiding,but sometimes they forget about their tail.

Darkness claims the last crags.Raghu and I won't glimpse a snow leopard this day.It's not a disappointment.The great cat is only living up to its reputation for being impossible to find.Called shan in Ladakhi,irbis in Mongolian,and brafani chita-snow cheetah-in Urdu,the carnivore scientists label Unica uncia ranges across about a million square miles and portions of 12 nations.You'll never hear one give away its whereabouts by roaring,it lacks the throat structure,though it can hiss,chuffmmew,growl,and wail.Beside being secretive,well camouflaged,amd usually solitary,snow leopards are most active at night and in the twilight hours of dusk and dawn,amid the most formidable tumult of mountains on Earth,the Himalaya and Karakoram,the Plateau of Tibet and adjoining Kunlun,the Hindu Kush,Pamirsmand Tian Shan,the Altay,whose peaks define Mongolia's border with China,Kazakhstan,and Russia,and the Sayan chain west of Lake Baikal.

More reclusive nudibranchs,with nocturnal habits or small ranges

2008-08-21T11:36:00.000-07:00

May opt for camouflagemfrom drab to brilliant,rather than contrast although many of those,too,have toxic defenses.Pigments matching sponges and other edible substrates on whihc they linger can make even the biggest slug varieties-the length of a man's forearm-vanish where they lie.Even the most keen-eyed diver may miss those cryptic species.But the brazen ones pop into view in bursts of Crayola colors,one munching coral,another glomming on to a rock face, a third riding a current along the seabed.A lucky sighting is a mass aggregation of dozens or even hundreds gathered at a food-rich locale to feed and mate,or a plate-size solar powered species that gets nutrients from photosynthetic algae farmed within its body.

Nudibranchs are blind to their own beauty,their tiny eyes discerning little more than light and dark.Instead the animals smell,taste,and feel their world using head-mounted sensory appendages called rhinophores and oral tentacles.Chemical signals help them track food not just coral and sponges but barnacles,eggs,or small fish-and one another.Hermaphroditic,nudibranchs have both male and female organs and can fertilize one another,an ability that speeds the search for mates and doubles reproductive success.Depending on the species,pairs may lay eggs in coils,ribbons,or tangled clumps,up to two million at a time.Not all adult encounters have such a fruitful outcome.Sometimes one nudibranch eats the other,particular if it is of another species.A cannibal slug rears up like a cobra to engulf its kin,using jaws and teeth to finish the job.Other nudibranchs rely on enzymes,rather than teeth,to break down prey.What else can devour a nudibranch without ill consequence?Certain fish,sea spiders,turtles,sea stars,a few crabs,some people consume them as well,after removing the toxic organs.Chileans and islanders off Russia and Alaska roast or boil sea slugs or eat them raw.Photographer David Doubilet likened the experience to chewing an eraser.

Humans have also studied sea slugs' simple nervous systems for clues to learning and memory and have raided their chemical armory in search of pharmaceuticals.Fashioning remedies from marine invertebrates has a long history.Pliny the Elder,For example,wrote in the first century A.D. of using ground snail mixed with honey to treat ulcerations of the head and sea urchin ashes for baldness.Scientists today are isolating chemicals that may help ailing heart,bone,and brain.A sea hare cousin to the nudibranch recently offered up a cancer-fighting compound that made it into clinical trials.Still,nudibranchs have hardly given up all their secrets.Scientists estimate that they've identified only half of all nudibranch species,and even the known ones are elusive.Most live no more than a year and then disappear without a trace,their boneless,shell-less bodies leaving no record of their brief,brilliant lives.

Nudibranchs crawl through life as slick and naked as a newborn.Snail kin whose ancestors shrugged off the shell millions of years ago,

2008-08-21T05:20:00.000-07:00

They are just skin,muscle,and organs sliding on trails of slime across ocean floors and coral heads the world over.Found from sandy shallows and reefs to the murky seabed nearly a mile down,nudibranchs thrive in waters both warm and cold and even around billowing deep-sea vents.Members of the gastropod class,and more broadly the mollusks,the mostly finger-size morsels live fully exposed,their gills forming tufts on their backs.Nudibranch means naked gill,a feature that separates them from other sea slugs.Although they can release their muscular foot-hold to tumble in a current-a few can even swim freely-they are rarely in a hurry.

So why,in habitats swirling with voracious eaters,aren't nudibranchs picked off like shrimp at a barbecue?The 3000-plus known nudibranch species,it turns out,are well equipped to defend themselves.Not only can they be tough-skinned,bumpy,and abrasive,but they've also traded the family shell for less burdensome weaponry.toxic secretions and stinging cells.A few make their own poisons,but most pilfer from the foods they eat.Species that dine on toxic sponges,for example,alter and store the irritating compounds in their bodies and secrete them form skin cells or glands when disturbed.Other nudibranchs hoard capsules of tightly coiled stingers,called nematocysts,ingested from fire corals,anemones,and hydroids.Immune to the sting,the slugs deploy the stolen artillery along their own extremities.

Many mobile nudibranchs-vulnerable as they move in daylight between feeding spots-announce their weapons with garish colors and designs,a palette million of years in the marking.Contrasting pigment make them highly visible against a reef's greens and browns,a visual alarm that turns predators wary-bold nibblers quickly learn to avoid the color paterns that announces unpalatable flesh.Animals able to mimic the designs,including nontoxic nudibranchs and other invertebrates like flat-worms,are similarly left alone.

Yet even oil optimists concede that physcial limit are beginning to loom

2008-08-20T23:10:00.000-07:00

Consider the issue of discovery rate.Oil can't be pump from the ground until it has been found,and yet the volume discovered each year has steadily fallen since the early 1960s-despite dazzling technological advances,including computer-assisted seismic imaging that allows companies to see oil deep below the Earth's surface.One reason for the decline is simple mathematics.Most of the big,easily located fields-the so-called elephants-were discovered decades ago,and the remaining fields tend to be small.Not only are they harder to find then big fields,but they must also be found in greater numbers to produce as much oil.Last November,for example,oil executives were ecstatic over the discovery off the Brazilian coast of a field called Tupi,thought to be the biggest find in seven years.And yet with as much as eight billion barrels,Tupi is about a fifteen the size of Saudi Arabia's legendary Ghawar,which held about 120 billion barrels at its discovery in 1948.

Worldwide,output from existing field is falling by as much as 8 percent a year,which means that oil companies must develop up to seven million barrels a day in additional capacity simply to keep current output steady-plus many more millions of barrels to meet the growth in demand of about 1.5 percent a year.And yet,with declining field sizes,rising costs,and political barries,finding those new barrels is getting harder and harder.Many of the biggest oil companies,including Shell and Mexico's state-owned Pemex,are actually finding less oil each year than they sell.As more and more existing fields mature,and as global demand continues to grow,the deficit will widen substantially.By 2010,according to James Mulva,CEO of ConocoPhillips,nearly 40 percent of the world's daily oil output will have to come from fields that have not been tapped-or even discovered.By 2030 nearly all our oil will come from fields not currently in operation.Mulva,for one,isn't sure enough new oil can be pumped.At a conference in New York last fall,he predicted output would stall at 100 million barrels a day-the same figure Total's chief had projected.And the reason,Mulva said,is ,where is all that going to come from?

Whatever the ceiling turns out to be,one prediction seems secure.The era of cheap oil is behind us.If the past is any guide,the world may be in for a rough ride.In the early 1970s during the Arab oil embargo,U.S. policymakers considered despreare measure to keep oil supplies flowing,even drawing up contingency plans to seize Middle Eastern oil fields.Washington backed away from military action then,but such tensions are likely to reemerge,Since Saudi Arabia and other members of the Organzation of Petroleum Exporting Countries control 75 percent of the world's total oil reserves,their output will peak substantially later than that of other oil regions,giving them even more power over prices and the world economy.A peak or plateau in oil production will also mean that,with rising population,the amount of gasoline,kerosene,and diesel available for each person on the planet may be significantly less than it is today.And if that's bad news for energy-intensive economies,such as the United State,it could be disastrous for the developing world,which relies on petroleum fuels not just for transport but also for cooking,lighting,and irrigation.

Husseini worries that the world has been slow to wake up to the prospect.Fuel-efficient cars and alternatives such as biofuels will compensate for some of the depleted oil supplies,but the bigger challenge may be inducing oil-hungry societies to curb demand.Any meaningful discussion about changes in our energy-intensive lifestyles,says Husseini,is still off the table.With the inexorable arithmetic of oil depletion,it may not stay off the table much longer.

Smaller fields also cost more to operate than larger ones do.The world has zillions of little fields,says Matt Simomons,a Houston investment banker who has studied the oil discovery trend.But the problem is ,you need a zillion oil rigs to get at them all.This cost disparity is one reason the industry prefers to rely on large fields-and why they supply more than a third of our daily output.Unfortunately,because most of the biggest finds were made decades ago,much of our oil is coming from mature fields that are now approaching their peaks,or are even in decline,output is plummeting in once prolific regions such as the North Sea and Alaska's North Slope.

Tapped out In 2000 a Saudi Oil Geologist named Sadad I.Al Husseini made a startling discovery.Huseini,

2008-08-20T06:31:00.000-07:00

Then head of exploration and production for the state-owned oil company,Saudi Aramco,had long been skeptical of the oil industry's upbeat forecasts for future production.Since the mid-1990s he had been studying data from the 250 or so major oil fileds that produce most of the world's oil.He looked at how much crude remained in each one and how rapidly it was being depleted,then added all the new fields that oil companies hoped to bring on line in coming decades.When he tallied the numners,Husseini says he realized that many oil experts were either misreading the global reserves and oil-production data or obfuscating it.

