III VI VIII - La Repubblica.it

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Sped. abb. postale art. 1
legge 46/04 del 27/02/2004 — Roma
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2008
Copyright © 2008 The New York Times
JENS MEYER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
MARKETS ARE FALLING.
BUT WHEN WILL THEY HIT
BOTTOM?
WORLD TRENDS
A sexual awakening
by way of the Web.
III
By ALEX BERENSON
LOT OF SMART people have tried
to call the bottom on Wall Street this
year.
So far, they have all been wrong.
Since the financial crisis first hit in August
2007, markets — and the financial industry —
have gone through a series of swoons, each
more dizzying than the last. Recently, the crisis reached a new pitch, as Lehman Brothers,
the fourth-largest United States investment
bank, filed for bankruptcy; the insurance giant, American International Group, had to
submit to a government bailout; and Washington Mutual, the largest savings and loan,
A
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Invasive species may
not be so evil after all.
saw its shares briefly fall below $2.
Now even Wall Street’s professional optimists have given up predicting exactly when
their industry might stabilize. One senior executive at a top investment bank, speaking
anonymously, recently observed that there
was no ending in sight.
Until now, the cataclysm in the banking and
securities industry has damaged but not derailed the rest of the economy, and the Federal
Reserve and the Treasury Department signaled that they were not ready to bail out Lehman Brothers with taxpayer money. Econo-
VI
Continued on Page IV
ARTS & STYLES
Fashion’s eternal
quest for what’s next.
VIII
A New Generation of Rockers Rage Against the Machine
Can music change the world?
Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones once
claimed that “music has probably had more effect
on pulling down the Berlin Wall and the Soviet
Union than all the rockets and all the politicians.”
Others might argue that
there was a bit more to it than
LENS
that. But music did have something to do with changing the
course of history in the 1960s
and early ’70s, in the United
States, and at other times in
other places.
In his historical play “Rock
’n’ Roll,” Tom Stoppard followed the exploits of the
Plastic People of the Universe, an anarchic Czech
band that flourished during the Prague Spring of
1968, then struggled for two decades against government repression.
But for Mr. Stoppard the band, and the freedom
and promise of rock music in general, were a
cornerstone of the Velvet Revolution that ended
Communism. “The play perhaps could be called
‘It’s Not Only Rock ’n’ Roll,’ ” he told The Times’s
Jon Pareles last year, “because it’s not.”
If young people inflamed by Western music
did indeed drive the peaceful upheavals of years
past, then what about the repressive regimes of
2008?
In “Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance and
the Struggle for the Soul of Islam,” Mark LeVine
dreams of a music-fueled domino effect sweeping the Muslim world. Mr. LeVine, a Jewish professor of Middle Eastern history and a guitarist
who once played with Mick Jagger, discovered nascent youth music scenes seething with rebellion
in North Africa and the Middle East.
In his book, reviewed in The Times in July by
Howard Hampton, he encounters Cairo metalheads, Palestinian M.C.’s, Iranian Iron Maiden
fanatics, Moroccan thrash girls and Dubai Goths.
Their music is frequently branded “satanic” and
some practitioners are hauled off to prison for
“shaking the foundations of Islam.” Yet, in the
power chords of the Middle East, Mr. Levine sees
“a model for communication and cooperation.”
If Arab youth can become rapt followers of an
Israeli death-metal band called Orphaned Land,
he argues, anything is possible.
The Chinese government, for one, fears the
power of music to mold the mood of the populace.
The state-monopolized radio, Howard French
reported in the Times last year, allows nothing
but the blandest pop songs, urging listeners to be
happy and have fun.
Nevertheless, even in a land where the slightest dissent is met with harsh punishment a furtive alternative music movement is emerging.
Liu Sijia, the bass player for an underground
Shanghai band called Three Yellow Chicken,
sings about poverty and civil rights. “The greatest utility of these pop songs is that they aren’t
dangerous to the system,” he told Mr. French. “If
people could hear underground music, it would
make them feel the problems in their lives and
want to change things.”