Where mainstream forecasts showed output rising steadily each year in a great upward curve that kept up with global demand,Husseubu's calculations showed output leveling off,starting as early as 2004.Just as alarming,this production plateau would last 15 years at best,after which the output of conventional oil would begin a gradual but irreversible decline.That is hardly the kind of scenario we've come to expect from Saudi Aramco,which sits atop the world's largest proven oil reserves-some 260 billion barrels,or roughly a fifth of the world's known crude-and routinely claims that oil will remain plentiful for many more decades.Indeed,according to an industry source,Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi took a dim view of Husseini's report,and in 2004 Husseini retired from Aramco to become an industry consulatant.But if he is right,a dramatic shift lies just ahead of a world whose critical systems,from defense to transportation to food production,all run on cheap,abundant oil.Husseini isn't the first to raise the specter of a peak in global oil output.For decades oil geologists have theorized that when half the world original endowment of oil has been extracted,getting more out of the ground each year will become increasingly difficult,and eventually impossible.Global outputmwhich has risen steadily from fewer than a million barrels a day in 1900 to around 85 million barrels today,will essentially stall.Ready or not,we will face a post-oil future-a future that could be marked by recession and even war,as the United States and other big oil importers jockey for acess to secure oil resources.

Forecasts of peak oil are highly controversial- not because anyone think oil will last forever,but because no one really knows how much oil remains underground and this how close we are to reaching the halfway point.So-called oil pessimists contend that a peak is imminent or has actually arrived,as Husseini believes,hidden behind day to day fluctuations in production.That might help explain why crude oil prices have been rising steadily and topped a hundred dollars a barrel early this year.Optimists ,by contrast,insist the turning point is decades away,because the world has so much oil yet to be tapped or even discovered,as well as huge reserves of unconventional oil,such as the massive tar-sand deposits in western Canada.Optimists also not that in the past,whenever doomsayers have predicted an imminent peak,a new oil-field discovery or oil-extraction technology allowed output to keep rising.Indeed,when Husseini first published his forecasts in 2004,he say optimists dismissed his conclusions as curious footnotes.

Many industry experts continue to argue that today's high prices are temporary,the result of technical bottlenecks,sharply rising demand from Asia,and a plummeting dollar.People will run out of demand before they run out of oil,BP's chief economist declared at a meeting early this year.Other optimist,however,are wavering.Not only have oil prices soared to historic levels,but unlike past spikes,those prices haven't generated a surge in new output.Ordinarily,higher prices encourge oil companies to invest more in new exploration technologies and go after difficult to reach oil fields.The price surge that followed the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s,for example,eventually unleashed so much new oil that markets were glutted.But for the past few years,despite a sustained rise in price,global conventional oil output has hovered around 85 million barrel a day,which happens to be just where Husseini's calculations suggested output would begin to level off.

In June 2003,Moscow prosecutors arrested Yuko's security on charges of organizing the execution of Petukhov.

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Four months later they arrested Khodorkovsky on charges of fraud and tax evasion.Tax authorities seized the Neftyugansk subsidiary and handed it over to a Kremlin-controlled company called Rosneft.Khodorkovsky was convicted and carted off to jail in southern Siberia,where his face was slashed by an inmate.Meanwhile,the security chief was convincted in a trial heavily publicized on state television.In the lastest development,prosecutors announced last February that Yukos co-owner Leonid Nerzlin also would be charged in Petukhov's murder.

Perhaps it did happen the way the government claimed,but ask folks in Nefteyugansk about the murder,and they tend to shrug and say they don't know what to believe.The coordinated elements of the Yukos affair have the whiff of a Moscow plot hatched by the KGB types in control of the Kremlin.The result,in any case,is that a cash cow-and still the town's livelihood-has passed from the hands pf a Moscow oligarch into the hands of the Kremlin.What I show up in town,Sergey Burov has been mayor for four months.He was once a deputy director for Rosneft and before that a senior manager for Yukos.He,too,is no stranger to violence.In 2005,while walking to his car in the morning,he took a bullet to the stomach.It looked like another contract job,but prosecutors closed the case without finding a culprit.

Burov is a burly man whose wide shoulders stretch his suit.He is interested in talking about the town's future,not its bloody past.In parntership with Rosneft,he tells me,the city administration has ambitious plans to redevelop Nefteyyugansk.Come back in two years,he says,and I will see an entirely different town,maybe even a yacht club.After the interview his press secretary shows off an indoor sports facility with an Olympic-size swimming pool.In the central plaza,the onel littered with pipe just a few days earlier,workers are starting to install brick walkways and flower beds.

Are things finally looking up for Nefteyugansk?Residents seem skeptical.Maybe Roseneft feels better being here,Vasily Voroshilov,a 52 year-old oil well repairman,says.But we don't feel it.That skepticism is shared by many observers outside Russia,who say it's one thing to seize control of an oil company and quite another to run it.Says one analyst of the Kremlin's takeover of Russian oil,You can steal a Chevy,but that doesn't mean you know how to drive it.For all the wealth that oil can produce,it is often as much a curse as a blessing for countries such as Russia.Early in the 1990s,before the oil boom,Boris Yeltsin encouraged local provinces to grab what autonomy they could.This was when Russia's potential for political pluralism and Western-style grassroots democracy looked greatest.When oil prices rose toward the end of the decade,the Kremlin realized that this source of wealth could be used to bring about a humiliated Russia's global resurgence.Salvation by oil has since become an article of national faith.

Oil said a 16 year-old student at Khanty mansiysk's school for math whizzes,is the only way for our country to stand up,to survive.Actually,there are many ways that the Russians,a creative and educated people,can revive their country.But oil suggests national potency,and Russia's petroleun patrimony lends itself to patriotic incantations of an almost mystical kind.At the festivities on Oilers's day one of the songs,a salute to the collective might of the neftyaniki,proclaimed,We are the fingers pressed thightly into a fist.Russia's superpower status today comes from energy,not its military,says Julia Nanay,a senior director at PEC Energy,a global consultancy based in Washington D.C. The Kremlin determines what happens with oil in western Siberia.They want to control production and exports in order to maximize Russia's geopolitical relevance.Just as the tsars of old exercised monopolies on valuable commodities such as fur and salt,the Kremlin wants direct control over oil-and over the oligarchs who produce it.Those who come to heel survive,those who don't risk suffering Khodorkovsky's fate,or worse.

One of the survivors is Vagit Alekperov,president of Russia's biggest private oil company,Lukoil.Starting out working on the rigs near his native Baku,Alekperov was sent to Siberia in the late 1970s to manage an oil-production team.A notoriously strict paternalist, he angered his men by banning the sale of alcohol in the village.Several of them grabbed hunting rifles and fired shots at his cabin,but Alekperov,ever the survivor,wasn't there at the time.During the fina days of the Soviet Union,Alekperov forged Lukoil from prime oil assets in western Siberia.Today the company is a global multinational with hydrocarbon reserves second only to ExxonMobil-and some 2000 gas stations in the U.S. Though most of Lukoil's reserves are in western Siberia,Alekperov keeps his headquarters just two miles from the Kremlin.Like other survivors,he knows that he must be attentive to any change in political mood that could affect Lukoil's fortunes,for better or worse.A distinguished-looking man with bronze skin and a crop of steel gary hair,Alekperov dresses in impeccably tailored suits.A tough guy,he can also charm.When pressed on whether oil consumers around the world should feel comfortable now that Russia has a large finger on the globe's petroleum tap,he leaned back in his chair.smiled expansively,and asked,Do I look like a bear?I couldn't help laughing.We just want to make money.Having gobbled up Yukos,might the Kremlin want to swallow Lukoil next?I don't think either the government or the president of Russia will target such a company,Alexperov remonstrates.I decide not to mention that Khodorkovsky had told me the same thing not long before his arrest.

Lukoil's base of operaions in Khanty-Mansi is the town of Kogalym.A roadside floral arrangement spells out the company's name not far from the golden domes of a Russian Orthodox cathedral and the green minaret of a mosque.At a refurbished maternity house-what Russians call a roddom-Dr. Galina Pustovit,director of the gynecology department,show off new Western-standard medical equipment.In a country where many women deliver their babies in Soviet-era buildings reeking of sour cabbage and damp concrete,this gleaming facility rates four stars.When I mention the Pustovit that Russia's oil industry is known for being corrupt,the doctor gives me a sharp look.This is oil,she says,sweeping a hand around the gynecology ward.Oilers built this hospital.All of the objects in this city have been built with oil money,including our beautiful boulevard.Don't judge us too harshly,her looks say.Life in these parts has never been better.

Surgut might have fallen apart,as did some other Russia cities.

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In the chaos following the collapse of the Soviet Union.That it didn't is a testament to the rootedness and stability of its political and business leadership.I was born in Surgut,,my children were bron here,and my grandchildren were bron here,Alexander Sidorov ,the city's longtime mayor,proudly declares.Surgut's economic anchor,the oil company Surgutneftegas,Russia's fourth largest producer,is majority owned by local managers.And unlike most Russian oil barons,who rule their western Siberian empires from Moscow,Surgutneftegas's general director,billionaire Vladimir Bogdanov,makes his home in town.Though now a towering figure in Surgut,Bogdanov started out as a common neftyanik.

Surgutneftegas is using the oil boom to finance an ambitious modernization program.At the oil field management center,computer engineers have custom designed an enormous digital map to monitor and adjust the field's performance.The map displays real-time information sent by coded radio signal from pump stations,active wells,and pipelines.From this display,managers can tell how much electric power is being consumed,whether a well needs repairs,and whether a pipeline is leaking.Protection of the environment,barely a concern in Soviet times,is being part of the new ethos.It's not that the oil industry has suddenly become softhearted toward flora and fauna.Rather,high oil prices provide an incentive to minimize waste,as do license agreements that include big fines for spills.Moreover,as Russian oil firms have become global players,they've also become more sensitive to international concerns about the environment.Maintaining a good reputation is very important,says Alexey Knizhnikov of the World Wildlife Fund in Moscow.Otherwise,doing business becomes difficult.Lubov Malyshkina,director of the environmental department at Surgutneftegas,is a chemical engineer with an advanced degree in the science of corrosion protection and geoecology.She also serves as an elected offical in the regional parliament.In Soviet times,she says ,the oil ministry in Moscow,oblivious to local conditions,would send chemicals that proved useless to treat oil spills and other hazards.Now Malyshkina's department,drawing on a nearly 500 million-dollar budget,makes its own purchase.She shows me one,a Swedish-made Truxor vehicle with tanklike treads that break up oil saturated peat so that spills can be cleaned up.The company is also investing five million dollars in a new plant for recycling old tires into fibers that can be mixed into the asphalt used to pave company roads.

For more than ten years oil has been at the center of a violent and chaotic power struggle in Neftryugansk.The difficulties began in the mid-1990s,when a nouveau riche Moscow banker snagged one of Russia's prime oil producers-and the town's sole large employer-in a privatization auction.The banker,Mikhail Khodorkovsky,made the Nefteyugansk unit the core subsidiary in his new oil company,known as Yukos.But the antagonized the city be delaying tax payment,causing city workers to go unpaid for months.Mayor Petukhov,a former neftyanik,led pubic protests against the new Moscow owners,who,he said,spit into our faces,the faces of oilers.The mayor's murder,at the age of 48,outraged the townpeople,many of whom connected the deed to his stand against Yukos.This blood is on your hands,read anti-Yukos banners put up at city hall by Petukhov's mourners.

For five years no one was brought to justice.During this time the city was governed by a corrupt official who eventually was sent to jail for swindling oil workers out of their promised retirement homes in Russia's balm

Send me to Sineria oil transforms a Russian outpost

2008-08-17T07:49:00.000-07:00

It's around midnight.and the couples on the dance floor at the palace restaurant are gently swaying to a slow one.Za nas,za neft-To us,to oil,the singer croons.Wherever life sends us,To us,to oil...We fill out glasses to the brim.It is Oilers' Day in the western Siberian province of Khanty-Mansi.This annual holiday,honoring the hard labor of the oil workers,falls early in September,after the worst of the summer mosquito season and before the first snowfall,in October.Hours earlier,as daylight faded,thousands crowded into a huge outdoor sports complex.A stage was framed bt a deep-green backdrop of unbroken forest.Balloon were released,torches were lit,and a troupe belted out a song.

Little wonder Russian are toasting oil.These are boom times.Global oil prices have increased tenfold since 1998,and Russia has pulled ahead of Saudi Arabia as the world's top crude oil producer.The Kremlin's budget now overflows with funds for new schools,roads,and national defense projects,and Moscow's nouveau riche are plunking down millions of dollar for mansion-scale dachas.The pumping heart of the boom is western Siberia's boggy oil fields,which produce around 70 percent of Russian's oil-some seven million barrel a day.For Khanty-Mansi,a territory nearly the size of France,the bonanza provides an unparalleled opportunity to create modern,even desirable living conditions in a region whose very name evokes a harsh,desolate place,Khaty-Mansi's regional capital,scene of the holiday revelries,is being rebuilt with oil-tax proceeds.The new structures include an airport terminal once a wooden shack with an outhouse,an art museum featuring paintings by 19th century Russian masters,and a pair of lavishly equipped boarding schools for children gifted in mathematics and the arts.Even the provincial town of Surgut,a backwater only a few decades ago,is laying out new suburbs and is plagued by traffic jams.

But the opportunity presented by oil could slip through the region's fingers.Despite the remarkable surge in oil price,oil production in western Siberia has leveled off in recent years.Output barely rose from 2004 to 2007-a period when the rulers of the Kremlin,a cold-eyed and control-oriented crew,seized choice fields once held by private oil barons.The oligarchs,as they were known,were rapacious sorts who jousted among themselves for spoils.But they also heavily invested in the fields in order to maximize production and profits.The Kremlin,by contrast,aims to exploit oil not only as a source of national wealth,but also as a political tool for making Russia a great world power once again.Its heavy-handed tactics have made foreign investors wary and could undermine the boom-and with it Khanyy-Mansi's chances for a brighter future.Western Siberia's great oil deposits lie under lands that an exiled Marxist revolutionary,suffering in the gulag,once called the waste places of the earth.But to someone visiting by choice,oil country looks fetchingly wild and pristine.The terrain is dominated by taiga-dense forest of spindly birch,cedar,and pine-and boloto peaty marsh that is frozen for most of the year and in spots bubbles with methane.There are no monutains and few hills,but there are numerous lakes,rivers,and streams.

Oil exploration began in earnest here in the mid-1960s.When geologists reported that large reserves of oil were waiting to be tapped,the Kremlin organized a frenzied military-style invasion of pioneers and bulldozers to ramp up production.Western Siberia,it turned out,had even more black gold than anyone had dreamed.More than 70 billion barrels have been pumped over the past 40 years.In the early days Siberia was all frontier says Khanty-Mansi's govenor,Alexander Filipenko,The governor appears older than his 58 years,with a shock of gary hair,watery eyes,and a mottled nose that has weathered its share of frost.Filipenko arrived in Khanty-Mansi in the early 1970s with orders to lay a bridge over the Ob River,which in the late 19th century was a route for squalid barges transporting prisoners to their final places of banishment.The bridge project took four years of toil under burtal conditions.Yet despite the hardships,the governor looks back at that time the way an old man might recall his first love for a beautiful young woman.

Filipenko is equally passionate about his latest project-the redevelopment of the provincial capital,Khanty-Mansiysk,a town of 60000.He attends to every detail,and he has the funds to remark the capital to his liking.The province's oil industury generates 40 billion dollars in annual tax revenues,4.5 billion dollars of which Khanty-Mansi gets to keep for its own use.The rest goes to Moscow.His party background notwithstanding Filipenko's vision is a distinctly non-Soviet one,The capital's leading architectural symbols include a shopping emporium topped by an enormous green dome in the shape of a chum,the traditional tent used by the region's indigenous people-the Khanty,Mansi,and others who herd reindeer,hunt and fish.That symbolism would have been unthinkable in Soviet times,when the state,with its ideological cult of the worker,denied the very idea of culturally derived identity.When Siberia's oil land came under development,native people were forcibly herded into villages and cut off from their hunting and fishing grounds.Following the breakup of the Soviet Union,the nomads won legal status as aboriginal people,with the right to roam the oil field.In spite of their new status and the architectural homage in the capital,their lot has hardly improved.Their numbers are small,about 30000 in all,their languages are nearly extinct,and they are heavily afflicted by the scourges of contemporary Russia-AIDS,alcoholism,and tuberculosis.Some oil tax money is being invested in medical ships that stop along the river to care for patients.But critics say these floating clinics diagnose disease,then leave patients with no means to get treatment.

Rural Russia is also being depopulated by the flight of young people to Moscow and other cities.To counter these trends,Filipenko has implemented ambitious plans to turn Khanty Mansi into a place young people will choose to live in rather than leave.And this effort,he boasts,is working.He notes that Khanty-Mansi has the third highest birthrate among province in Russia,and unlike the country as a whole,whose population is in decline,Khanty-mansi's has increased 18 percent since 1989,from a combination of births and immigration.Oil composes 90 percent of the capital's economy,which is not surprising given the surge in oil prices.But it points to a problem shared by all resource-dependent economices.At some point the resource will be exhausted,and new sources of prosperity will have to be found.Recognizing the need to develop economic prospects beyond oil,Filipenko persuaded some 80 top researchers from Akademgordok-a famed science and research town in southern Siberia capital to staff a new institute specializing in information technologies.The institute provides consulting servies to oil companies,but it also takes on projects in unrelated fields such as nanotechnology.

It's the start of a Silicon Taiga,says Alexander Sherbakov,a 60 year old mathematician with a gary walrus mustache.As the era of easy oil comes to an end,he say,we're going to grow our own scholars by creating information-age jobs for the younger generation.Unlike investment in oil,investment in science,he says,can guarantee an everlasting bright future for the region's economy and its people.That's undoubtedly an optimistic assessment.For one thing,the touted model,silicon valley,is located in temperate California.In Soviet times the Kremlin could simply order top scientists to move to remote research centers.In post-Soviet times Russia's top researchers can live and work wherever they choose,and most are choosing to living in prosperous cities such as Moscow and St.Peterburg.While the oil boom has yet to make Siberia a magnet for Russia's knowledge class,it is attracting many other newcomers,impoverished immigrants from beyond Russia's borders.Early one morning,in a vacant lot just off the highway to Filipenko's showcase capital,a group of about 15 shabbily dressed men ranging in age from their 20s to their 40s are waiting for offers of work.however menial.A white Nissan pulls up,and several of the men walk over to talk to the driver,who is looking for a few hands to dig potatoes.But his offering price,just under ten dollars a day,isn't enough,and he drives away without any takers.These men are what Russians,borrowing a German word,call gastarbeiters-guest workers.They are nearly everywhere in Khanty-Mansi.Most are Muslims from Tajikistan,the former Soviet republic in Central Asia whose economy was shattered by civil war in the mid-1990s.They come here in spring and return home before winter arrives.It's not every day they find a job,but when they do they can earn about $20 lugging bags of cement for a construction crew or doing household cleaning.They wire funds back to their families,and their employers avoid paying taxes on the wages.The man balk at my request to see their living quarters.One says he is ashamed to show me how he lives.I don't want you to get the wrong idea,he says.We are not bandits,we are civilized people.We just need work.