Meanwhile, in Havana’s underground, a brash
young punk rocker named Gorki Luis Águila
Carrasco is howling with rage at Cuban Communism. His expletive-laced lyrics, shouted over
the primal roar of his band, Porno para Ricardo,
attack the regime of Raúl and Fidel Castro head
on.
And as Marc Lacey reported in a Times article
this month, he has landed in jail under charges of
“social dangerousness.” He remains defiant.
“I am against everything that limits my personal liberty,” Mr. Gorki said.
It remains to be seen if another Velvet Revolution is on the horizon anywhere in the world. But
a new generation of rappers and rockers is definitely rising, risking prison to indict the powerful,
incite calls for freedom or just have fun.
Repubblica NewYork
II
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2008
O P I N I O N & C O M M E N TA RY
E DIT OR IAL S OF TH E T IME S
Barry Goldwater
celebrated
a “rugged
individualism,”
but the reality
is that humans
are deeply
interconnected.
A Bad Nuclear Deal
President Bush has failed to achieve
so many of his foreign policy goals, but
recently he proved that he can still get
what he really wants. The administration bullied and wheedled international
approval of the president’s ill-conceived
nuclear deal with India.
The decision by the 45-nation Nuclear
Suppliers Group (which sets rules for
nuclear trade) means that for the first
time in more than 30 years — since New
Delhi used its civilian nuclear program
to produce a bomb — the world can sell
nuclear fuel and technology to India.
Mr. Bush and his aides argued that
India is an important democracy and
dismissed warnings that breaking
the rules would make it even harder to
pressure Iran and others to abandon
their nuclear ambitions.
The White House will now try to
wheedle and bully Congress to quickly
sign off on the deal. Congress should resist that pressure.
The nuclear agreement was a bad
idea from the start. Mr. Bush and his
team were so eager for a foreign policy
success that they neglected to insist on
important conditions. They extracted
no promise from India to stop producing bomb-making material. No promise
not to expand its arsenal. And no promise not to resume nuclear testing.
The administration — and India’s
high-priced lobbyists — managed to
persuade Congress in 2006 to give its
preliminary approval. But Congress
insisted on a few important conditions,
including a halt to all nuclear trade if India tests another weapon.
That didn’t stop the White House
from insisting on more generous terms
from the suppliers’ group. When New
Zealand and a group of other sensible
countries tried to impose similar restrictions, the administration pulled
out all of the diplomatic stops. (Officials
proudly reported that Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice made at least
two dozen calls to governments around
the world to press for the India waiver.)
The suppliers’ group gave its approval after India said it would abide by a
voluntary moratorium on testing — but
it does not require any member to cut
off trade if India breaks that pledge.
Congress’s restrictions were a sensible effort to limit the damage from
this damaging deal and maintain a few
shreds of American credibility when
it comes to restraining the spread of
nuclear weapons.
Lawmakers should hold off considering the deal at least until the new Congress takes office in January. And they
must insist that at a minimum, the restrictions already written into American law are strictly adhered to.
The next president will have to do a
far better job containing the world’s
growing nuclear appetites. And for that,
he will need all of the moral authority
and leverage he can muster.
Europe’s Russia Problem
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France
did not go to Moscow earlier this month
with a strong diplomatic hand, and the
Russians knew it. President Dmitri
Medvedev of Russia agreed to withdraw his troops from most of Georgia by
mid-October, but he insists on keeping
nearly 8,000 in the two breakaway enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Those, he says, are now independent.
Russia cannot be allowed to redraw
Georgia’s (or anyone else’s) borders
by force. Until the Europeans stand
together — and with the United States
— against Moscow’s bullying, Russia’s leaders will feel little pressure to
change their behavior.