The men are supposed to obtain registration papers certifying their place of residence,but,as they tell me,they have no authorized place to live,bunking instead in unheated garages illegally rented to them.A work boss- a kind of Mafia figure-obtains papers for them by bribing the registration office,but those documents,listing a false address,leave the gastarbeiters at the mercy of the police.When they are found out ,they're sometimes forced to pay a spot fine read bribe,and repeat offenders may face deportation.Russia's feferal government recently put the burden on employers to register the workers and check their identifications,but such measures are unlikely to stem the tide so long as the oil boom continues.A flood of Russians from economically depressed cities west of the Urals is also swelling the oil towns of western Siberia.Forty years ago Surgut was a collection of wooden hovels,in a place where temperatures can plunge to minus 60 degress Fahrenheit and midwinter darkness lasts for all but a few hours a day.Today Surgut is one of the western Siberia's largest cities.with 300,000 people,The new arrivals are voting with their feet,a sign that Russia's new market economy is actually working.

The polisg and prosperity on view in Surgut were once unthinkable in Russia's hinterlands.A combined day care and preschool the city recently remodeled with 5.2 million dollars largely from oil revenue now has a heated indoor swimming pool and hydromassage whirlpool, an animal collection with rabbits,turtles,and parrot,and a room with a small wooden stage on which colorfully costumed children diligently perform fairy tales.When weather doesn't permit outdoor exercise,the children can ride around in toy cars in a large,glass-enclosed playroom kept at a moderately chilled temperature.And then the toddlers can be soothed by a hot drink from the herbal tea bar.I understand that the foreigner is being shown the finest kindergarten in town,but only so much can be faked.Stuck in Surgut's traffic jams are as many Hondas,Toyotas,and Nissans as inexpensive Russian-made lades.Two-car families are becoming more common with the rise in living standard.The housing stock of a typical Russian city consists of large and ugly multistoried concrete apartment blocks,Surgut boasts a suburban development of single-family town houses, aimed at a new upper middle class of oil company managers,bankers,and entrepreneurs.The red-brick houses,each with its own small plot of land,are being built along a tree-lined stretch of riverfront at an average cost of 400,000.Envious townspeople coined an ironic sobriquet for the elite community.Dolina Nischikh,Valley of the Beggars.

The old earthworls were now refashioned to highlight the northeast entrance

2008-08-16T21:51:00.000-07:00

Thus confirming the import of monument's alignment with the solstices-an emphasis that perhaps reflected beliefs about the meaning of the stones in their location at Preseli,or perhaps the new beliefs of a changing age.At some later date the giant sarsens of hard sandstone were dragged in from the Marlborough Downs,20 to 30 miles away.Although subsequent ages would fiddle with the internal design,the erection of the sarsens-the great broad-shouldered guardians of the small stones from Wales-bestowed on Stonehenge its enduring aura of unassailable assurance.Mystifying as it is to us,there is no mistaking the confident purposefulness of its massive,monumental features.

Studies conducted by Michael Allen,an expert in environment archaeology,demonstrate that throughout the long period of stonehenge's construction,people of the area carried on with the mundane tasks of their lives.Charcoal remains,pollens of weeds associated with crops,and,most valuably,snail shells-which can be mathced to different habitats-slow that the Stonehenge landscape was cleared,grazed,and farmed.Whatever its function,Stonehenge was embedded in the community it served.I see it being used like a cathedral,or Wembley Stadium,Allen said Some days it was used to hold solemn rituals,other days for more ordinary gatherings.That so much has been found so recently on this historic landscape underscores how much may yet be revealed.Projected work on the avenue could establish when it was extended to the Avon,clarifying at what stage the river became ritually linked to the monument.Creation remain that were excavatedand reburied at the monument as long ago as 1935 could benefit from rigorous new analysis with up-to-date technology.In April Timothy Darvill and Geoffy Wainwright conducted a two-week dig in decades-hoping to pin down when the bluestone arrived.Their planned reexamination of skeletal remain from the Stonehenge region people had been in need of healing.Fieldwork already under way in the Preseli hills may yield datable burial finds,possibly shedding light on the significance of the Preseli stones.

To all those who seek to read the meaning of Stonehenge in its stones,ritual texts from the dawn of history offer cautionary tales.Take,for example,a random Late Broze Age text of ritual practice from the Luwians,who lived in what is now Turkey between roughly 1700B.C. and 800 B.C.,Then they hold it the sheep out to him and he spit into its mouth twice.The Old Woman speaks as follows,Spit out pain and woe,the god's anger....,Then they bring a piglet of dough and a living piglet.Thay wave the living piglet at some distance.It is fair to say that no diligent fieldwork or application of logic and reason could have led even a visionary archaeologist to reconstruct this ritual from artifacts like bones and ceramics.These are no texts to explain Stonehenge.Secure in its wordless prehistory,it can thus absorb a multitude of meanings ,temple to the sun-or the moon for that matter,astronomical calendar,city of the ancestral dead,center of healing,stone representation of the gods,symbol of status and power.The heart of its mystique is,surely,that it excites in equal measure both zealous certitude and utter bafflement.

So far the Preseli hills have not yielded an answer,but they do offer some clues.

2008-08-16T09:56:00.000-07:00

As Staelens recalled,on the first day Wainwright and Darvill began their field survey,Wainwright laid his hand on a rock.And it had rock art.The pair of them were very academic blokey about the discovery.Geoff said,Look at this,Tim.Tim said,That looks important,Geoff.They just stood there,very British low-key.The handful of examples they eventually discovered of the distinctive cup mark art,a motif of circular hollows within hollows,could be dated only very broadly at between 3800 and 2000 B.C. We didn't get anything we could confidently put in for dating,Darvill said.This much ,however,is known.Perhaps as early as 4000 B.C. people were constructing monuments in this atmospheric areas where rock pinnacles seem to pierce the sky and commemorating the site with motif associated elsewhere with special sites.In Neolithic times people are going to the Preseli hills and venerating them,was how one archaeologist put it.

Whether the stones were moved to Salisbury Plain in a single,sustained campaign or an ongoing effort spread out over a generation or more is not known.Similarly,how the stones were transported has been hotly debated over the years.That's a blue-collar question,Wainwright said,relishing what was clearly a well-rehearsed line,and I am not a engineer.Although glacial drift may initially have worked the stones loose from the hills,an old theory that glaciers swept them onto Salibury Plain has been discounted by modern studies,somehow people must have moved them.The shortest accepted route-by river and along the coast of Wales,across the Severn estuary,into the upper reaches of the Avon-is about 250 miles.It is impossible to judge just how remarkable a feat such transport was in its day.As Darvill points out,in continental Europe even more massive stones were being lugged around.Increasingly,the unaccountable effort' argument is under attack,Darvill said.The Grand Menhir in Brittany-what does it weigh?Three hundred and forty tons,something like that,and it was moved at least a few miles.Whether the stones were pulled by teams of men or oxen,on sleds with greased tracks,giant rollers of wood,or some other unsuspected means,Neolithic man evidently,as Darvill said,had transportation sorted out.

Archaeologists can only speculate about the significance of the bluestones.Carn Menyn may have been a landmark charged with special meaning in a key overland route for trade or travel.Some claim the arrangement of the types of bluestone-dolerite ,rhyolite,and tuff-at Stonehenge mirrors their natural arrangement on Carn Menyn.Then again,perhaps the very effort of transporting the stones or their exotic nature was the point-a kind of statement of ability and power.Darvill and Wainwright believe the answer lie in an old tradition.Writing in the 12th century A.D.,Geoffy of Monmouth,in his rambling,gossipy meander through the history of the kings of Britian,gave a fanciful account of how stonehenge was carried bodily-on the orders of the wizard Merlin,no less-from Ireland to Salisbury Plain,where it was set down to be a place of healing.The story may represent oddments of tenaciously preserved folk memory garbled by a long-in this case,3600 year old-oral tradition,the stones of Stonehenge were,after all,brought from a far place in the west by seemingly magical means.

Rounding out this story is an old local belief,Still potent today,that attributes healing powers to springs arising in the Preseli hills.The sum of these two traditions posits Stonehenge as a kind of Lourdes of the prehistoric world.Among colleagues this healing theory has received a mixed,but cautiously interested,reception.I mean,it's plausible,one expert said.Until further evidence comes to light,then,the trail returns to where it began,with only the most basic of hard facts.People had found something special in the Preseli hills and transported this to southern England.At the time the bluestones arrived on what is now Salisbury Plain,the old-growth forest had been cleared for centuries into open grassland.If brought by river,the stones would have been dragged from the willow-and-sedge-lined banks of the Avon up to the site.Decoratively stippled,grooved and smoothed,the stones were erected in pairs to form a double arc and were perhaps also yoked by lintels that have since fallen away.

Many specialists would go along with the dead and living in a loose sort of way,said Mike Pitts

2008-08-16T00:34:00.000-07:00

Editor of the journal British Archaeology and one of the few people around today who have actually excavated at Stonehenge.It is the details of the new theory that are problematic.The assumption has always been that burial remains at Stonehenge were common only during the period of the pre-stone earthworks and timber structures,though Parker Pearson now believes they continued into the period of the stones.But environmental evidence from the immediate landscape around Stonehenge indicates the usual activites of the living,such as farming and grazing of animal,which do not seem compatible with a large ritualized domain of the dead.And there is no agreement about when the sarsen stones arrived.Similarly,the date of the avenue landing from Stonehenge to the Avon,the necessary link between the two sites,need to be resolved by more evidence.Filling in thses gaps in crucial for any meaningful correlation of activities between the two sites.

Summing up,Pitts said of Parker Pearson's theory.The value of this interpretation is not just the idea of linking stones and ancestors,but that it works with the entire landscape.Previous interpretations have taken the independent sites separately.

Ironically,a more direct approach to the heart of stonehenge might lie in fieldwork far from its own landscape,miles away in a small site amid convulsed,fractured outcrops of dolerite and shale in Preseli Mountains of Southwestern Wales-the source of Stonehenge's oldest stones,the fabled bluestones.The erection of the bluestones marked a critical transition from the original timber settings toward the monument we have today.Dusted with magic,is how one archaeologist described the famously atmospheric hills to me,in a region long known for its intriguing stone circles,dol-mens, and other megalithic monuments.As long ago as 1923,specific outcrops around Carn Menyn,at the eastern end of the Preseli hills,had been identified as the bluestone source,subsequent geochemical work in 1991 refined this to roughly one square mile.Yet for more than 80 years after the discovery of the bluestone source,no one actually got their trowel out and did nothing,said Timothy Darvill,a professor of archaeology at Bournemouth University.It's perverse,really.Together with Geoffrey Wainwright,a distinguished authority on the Neolithic and the original excavator of Durrington Walls in the 1960s,Darvil began a systematic survey around Carn Meyn in 2001,accompanied by a small team of researchers from Bournemouth University,including Yvette Staelens,a senior lecturer.It's place where strange things happen,Staelens said of the hills.She descibed reaching the top of a sheer rock outcrop and finding a fox impaled on rock.Guts and blood were spilling down- we think a large raptor must have dropped it.Strange things like that.

It's natural monument,said Wainwright,of the chaotic rock formations of columns and pillars that litter the ground.The stones of Stonehenge didn't have to be quarried,they could be simply carried off.Up to six feet in height and four tons,the approximately 80 original bluestones-the exact number formerly located at Stonehenge is unclear-are mostly dolerite spotted with milky feldspar.Freshly cut and wet with rain,they do indeed glisten blue.Still,these are not the only strikling stones within the British Isles.Why did they bring there stones 250 miles to build Stonehenge?Wainwright asked.And why did they retain these stones throughout its structural history?

While it is not fanciful to speculate that these immigrants saw stonehenge-perhaps even helped built it

2008-08-15T07:33:00.000-07:00

Remarkable new evidence has recently been unearthed about the dence has recently been unearthed about the community that surely used it.Since 2003 the Stonehenge Riverside Project,headed by Mike Parker Pearson of the university of Sheffield and five other team leaders and supported by the National Geographic Society,has been conducting a series of excavation of the wider Stonehenge landscape,focusing on a massive henge,some 1500 feet in diameter,known as Durrington Walls.Nearly two miles northeast of Stonehenge,Durrington was known as early as 1812 and excavated in the 1960s ahead of road construction.Erosion and land use have now blurred its once formidable outlines,made of earth banks formerly as wide as one hundred feet and at least as high as ten.

Hearth and home who used stonehenge?clues are being found in a recently unearthed Neolithic village at Durrington Walls-the largest known inBritain-tentatively dated at between 2600 and 2500 B.C. Archaeologist Mike Pearson believes the perhaps 300 wattle-and-daub houses,with wooden beds and hearth-warmed plaster,were seasonally occupied when people gathered for the winter and summer solstices.

In and around the giant henge were three circular timber structures whose footprints survive in trances of their postholes.Two-the Northern and Southern Circles-lay within the henge itself,while a later monument known as Woodhenge stood just outside.There is evidence to suggest that timber circles were secretive places,their interiors hidden by screens as well as the multiplications of posts,said Alex Gibson,an authority ib timber circles at the university of Bradford.Recently,inside the henge banks,the Riverside Project unearthes two structures,lofty and distinguished by individual ditches and palisades,perhaps residences of elite officals overssing the circle,or even cult houses.Outside the henge and under the embankment,the project excavated a cluster of seven small houses.Tentatively dated at between 2600 and 2500 B.C. ,they straddle a hundred-foot-wide flint-paved avenue to the Avon.Standing inside the foundation outline of one of the houses,Mike Parker Pearson pointed out domestic details,such as an oval hearth in the middle of the floor.These are heel,or maybe buttock,marks,he said,squatting by way of demonstration beside indentations on the plaster floor.Remains of a cooking area stood to one side.Five houses show evidence of furniture,including slot marks for the edges of wooden beds.Parker Pearson waved a hand toward the dark tree fringe in the distance.Trial excavations and geophysical surveys have detected a multitude of other possible hearths in the valley.There may be as many as 300 houses,he said,making it the largest Neolithic settlement found in Britain.

Drawing on filed experience in Madagascar,Parker Pearson advocates a bold interpretation of the site and,with it,the answer to Stonehenge.In Malagasy culture,the ancestors are revered with stone monuments,signifying the hardening of bodies to bone and the enduring commemoration of death.wood,by contrast,which decays,is associated with transient life.Stone is ancestral and male,while wood,as Parker Pearson put it,is soft and squishy,like women and babies.As he allows,no such gender distinction has yet been discerned in Britain,but it's the same principle underlying Western commemorative practive.You lay flowers on the grave,then you put up a tombstone.Guided by this model,Parker Pearson sees suggestive associations between Durrington Walls,with its defining wooden structures,and the hard monumentality of Stonehenge.Durrington has a path to the Avon that could be a ceremonial avenue,thought it is just over 550 feet long,while that at Stonehenge runs a mile and three-quarters,and its processional character is defined by flanking ditches and banks.

To Parker Pearson,the contrasts are equally suggestive.Stonehenge is aligned on both the axis of the summer solstice sunrise and the winter solstice sunset, while th southern circle at Durrington walls catches the winter solstice sunrise.A profusion of pottery and animal bone debris,especially of pigs,implies that Durrington Walls saw much feasting,while very little pottery has been found at Stonehenge.Scarely any human remains have been found at Durrington,byt 52 cremations and many other burials have been uncovered at Stonehenge,which may contain as many as 240-the largest Neolithic cemetery in England,Durrington,in this new theory,represents the domain of the ancestral dead,with the two linked by seasonal processions along a route formed by the avenues and the river.The ashes of most of dead would have been entrusted to the river.Other cremated remains,possibly the society's elite,were deposited ceremonially at Stonehenge itself.

If the stone could speak searching for the meaning of stonehenge

2008-08-14T23:33:00.000-07:00

The first glimpse often comes from the road.Blurring past on the A303 thoroughfare that cuts heedlessly almost across the monument's very entrance,Stonehenge appears as a cluster of insignificant protrusions on the big,otherwise featureless plain,and yet,even from this profane and glancing vantage,the great-shouldered silhouette is so unmistakably prehistoric that the effect is momentarily of a time wrap cracking onto a lost world.

Up close,amid the confusion of broken and standing stones,it still seems smaller than its reputation,notwithstanding the obvious feat represented by the erection of the famous sarsen stones,the largest weighs as much as 50 tons.Unique today,Stonehenge was probably also unique in its own time,some 4500 years ago-a stone monument modeled on timber precedents.Indeed,its massive lintels are bound to their uprights by mortise-and tenon joints taken straight from carpentry,an eloquent indication of just how radically new this hybrid monument must have been.It is this newness,this assured awareness that nothing like it had existed before,this revelatory quality,this is still palpable in its ruined stones.The people who built Stonehenge had discovered something hitherto unknown,hit upon some truth,turned a corner-there is no doubt that the purposefully placed stones are fraught with meaning.

But what in fact do they mean?Despite countless theories offered over centuries,no one knows.Stonehenge is the most famous relic of prehistory in Europe and one of the best known,most contemplated monuments in the world-and we have no clear idea what the people who built it actually used it for.In the past ,archaeologists sought to crack this enigma by wringing every fact they could from the stones themselves,subjecting their contours,marks,and even shadows to scrutiny.Recently,though,the search has led investigators farther afield,away from Stonehenge itself to the remains of a nearby Neolithic village on the one hand,and on the other to a craggy mountain peak in southwestern Wales.While no definitive answer has yet emerged,these two very different searches-in-progress have stirred tantalizing new possibilities.

Stonehenge arose from a rich tradition of equally enigmatic structures.Henges-circular banks of earth paralleled by an internal ditch-earth barrows and mounds,circular timber structures,monoliths,and circles and horseshoes of stone were all common throughout Neolithic Britain and part of continentak Europe.(Strictly speaking,Stonehenge is not,as its name implies,a henge,because the position of its bank and ditch are reversed.)At different stages of its evolution Stonehenge reflected many of there traditions.The first certain structural stones of Stonehenge,the bluestones,which were floated,dragged,and hauled from Wales,most likely arrive sometime before 2500 B.C. The giant sarsens followed,filling out the monument,which was at some point linked by a avenue to the River Avon.Stonehenge,then,is the culmination of a dynamic evolution,the pre-stone earthworks thrown up in grassland probably embodied different beliefs than the late monument of stone that was resolutely connected to water.Standing within the collapse circlesmitis not easy to make out the monument's original blue-print.Easier to imagine are the actions that lie behind it,the planning and engineering,the diplomacy required to negotiate transportation of stones through differnet territories,the logistical maneuvering to supply and equip a labor force,the ability to cajole,inspire,or compel able-bodied men to leave their animals,fields,and hunting grounds-in short,the many necessary human acts that we still recognize,although we know little about who these early Britons were,how they were organized,or what language they spoke.We do know that some were farmers and pastoralists,and that they had long since begun the task of domesticating their landscape,making inroads into the ancient birch,pine ,and hazel forests.Skeletal renains indicate that despite physically demand lives,the people of Neolithic Britain were more lightly built than us.Their relative lack of dental decay suggests a diet low in carbohydrates,and although life expectancies are difficult to calculate,people seem,overall,to have enjoyed good health.Then as now,life held unexpected hazards.Five to 6 percent of there populations showed massive blunt-force trauma to the crania,according to Michael Wysocki,a senior lecturer in forensic and investigative science at the University of Central Lancashire.This was equally the case between male and female.Explanations for this trauma range from ritualized violence to the possibility that life of the era was simply brutal.