The European Union is divided between the desperately frightened and
the myopically complacent. In the first
group are former Soviet satellites, like
Poland and the Baltic states, which
have earned their fear, joined by Britain. In the second are Germany, Italy
and France (Mr. Sarkozy is the exception), which have put trade and a thirst
for Russian energy ahead of everything
else.
If the second group believes that they
are somehow immune from Moscow’s
bullying, then they should take another
look at their dependence on Russian energy supplies.
Georgia’s pro-Western president,
Mikheil Saakashvili, eagerly fell into
Moscow’s trap when he tried to retake
South Ossetia by force and gave Moscow the pretext to invade Georgia. That
blunder makes it even less likely that
Georgia will regain full control over the
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two enclaves, but their ultimate status
must be decided by international mediation, not Russian occupation.
Flush with oil and gas wealth, Moscow has leverage, but not as much as
it believes. European energy importers would have more leverage if they
started pooling their buying power and
stockpiling strategic reserves. Few
Russians — and certainly not Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin’s many business class partners — are eager to go
back to the bad-old days of isolation.
The Bush administration has correctly recognized that unilateral action is
unlikely to make a difference. The message must come from both sides of the
Atlantic that there can be no business
as usual until Russia returns to playing
by the rules.
Europe has deferred talks with Russia on a new economic and security pact
until it completes its promised troop
withdrawal. That is not enough. The
European Union should not resume
talks until Russia agrees to admit European monitors to both South Ossetia
and Abkhazia and to international mediation on the enclaves’ status.
More complacency will only feed
Russia’s ambitions. That can’t be good
for Europe or anyone else.
SLIM AARONS/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES
DAVID BROOKS
The Social Animal
voucher at it.” Schools are bad. Throw
a voucher. Health care system’s a
mess. Replace it with federally funded
individual choice. Economic anxiety?
Lower some tax rate.
The latest example of the mismatch
between ideology and reality is the
housing crisis. The party’s individualist model cannot explain the social
contagion that caused hundreds of
thousands of individuals to make bad
decisions in the same direction at the
same time. A Republican administration intervened gigantically in the
market to handle the Bear Stearns,
Freddie and Fannie debacles. But it
has no conservative rationale to explain its action, no language about the
importance of social equilibrium it
might use to justify itself.
The irony, of course, is that, in preGoldwater days, conservatives were
incredibly sophisticated about the
value of networks, institutions and invisible social bonds. You don’t have to
go back to Edmund Burke and Adam
Smith (though it helps) to find conservatives who understood that people
are socially embedded creatures and
that government has a role (though
not a dominant one) in nurturing the
institutions in which they are embedded.
That language of community, institutions and social fabric has been lost,
and now we hear only distant echoes
— when social conservatives talk
about family bonds or when John McCain talks at a forum about national
service.
If Republicans are going to fully
modernize, they’re probably going
to have to follow the route the British
Conservatives have already trod and
project a conservatism that emphasizes society as well as individuals, security as well as freedom, a social revival
and not just an economic one and the
community as opposed to the state.
creatures.
Psychologists have shown that we
are organized by our attachments.
Sociologists have shown the power of
social networks to affect individual
behavior.
What emerges is not a picture of selfcreating individuals gloriously free
from one another, but of autonomous
creatures deeply interconnected with
one another. Recent Republican Party
doctrine has emphasized the power of
the individual, but underestimates the
importance of connections, relationships, institutions and social filaments
that organize personal choices and
make individuals what they are.
This may seem like an airy-fairy
thing. But it is the main impediment
to Republican modernization. Over
the past few weeks, Republicans have
talked a lot about change, modernization and reform. Despite the talk,
many of the old policy pillars are the
same. We’re living in an age of fastchanging economic, information and
social networks, but Republicans are
still impeded by Goldwater’s mental
guard-rails.