Recently,dramatic and wholly chance discoveries have provided biographical outlines of individual men.In 2002 archaeologists working on Boscombe Down,on the east side of the Avon,two and a half miles southeast of stonehenge,unearthed two burials dated at between 2500 and 2300 B.C.They contained the remains of a 35-45-years-old man whose leg had been badly damaged-he would have walked with a horrific limp-and a younger relative,perhaps his son.The old man's grave contained the richest burial goods of the era found in Britain,gold jewelry for hair,copper knives,flint tools,two archer's wrist guards of polished stone, a cushion stone for working mental,along with pottery of the distinctive Beaker style common at the time in continental Europe but not in Britain.Chemical analysis of the tooth enamel of both men gave startling results.The younger man was from the local chalk country of Wessex,the older man,dubbed the Amesbury Archer,came from the foothills of the Alps in the region of what is now Switzerland and Germany.I suppose it was inevitable said Andrew Firzpatrick of Wessex Archaeology,who conducted the excavation,with a wan smile,showing me a cartoon depicting Stonehenge flying a Germany flag.The hard facts suggest a romantic story.Migrating from Europe,with his advanced pottery and his skills in metalworking,the archer had made good in Wessex,acquiring considerable wealth and status along with a family.

One year after the discovery of the Archer and his companion,and less than a quarter mile away,construction workers laying pipe stumbled on yet another grave from roughly the same period,this one containing the remains of seven individuals,at least four of whom were males,also appreantly related and,like the Archer,not native to the area.Analysis of the premolars and molars of the three adults revealed,according to Fitzpatrick,that they were in one place up to the age of six,and in another up to the age of thirteen.Matchers for the place of infancy include northwestern Britain,Wals,or Brittany.The larger point is not where they came from Fitzpatrick emphasized,it's that people of the era traveled.This is the best example of prehistoric migration in Europe yet found.

Last Colonies

2008-08-14T09:51:00.000-07:00

In 2002 East Timor won full independence from Indonesia.Since then no territory anywhere has achieved self-government.Nearly 50 years after the UN said colonnialism must end,that organization lists 16 places,and 1.2 million people,still under foreign rule.Two colonial powers,the U.S. and the U.K.,refuse to cooperate with the U.N. France will let New Caledonia vote next decade on its future.And New Zealand urged Tokelau to choose equal partnership,but a 2007 referendum failed-by 16 votes.

similar size to a chimpanizee,a bonobo stretches out in the canopy to eat

2008-08-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

Ng grant a boon for bonobos in the great ape family,bonobos are the cheeky,easy going members.Not for them aggressive,chest pounding display of dominance.They are lovers,seldom fighters.In their female-dominated societies,individuals copulate to seattle conflicts.Bonobos also engage in communal sex to ease strains at a new feeding site.To help save tgus singular and endangered primate,found only in the rain forest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo,the DRC government and the U.S. based Bonobo Conservation Initiative have created a vast sanctuary.Larger than the state of Massachusetts,the 11803 square-mile Sankuru Nature Reserve likely harbors several thousands bonobos out of an estimated population of 50000.Numbers are inexact,as a decade of civil war has kept researchers out of the area. To make the reserve work,local communities have vowed to stop killing bonobos for meat,the chief threat,in return for development aid.Sankuru is the first part in a network of planned reserves to be called the Bonobo Peace Forest.

These guns in Pyongyang were prop perhaps for a drill but they reflect North Korea's milltary mind-set

2008-08-12T06:42:00.000-07:00

Arm's length I used to dream about seeing North Korea,the milltantly communist Hermit Kingdom that few outsiders get to visit.Unfortunately,North Korea didn't want to see me.For three years I tried and failed to get a journalist visa,so I traveled as a tourist instead,flying to Pyongyang with a small,state-sanctioned group led by government appointed guides.Since visitors are forbidden to carry professional cameras photography,in general,makes officals nervours,I packed two small,amateur models.When I used them,I often shot from the hip-literally-snapping pictures without looking through the viewfinder.Every night at the hotel I'd download my photo to an MP3 player while my roommate slept.Sometime I felt like a spy.Other days I felt like an extra on a huge movie set,where citizen were the actors,and the director hovered somewhere in the shadows,making sure we stuck to the script.

I wasn't surprised by the nation's story line-the revolutionary passion,the emphasis on ethnic purity,the near deification of the son,the Dear Leader,Kim II Sung and the reverence for his son,the Dear Leader Kim Jong II .But I didn't expect North Koreans to be so happy.They wave at me.They smiled.They seemed unfazed by or unwave of how the world perceived their country.Sure,maybe that's part of the performance,but it's tough to tell.I could'nt ask provocative questions,and most people were afraid to talk.While I managed to capture some hidden corners of this country,it was the errie silence that really opened my eyes.

Sea change.Agnes Water is a best-kept secret among sun worshippers.But for how much longer?

2008-08-11T01:20:00.000-07:00

Until the present wave of backpackers began to arrive,the most notable visitor to the area of Agnes Water,an idyllic village on Australia's Queenland coast,was James Cook,who sailed by 238 years ago.During his epic journey of discovery Down Under,the then Lieutenant Cook passed the headland that locals now call the point and on May 24,1770,he anchored H.M.Bark Endeavour just under two miles off the coast and led a small landing party ashore.They poked around what is now the burgeoning and quaintly named Town of 1770,at the mouth of Round Hill Creek-over three miles north of Agnes Water.After collecting plant specimens and noticing smoke rising from aboriginal campfires in the distance,they sailed off the following day.The backpackers tend to linger longer,reveling in the golden beaches,the warm water and the comparatively gentle surf that make the Discovery Coast,as Queensland's northernmost surfing spot is known,a longboarder's paradise.Tanned,blonde wahines-that's lady surfers,if you aren't up on the argot-navigate waist-high waves.The area is also a magnet for pro surfers,but they eschew the small stuff and charter boats out to the nearby southern fringes of the Great Barrier Reef,where perfect,empty barrels unload onto jagged coral.When it's flat,there's good fishing and diving to be had.Onshore,the backpackers are in budget-accommodation heaven,but they'd better make the most of it because Agnes Water will soon be busier and a whole lot more exclusive.It's already being dubbed the new Noosa-after Nossa Heads,the ritzy beachside resort town that hugs picturesque Laguna Bay,86 miles from Queenland's capital Brisbane.Swish resorts are materializing and exclusive residential enclaves are establishing themselves in the nearby hills.But while Agnes Water is on the make,it hasn't quite made it yet,thanks to its relative isolation.It's 307 miles north of Brisbane-a six hour drive-and almost two hours from the nearest provincial cities,Gladstone and Bundaberg.Flying into either and hiring a car is the best way to get there,though some travelers ride the rails noeth and then bus in from nearby Miriam Vale.Outside the holiday season,Agnes Water is still a sleepy hollow by the coral sea,surrounded bt the subtropical wonders of the Eurimbula and Deepwater national parks.From the headland,the deserted coast sweeps north in a series of yellow boomerangs of sand.To the south,little horseshoe bays offer privacy and uncrowded waves.The backpackers and their friends cram the point break under the admiring eye of a local surf-school instructor.They hoot and holler,gliding toward the beach.At night,the bush echoes with the sounds of their revelry.But there's a feeling that this is all the calm before a storm.Agnes Water probably still looks the way it did the late 18th century,during Cook's sail-by.But be warned,the 21st century is closing in fast.

Why grass is green.Marijuana is more prominent,accepted-and profitable-than ever in movies.What's it doing there?

2008-08-09T19:18:00.000-07:00

The test screenings for his movie the 40 year-old virgin were killing.But the jokes that were really landing were that ones featuring pot.Sophomoricm,Cheech and Chong-y cheap yuks about weed.But funny ones.He called his old friend Garry Shandling to ask whether he sould leave them in.They went with the only responsible choice,comedy comes first.

The film opened,and nobody made a big deal about the pot.Nor did Apatow get called out when the lead character in his next big hit,Knocked up,was an inveterate stoner.And on Aug.8 in the U.S. pineapple express,which he produced,arrived,it's named after a particularly potent and fictional strain of Cannabis sativa.Time was ,pot movie were like Grateful Dead concerts or parent-teacher conference,you had to be wasted to enjoy them.And the genre had two tones,either apoplectic or apologist.But this year is bringing us a bumper crop of movies and TV shows-pineapple express,the wackness,Humboldt county and the showtime TV network's weed's among them-with THC in their DNA.Not stoner stories so much as plots that happen to involve pot,they ask 37 years after the war on drugs was declared,whether there's a place in the culture for treatments of pot that neither criminalize nor celebrate it.

Marijuana is growing onscreen while use of the drug,which has been widespread for nigh on years,is flattening.About 6% of Americans smoked it regularly in 2002,and about 6% of them lit up in 2006.And no,it's not the same 15 million stoners.Many users tend to pick it up in their teens,then drop it in their 20s.And 50% of them don't use any other drugs.Selling it is still illegal,but the pot dealer is no longer the panic-inducing bogeyman he used to be.In movieland,he's become a stock character,about as threatening as the hot woman's quirky roommate.But funnier.I'm always a proponent for the comedy involved in people who are under the influence,says Apatow.I just think it's fun watching anyone acting like an idiot.Alcohol,the comic intoxicant of choice for generations of filmmarkers,is now too strongly associated in people's minds wtih spousal battery and drunk driving to be truly hilarious.

Smarter Clothes.Europe wants to own the market for fabrics that can monitor you and your environment

2008-08-09T08:05:00.000-07:00

At the Eucenter,a research site co-founded by the Italian Civil Protection Department in Pavia,Italy,a young engineer dons a firefighter's uniform that has been in testing for six months.The first prototype of the Proetex project.the ordinary-looking navy blue jacket and pants contain high-tech fabrics that can keep track of a firefighter's vital signs,warm him if the fire is too hot up ahead,provide GPS reading of his position and alert the command center if he has passed out.The Eucentre engineer walks across the room,and the computer screen reacts.The interface reads moving:yes.

The same could be said of the 63 million push by the European Commission to develop so-called smart fabrics and interactive textiles.Though the technology was pioneered in the U.S.,the Europeans have taken the reins in a bid to revitalize their traditional-textile industry,which has been hammered by Asia competition.We want to develop state-of-the-art know how that can't be found in Asia.says Andreas Lymberis,a scientific officer with the commission who has championed smart textiles.Out purpose is to create a new market.Bring industry partners like Philips and traditional-clothing and textile companies together with university researchers from across the E.U. and Swutzerland,Commission-funded teams have already produced prototype with limited commerical availability,such as a tank top that wirelessly monitors cardiac patients and sports clothes that keep track of breathing.Other projects include fabrics that look and feel normal but are embedded with microcomputers,solar panels and energy-harvesting systems,as well as fabrics that measure blood oxygeon levels and track biochemcials in sweat and bedsheets that monitor depression.

The world market for smart textiles is still small-about $550 million in revenue in 2008-but that could double by 2010,according to Massachusetts-based Venture Development Corp.The challenge is to fit applications to the market,says Lutz Walter,R&D manager at Euratex,a group representing the $326 billion European clothing-and-textile industry.In the medical field,there's high value added.But to be approved as devices takes 10 years,says Walter.In other areas,it's price,How much are consumers going to be willing to pay for a smart jogging shirt or for a baby suit that detects sudden death syndrome?At the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston,researchers are testing a glove made by smartex,an Italian smart-materials company,that tracks motor functions in poststroke patients.We've been looking a lot into European group for wearable tech,say Paolo Bonato,a professor at Harverd Medical School amd ratory at Spaulding.Bonato estimates that fabric-based wearable systems will be commercially viable in two to five years.The clinical need is there,he says.

The development of these technologies is currently taking place largely in the biochemical and safety fields,but Annalisa Bonfiglo,a professor of electrical and electronic engineering at the university of Cagliari who coordinates the Proetex project,thinks sports could be the sector where the most potential lies.Sportwear is an extremely powerful means for prompting the acceptance of these new technologies by common people,say Bonfiglio,noting that the technology Proetex develops for rescue workers could easily be used later for sports applications.Smartex founder and University of Pisa biochemical-engineering professor Danilo De Rossi says there is no way of knowing if Europe will maintain its edge.Right now we are leading in this field,he says,since Europe tends to be concerned with medicine,social welfare and the elderly,whereas the U.S. tends to focus on military technology.That could change.But in a business driven by technology rather than price,the Europeans would still have a fighting chance.

The Path to perfection.Golfers at the British Open seek a elusive blend of mechanical percision and mental poise

2008-08-05T00:08:00.000-07:00

When the British Open was contested at Royal Birkdale Golf Club in 1998,Justin Rose,a 17 year old English amateur,finished in fourth place after holing a 40-yd.Pitch shot on the final hole.The defining image of the tournament was of Rose smiling at the heavens after his improbable shot,his arms raised in jubilation.Pundist and players alike predicted that he would be golf's next great champion.But as miraculously as it appeared,Rose's form deserted him.After Birkdale,he went on to miss 21 consecutive cuts in professional tournaments,trailing the leader by such a distance that it seemed he might never again make it to the final day of play.His slump sent him searching.He started out by hiring one of the great experts on golf technique,David Leadbetter,who showed him how the mechanism of his swing could be broken down into cmponents that could be rebuilt for greater reliability.Then,in 2006,Rose hired Nick Bradley,a buddhist who told him that successful golf incorporates elements of reincarnation,as the completion of each shots set up a new beginning for the next one.Now 27,Rose has finally emerged as one of Europe's top golfers,and is among the favorite to win when the open returns to Birkdale,near Liverpool,on July 17.

Rose's employment of both swing doctors and spiritual gurus on his return to top form is not unusual for a professional golfer,the debate over whether the game is best mastered through technical engineering or mental fine-tuning may be more pertinent to this sport than to any other.When Tim Gallwey published the inner game of golf in 1979, in which he documented the division of a golfer's psyche into a thinking and a feeling self,he articulated what lovers of the game have long understood,there are two approaches to becoming a great golfer,and each appeals to a certain type of personality.

The first approach emphasizes order and precision,and appeals to tinkerers and mechanically minded players such as former Open champions Nick Faldo and Ben Hogan,who dedicated their lives to studying the angles and positions of an accurate swing.The latter approach embraces more poetical notions like rhythm,focus and visulization is exemplified by feel players such as the Texan Ben Crenshw,who credited his 1995 U.S. Masters victory to the mental strength instilled in him by his golf mentor Harvey Penick,and who mused mysteriously that the U.S. Ryder Cup team won in 1999 because there was something in the trees.

There two approaches can result in absurdity when taken to extremes.Professional practice ranges are lined with golfers htting balls while standing on one foot or rigged up to mechnical swing aids such as metal arm braces or restrictive leg harnesses,all under the watchful eye of their earnest swing coaches.At the same time,no sport attracts more mental mumbo jumbo.Leadbettter says Argentina's Eduardo Romero credits his late-career success to yogic breathing during his swing.Sapin's Ignacio Garrido said his win in the 2003 European PGA championship stemmed from practicing less,reading more-particularly the works of spiritual guru Deepak Chopra.And Nick Bradley,Rose's buddhist coach,told time that he advises his pupil to remember in the heat of battle that even at a rock concert there's silence,if you take the noisy away.

The great golfer of each generation fuse the two approaches.Tiger Woods regurlarly reassembles his golf swing-sometimes midround- if he feels his technique needs tweaking.But as the son of a Green Beret father and a buddhist mother,he brings to the game an idiosyncratic brand of mental resilience and focus that is unmatched by his rivals.When Tiger was 13,his father,Earl Woods,hired a Navy clinical psychologist who reportedlt used interrogation techniques to test the boy's concentration.I tried to break him down mentally,Earl once said. I tried to intimidate him.

Wood's will skip the open this year to recover from knee surgery,imporving the odds that one of the nearly-greats of golf might win.But even without Woods,Birkdale will provide an intimidating acumen.Colin Montgonmerie,who finished second to Woods in the 2005 Open at St. Andrews,says British links courses such as Birkdale magnify the inherent capriciousness of golf,demanding extraordinary patience and equanimity in the face of fickle conditions.In contrast to American courses,the rough in Britain is typically not uniform,leading to inconsistent results for errant shots.What's more,the weather along Britian's coasts can change so quickly that golfers teeing off in the afternoon may find themselves playing in completely differebt conditions than competitors who started earlier in the day.At Birkdale in 1998 Woods lost his chance for victory when he caught the worst of the weather on the second day,struggled to a 73,and eventually lost to veteran tour pro Mark O'Meara by a single shot.

Blustery weather places equally strigent demands on a golfer's technique.Like serves in tennis or free throws in Basketball,golf shots are unusual in that they start from a point of total stillness.In fact,this stillness occurs twice in the swing-once before the take-away of the club and then again at the top of the swing.This latter pause is crucial,as this is when the golfer initiates the all-important downward motion toward the ball.While a golfer can self-correct during the back-swing,it's almost impossible to do so after the downswing has begun.This period of vulnerability in the swing is particularly exposed in the windy conditions of the open-a strong gust can blow a stationary club raised above the shoulders out of the correct position.Of course,a lot else can go wrong during that pause at the top of the swing,doubts can creep in,and a player can twitch at the key moment-a disaster when millimeters of variation in the angle of the clubface lead to yards of dispersion in the flight of the ball.To avoid such errors,a blend between the two approaches is necessary,whoever wins at Brikdale will have consistently succeeded in maintaining the correct technical position while also holding his nerve.

Like athletes in all major sporting events,golfers at the Open undertake this challenge with the added pressure of intense scrutiny,spectators,TV cameras and journalists dissect every aspect of their game, and up to the second scoreboards offer players the strange meta-drama of watching their own performance unfold in front of them.That said,British Open courses such as Birkdale tend to be more sparsely decorated than the courses on which U.S. majors are played,with fewer scoreboards and no JumboTrons,the Open reminds competitors that golf is essentially a lonely sport,designed to be played over a large expanse,often in wind and rain.This feeling of isolation is intensified at Birkdale,where fairways run through valleys carved out of sand dunes.Playing among Birkdale's shadows and swales for the first time,says Leadbetter.is like playing on the moon.

As they venture across this alien landscape,player must seek through technique and concrentration a peculiarly thrilling reward,the perfect control of a ball's trajectory over hundred of yards,through contact that lasts less than a split second.When it all goes right,as it did for Justin Rose on the final hole at Birkdale a decade ago,no sport offers a greater sensation of mastery.It is this elusive joy that explains the golfer's endless pursuit of perfection.As Leadbetter says.That's what it's all about in golf,the quest.