If there’s a thread running through
the gravest current concerns, it is that
people lack a secure environment in
which they can lead their lives. Wild
swings in global capital and energy
markets buffet family budgets. Nobody is sure the health care system
will be there when they need it. National productivity gains don’t seem
to alleviate economic anxiety. Inequality strains national cohesion. In many
communities, social norms do not encourage academic achievement, decent values or family stability. These
problems straining the social fabric
aren’t directly addressed by maximizing individual freedom.
And yet locked in the old framework,
the Republican Party’s knee-jerk response to many problems is: “Throw a
Near the start of his book, “The
Conscience of a Conservative,” Barry
Goldwater wrote: “Every man, for his
individual good and for the good of his
society, is responsible for his own development. The choices that govern
his life are choices that he must make;
they cannot be made by any other human being.” The political implications
of this are clear, Goldwater continued:
“Conservatism’s first concern will
always be: Are we maximizing freedom?”
Goldwater’s vision was highly individualistic and celebrated a certain
sort of person — the stout pioneer
crossing the West, the risk-taking entrepreneur with a vision, the stalwart
hero fighting the collectivist foe.
The problem is, this individualist
description of human nature seems to
be wrong. Over the past 30 years, there
has been a tide of research in many
fields, all underlining one old truth —
that we are intensely social creatures,
deeply interconnected with one another and the idea of the lone individual
rationally and willfully steering his
own life course is often an illusion.
Cognitive scientists have shown
that our decision-making is powerfully influenced by social context —
by the frames, biases and filters that
are shared subconsciously by those
around. Neuroscientists have shown
that we have permeable minds. When
we watch somebody do something, we
recreate their mental processes in our
own brains as if we were performing
the action ourselves, and it is through
this process of deep imitation that we
learn, empathize and share culture.
Geneticists have shown that our
behavior is influenced by our ancestors and the exigencies of the past. Behavioral economists have shown the
limits of the classical economic model,
which assumes that individuals are
efficient, rational, utility-maximizing
INTELLIGENCE/ORI AND ROM BRAFMAN
The Surest Way to Lose Is Not Playing to Win
It’s one of the most perplexing phenomena in
sports. An underdog team plays aggressively, takes
chances, makes bold moves and,gains the lead. But
then something changes. Now on top, the team becomes afraid of losing its lead and abandons its aggressive attack, instead playing cautiously and conservatively. Rather than focusing on winning, the
team begins to play not to lose.
Without realizing it, teams fall victim to a psychological force called loss aversion. Simply put, we feel
the pain of a loss more intensely than the pleasure associated with a gain. As a result, coaches and players
become paralyzed by the fear of losing the lead. But
playing conservatively often spells their downfall:
creative teams become fearful and protective, creating an opportunity for the opposing team to catch
Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman are co-authors of
“Sway: The Irresistible Pull
of Irrational Behavior.” Ori Brafman, M.B.A., is an
international speaker on organizational behavior
and management. His brother Rom Brafman, Ph.D.,
is a psychologist who lectures on interpersonal dynamics. Send comments to [email protected].
up.
The very same loss aversion that plagues sports
teams also plays out in the game of politics. And in
the United States presidential race, Barack Obama
is its most recent victim.
Mr. Obama was an underdog who made his mark
by being bold and creative. He took risks and challenged conventional truisms to capture the Democratic nomination. But once he secured the nomination and was sitting on a comfortable poll lead over
his Republican opponent, Mr. Obama started playing
not to lose.
The young superstar began acting like a worried
grandpa. Moving cautiously to avoid stumbling, Mr.
Obama chose a safe and predictable vice presidential
candidate in Senator Joseph R. Biden. Now, there’s
nothing wrong with Mr. Biden. But there’s nothing
exciting about him either.
Until recently, it was John McCain who was the
more traditional, safe candidate. When it came to
vice presidential choices, however, Mr. McCain
abandoned the safe play and instead gambled with
his pick. Sarah Palin is lively, unconventional and
intriguing.