The truth about plastic.It's in just about everything-which may be harmful to you and the planet.How to shrink your plastic footprint

2008-08-04T06:30:00.000-07:00

If you know where to find a good plastic-free shampoo,can you tell Jeanne Haegele?Last September,the 28 year old Chicago resident resolved to cut plastics out of her life.The marketing coordinator was concerned about the what chemicals leaching out of some common types of plastic might to be doing to her body.She was also worried about the damage all the plastic was doing to the environment.So she hopped on her bike and rode to the nearest grocery store to see what she could find that didn't include plastic.I went in and barely bought anything,Haegele says,just seemed like it was in everything.

She's right.Back when Dustin Hoffman received the most famous one-word piece of career advice in cinema history,plastic was well on its way to becoming a staple of American life.The U.S. produced 28 million tons of plastic waste in 2005-27 million tons of which ended up in landfills.Food and water come wrapped in plastic.It's used in phone and computers,the cars we drive and the planes we ride in.But the infinitely adaptable substance has it dark side.Environmentalists fret about the petroleum needed to make it.Parents worry about the possibility of toxic chemicals making their way from household plastic into children's bloodstreams.Which means Haegele isn't the only person trying to cut plastic out of her life-she isn't even the only blogging about this kind of endeavor.But those who've tried know it's far from easy to go plastic-free.There things are so ubiquitous that it is parctically impossible to aviod coming into contact with them,says Frederick vom Saal,biologist at the university of Missouri.

Scientists like vom Saal argue that BPA and phthalates are different from other environment toxins like lead and mercury in that these plastic ingredients are endocrine disrupters,which mimic hormones.Estrogen and other hormones in relatively tiny amounts can cause vast changes,so some researchers worry that BPA and phthalates could do the same,especially in young childern.Animal studies on BPA found that low-dose exposure,particularly during pregenancy,may be associated with a variety of ills,including cancer and reproductive problems.Some human studies on phthalates linked exposure to decling sperm quality in adult males,while other work has found that early puberty in girls may be associated with the chemicals.Does that mean even tpdau's minuscule exposure levels are too much?The science is still murky,and human studies are few and far from definitive.So while Canada and the Democratic Republic of Wal-Mart are moving to ban BPA in baby bottles,the U.S food and Drug Administration maintains that BPA products pose no danger,as does the European Union.Even so,scientists like Mel Suffet,a professor of environment-health sciences at the university of California,Los Angeles,say avoiding certain kinds of plastic is simply being better safe than sorry.

As researchers continue to examine plastic's impact on the human body,there's no doubt that cutting down on the material will help the environment.Plastic makes up nearly 12% of trash in the U.S. up from 1% in 1960.You can literally see the result 1000 miles west of San Francisco in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch,a swirling mass of plastic debris twice the size of Texas.The rising cost of petroleum may get plastic manufactures to come up with incentives for recycling,current rates stand at less than 6% in the U.S.But the best wat to reduce your plastic impact on the earth is simply to use less.

Here's how.You can avoid plastic bottles and toys labeled with the numbers 3 or 7,which often contain BPA or phthalates,and steer clear of vinyl shower curtains and canned foods-especially those with acidic contents like tomatoes.Vom Saal counsels that the caustions should also avoid heating plastic in microwaves.But get rid of the stuff altogether?It's hard to go all the way,says Hagele,who,10 months into her experiment,is leading a mostly plastic-free life.Although she still uses a plastic toothbrush. She's experimented with her own toothpaste made of baking soda,cinnamon and vokda,for the recipe,go to her blog.She has used vinegar for conditoner and is searching for a decent shampoo that doesn't come in a plastic bottle.She has tried soaplike bars of shampoo,but they make her hair feel sticky.Plus,they sometime come wrapped in you guessed it plastic.

Wings of desire A fly-by history Farnborough international airshow will mark its 60th anniversary this summer with a celebration of aviation's history

2008-08-03T23:35:00.000-07:00

By the time Farnborough held its first public air show in 1948,the town was already well established as the cradle of British aviation.In the early 20th century,the British had established a ballon school and factory in the town.But Farnborough's place in history was truly secured in 1908.Thanks to Samuel Franlin Cody.This flamboyant American aeronaut was the builder and pilot of the British army aeroplane no1-a biplane with a 53ft.In Sept.1908,on a grassy field outside Farnborough,Cody took off in the plane,and managed to stay airborne for 304ft-the U.K's first sustained powered flight.Later that year,Cody flew for 1390 ft.The flight ended with a crash-landing.caused by a wing touching the ground as Cody attempted to turn the plane.Cody was slightly injured in the crash,and went on to achieve a world distance record of 40 miles the following year.

As well as celebrating aviation's rich past,the Farnborough international Airshow has always looked forward to the aircraft of tomorrow.The world's first jet airliner-the de Haviland Comet-premiered at the 1949 show,while Concorde mede its first U.K. flight at Farnborough in 1970.The show is still synonoymous with high-profile launches.In 2006,the Airbus A 380 superjumbo-the world's most advanced ,spacious amd eco-efficient airliner-made its air show debut at Farnborough.With a 525 passenger capacity and an operational range of 9320 miles,the double decker airbus a380 wowed the show's 370000 attendees.Its green credentials also impressed.Not only does the Airbus A380 produce less noise than any of its predecessors,but it also burns only o.76 gallons of fuel per passenger per 60 miles.That less than an average medium-size car,which also mean less CO2 emissions.Cements airbus's reputation for innovation and cutting edge technology,allowing the world's lead airlines to do more with less,explains John Leathy,Airbus's chief operating officer.More passengers with less fuel,more comfort and less noise,more travel with less environmental impact-it's why Airbus is the world's leader in commercial aviation.

Airbus representatives will set out the company's ongoing drive for eco-efficiency at this year's now.As well as producing more efficient,less polluting aircraft,the business has set ambitious targets to shrink the environmental impact of its manufacturing activities.By 2020,it intends to have reduced the amount of energy used in manufacturing by 30%,and halved CO2 emissions,water consumption and waste production.And,as an example of Airbus consideration of the full life cycle of an aircraft,the company will showcase its recycling techniques at the airbus exhibition stand on the Pamela process for advanced management of end of life aircraft project.

The 2008 Farnborough International Airshow will mark the centenary of this pioneering flight with a display featuring a full-size replica of the Cody Flyer.A specially designed flight simulator will also give visitors the chance to experience what it was like to pilot this revolutionary biplane.

In the years following Cody's breakthrough,a fleet of innovative aircraft-from the airships and biaplanes of WWI to the Spitfires and Hurricans that served in WWII-were developed and tested in Farnborough's hangars and wind tunnels.It was this aviation pedigree that led to England's premier air show being moved from Hendon-a north London suburb-to Farnnorough in 1948.At this year's show,Farnborough will celebrate its 60th anniversary with a display by 14 aircraft that took part in the inauguarl exhibition.This historic flyover will include the Fairey Swordfish,Supermarine Spitfire,SC Seahawk,Hawker Sea Fury as well as a pair of Chrislea Super Aces-the last two planes of their kind still flying.

U.S. firm Sikorsky Aircraft are expected to exhibit the militarized version on their S92 Helicopter,the H92 superhawk,The twin engine,medium-lift helicopter has been adapted for the rigors of military missions.and is capable of performing troop transport,combat search and rescue,medical evacuations as well as head of state missions throughout the world.Over the past 60 years,Farnborough has served as the premier showcase for the international aerospace industry.But the event has also come to symbolize the adventurousuntamable spirit of flight.Generation pf attendees have been stunned by daring displays of aerobatics carried out by teams of pilots from around the world.And this year's event will follow in the Farnborough tradition,with daily,adrenalin-raising performances from stunt flyers.The show will culminate on July 14 with a breathtaking display of glider acrobatics,extreme parachutingand a daredevil show from Britain's legendary Red Arrows.All of which sould provide you with enough excitement until Farnborough returns in 2010/

Caught in the middle.Why obama's centrist shift is turning off his truest believers

2008-07-30T22:42:00.000-07:00

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.

It's the Economy,Stupid

2008-07-30T01:42:00.000-07:00

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.

Dangerous ground Pakistan is reeling from rising radicalism and slumping economy.What the new government must do to fix the nation

2008-07-29T04:34:00.000-07:00

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,

No 5 Keep your friends close-and your rivals even closer

2008-07-28T12:58:00.000-07:00

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.

Mandela understood that blacks and Afrikaners had something fundamental in common

2008-07-28T12:43:00.000-07:00

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.

NO 4 Know your enemy-and learn about his favorite sport

2008-07-28T08:07:00.001-07:00

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.

No1 courage is not the absence of fear-its inspiring others to move beyond it

2008-07-27T23:29:00.000-07:00

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.

His 8 lessons of leadership as he celebrates his 90th biethday,the world's greatest moral leaders reflects on a lifetime of service

2008-07-27T08:55:00.000-07:00

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.

Santa Barbara Living at the mercy of the winds

2008-07-27T04:44:00.000-07:00

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.

Santa Barbara.Eighteen years after it burned to the ground,the author

2008-07-26T23:21:00.000-07:00

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.

Though he wasn't the original Bozo the clown,Larry Harmon was perhaps the best

2008-07-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

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.

Sir John Templeton

2008-07-26T08:04:00.000-07:00

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.

A brief history of Kabbalah

2008-07-25T22:55:00.000-07:00

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.

G8 summit Japan too little too late a pledge to cut carbon emissions is less than it seems

2008-07-24T06:27:00.000-07:00

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.

Tha abstract and the concrete.A splendidly simple new building by Tadao Ando proves that less can still be more

2008-07-23T23:35:00.000-07:00

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.