THE NEW YORK TIMES IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY IN THE FOLLOWING NEWSPAPERS: CLARÍN, ARGENTINA
●
DER STANDARD, AUSTRIA
●
Pundits can argue (rightly) that she is an unknown,
that her record as governor is spotty, and that her
claims of achievement are merely hyperbole. Yes, the
list of her faults is long. But love her or hate her, Ms.
Palin is exciting. She represents the aggressive play
— the type aimed at actually winning. Ironically, she
embodies the same characteristics that Mr. Obama
had during the Democratic primaries.
While the election campaign has yet to play out, in
this round Mr. McCain was the one who was playing
to win.
And that’s a potent reminder. Any of us can fall victim to loss aversion, whether it’s I.B.M. protecting
its mainframe business and losing out to Microsoft,
Yahoo failing to innovate its search technology and
giving Google the opportunity to grab market share,
or General Motors guarding its lucrative sport utility vehicle business and allowing Toyota to run away
with the hybrid car market.
The challenge for any successful leader, be it in
business, politics, or sports, is to avoid playing not to
lose. Although it feels as if we’re playing it safe, when
we let loss aversion take over, we’re handing over
the victory to an opponent playing to win.
LA SEGUNDA, CHILE
●
EL ESPECTADOR, COLOMBIA
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Repubblica NewYork
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2008
III
WORLD TRENDS
In Tangle of Lips, a Sex Rebellion in Chile
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
SANTIAGO, Chile — It is just after
5 p.m. in what was once one of Latin
America’s most sexually conservative
countries, and the youth of Chile are
bumping and grinding to a reggaetón
beat. At the Bar Urbano disco, boys
and girls ages 14 to 18 are stripping off
their shirts, revealing bras, tattoos and
nipple rings.
The place is a tangle of lips and
tongues and hands, all groping and
exploring. About 800 teenagers sway
and bounce to lyrics imploring them to
“Poncea! Poncea!”: make out with as
many people as they can.
And make out they do — with stranger after stranger, vying for the honor of
being known as the “ponceo,” the one
who pairs up the most.
Chile, long considered to have among
the most traditional social mores in
South America, is crashing headlong
into that reputation with its precocious
teenagers. Chile’s youths are living in a
period of sexual exploration that, academics and government officials say, is
like nothing the country has witnessed
before.
“Chile’s youth are clearly having sex
earlier and testing the borderlines with
their sexual conduct,” said Dr. Ramiro
Molina, director of the University of
Chile’s Center for Adolescent Reproductive Medicine and Development.
The sexual awakening is happening
through a booming industry for 18-andunder parties, an explosion of Internet
connectivity and through Web sites
like Fotolog, where young people trade
suggestive photos of each other and organize weekend parties, some of which
have drawn more than 4,500 teenagers. The online networks have emboldened teenagers to express themselves
in ways that were never customary in
Chile’s conservative society.
“We are not the children of the dictatorship; we are the children of democPascale Bonnefoy and Tomás Munita
contributed reporting.
Parties in Santiago encourage
teenagers to ‘‘poncea,’’ or make
out with as many people as they
can. Above, a couple at a bus stop.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY TOMÁS MUNITA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
racy,” said Michele Bravo, 17, at a recent
afternoon party. “There is much more
of a rebellious spirit among young people today. There is much more freedom
to explore everything.”
The parents and grandparents of
today’s teenagers fought hard to give
them such freedoms and to escape the
book-burning times of General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. But in a
country that legalized divorce only in
2004 and still has a strict ban on abortion, the feverish sexual exploration of
the younger generation is posing new
challenges for parents and educators.
Sex education in public schools is badly
lagging, and the pregnancy rate among
girls under 15 has been on the rise, ac-
cording to the Health Ministry.
Indeed, adolescent sexuality has
changed throughout Latin America,
Dr. Ramiro said, and underlying much
of the newfound freedom is an issue that
societies the world over are grappling
with: the explosion of explicit content
and social networks on the Internet.
Chilean society was shaken last
year when a video of a 14-year-old girl
eagerly performing oral sex on a teenage boy on a Santiago park bench was
discovered on a video-hosting Web site.
The episode became a national scandal, stirring finger-pointing at the girl’s
school, at the Internet provider — at
everyone, it seemed, but the boys who
captured the event on a cellphone and
distributed the video.
Chile’s stable, market-based economy has helped to drive the changes,
spurring a boom in consumer spending and credit unprecedented in the
country’s history. Chile has become
Latin American’s biggest per-capita
consumer of digital technology, including cellphones, cable television and Internet broadband accounts, according
to a study by the Santiago consulting
firm Everis and the Center for Latin
American Studies at the University of
Navarra in Spain.
Chileans are plugged into the Internet
at higher rates than other South Americans, and the highest use is among
children ages 6 to 17. Therein lies a cen-
tral factor in the country’s newfound
sexual exploration, said Miguel Arias,
a psychologist and head of the Santiago
consulting firm Divergente.
Fotolog, a photo-sharing network
created in the United States, took off in
the last two years in this country. Today
Chile, which has a population of 16 million, has 4.8 million Fotolog accounts,
more than any other country, the company says. Again, children ages 12 to
17 hold more than 60 percent of the accounts. Party promoters use Fotolog,
as well as MSN Messenger, to organize
their weekend gatherings.
At the Bar Urbano disco recently, a
17-year-old boy, Claudio, danced with
Francisca Durán, also 17, whom he had
just met, and soon the two were kissing and rubbing their bodies together.
Within minutes they separated and he
began playing with the hair of another
girl. Soon, they, too, were kissing passionately. Claudio, who declined to give
his last name, made out with at least
two other girls that night.
“This is about being alive,” Cynthia
Arellano, 14, said after the Bar Urbano
party. “It is all about dancing, laughing, changing the words of the songs to
something dirty.”
And with a slight giggle, she said,
“Well, it’s about making out with other
boys.”
A Memory May Be a Smoking Gun
By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS
MUMBAI, India — The new technology is, to
its critics, Orwellian. Others view it as a weapon
against terrorism that could render waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods obsolete. Some scientists predict the end of lying as
we know it.
Now, well before any consensus on the technology’s readiness, India has become the first country to convict someone of a crime relying on evidence from this controversial machine: a brain
scanner that is said to reveal signs that a suspect
remembers details of the crime in question.
Lie detection technologies, generally regarded
as promising but unproved, have yet to be widely
accepted as evidence — except in India, where in
recent years judges have begun to admit brain
scans.
But it was only in June, in a murder case in
Pune, in Maharashtra State, that a judge explicitly cited a scan as proof that the suspect’s brain
held “experiential knowledge” about the crime
that only the killer could possess, sentencing her to life in
prison.
Psychologists and neuroscientists in the United States,
which has been at the forefront of brain-based lie detection, variously called India’s
application of the technology
to legal cases “fascinating,”
“ridiculous,” “chilling” and
“unconscionable.”
“I find this both interesting and disturbing,”
Henry T. Greely, a bioethicist in California, said
of the Indian verdict. “We keep looking for a magic, technological solution to lie detection. Maybe
we’ll have it someday, but we need to demand the
highest standards of proof before we ruin people’s lives based on its application.”
Law enforcement officials from several countries, including Israel and Singapore, have shown
interest in the brain-scanning technology and
have visited government labs that use it in interrogations, Indian officials said.
This latest Indian attempt at getting past criminals’ defenses begins with an electroencephalogram, or EEG, in which electrodes are placed on
the head to measure electrical waves. The suspect sits in silence, eyes shut.
An investigator reads aloud details of the crime
— as prosecutors see it — and the resulting brain
images are processed using software built in
Bangalore.
The resulting brain images are processed to
detect whether, when the crime’s details are recited, the brain lights up in specific regions — the
areas that, according to the technology’s inventors, show measurable changes when experiences are relived.
The Brain Electrical Oscillations Signature
test was developed by Champadi Raman Mukundan, a neuroscientist who formerly ran the
clinical psychology department of the National
Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences in
Bangalore.
Despite the technology’s promise, many experts in the fields of psychology and neuroscience
were troubled that it was used to win a criminal
conviction before being validated by any independent study and reported in a respected scientific journal.
After passing an 18-page promotional dossier
about the BEOS test to a few of his colleagues,
Michael S. Gazzaniga, a neuroscientist in California, said: “Well, the experts all agree. This
work is shaky at best.’’ But one British forensic
psychologist who has met the investigators using the test said he found the presentation highly
convincing.
“According to the cases
that have been presented to
me, BEOS has clearly demonstrated its utility in providing admissible evidence that
has been used to assist in the
conviction of defendants in
court,’’ Keith Ashcroft, a frequent expert witness in the
British courts, said in an email message.
Even as the debate continues, researchers are
developing new uses for the technology. No Lie
MRI, a company in California, promises on its
Web site to use the scans to help with developing interpersonal trust and military intelligence,
among other tasks. In August, a committee of the
National Research Council in Washington predicted that, with greater research, brain scans
could eventually aid “the acquisition of intelligence from captured unlawful combatants’’ and
“the screening of terrorism suspects at checkpoints.”
“As we enter more fully into the era of mapping and understanding the brain, society will
face an increasing number of important ethical,
legal and social issues raised by these new technologies,” Mr. Greely and his colleague Judy Illes
wrote last year in the American Journal of Law
& Medicine.
If brain scans are widely adopted, they said,
“the legal issues alone are enormous.”
“At the same time,” they continued, “the potential benefits to society of such a technology, if
used well, could be at least equally large.”
An Indian judge says
a brain scan proves a
criminal’s guilt.
Repubblica NewYork
IV
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2008
WORLD TRENDS
Wall Street Looks Ahead
As a ‘Golden Era’ Ends
Investors Ask
When Will
The Market
Hit Bottom?
By LOUISE STORY
and EDMUND L. ANDREWS
From Page I
mists generally predict that the United
States will grow slowly over the next
few months but avoid a deep recession,
especially if oil prices fall further, easing pressure on consumers, and exports remain strong.
But as the Wall Street crisis moves
into its second year, the risks to the
overall economy are increasing.
Until the worst turmoil on Wall
Street ends, the economy will struggle,
said Sung Won Sohn, an economist at
California State University, Channel
Islands, who studies financial markets.
“Until and unless we have financial
markets stabilize, I don’t think we will
see a meaningful recovery in housing, and therefore in the economy,” Dr.
Sohn said.
Steven Wieting, the United States
economist for Citigroup, said: “We’re
describing the U.S. economy as recessionary.”
Unfortunately, Mr. Wieting — and
other economists — say that the Federal Reserve and the government
have few good options left to ease the
pressure on financial firms or the
economy.
The Fed has taken several measures
to buoy the financial industry, such as
allowing more banks access to lowinterest, short-term loans. Yet Wall
Street continues to struggle through
the aftereffects of the biggest speculative bubble in history.
Financial services companies
have cut more than 100,000 jobs this
year, according to Challenger, Gray
& Christmas, an executive placement
firm, and deeper layoffs may come
this fall, including thousands of workers from Lehman and possibly Merrill
Lynch, which was quickly sold to Bank
of America the same weekend Lehman
filed for bankruptcy.
Yet the picture may not be entirely
bleak. When the chaos finally ends,
Wall Street will almost certainly be
smaller and more risk-averse. That
change could eventually put the economy on firmer footing.
This year’s crisis appears to mark
the end of a bubble in the financial
markets that has lasted nearly two decades. The speculation began in technology stocks in the 1990s and turned
to real estate, commodities and private equity buyouts this decade. Along
the way it powered the New York City
economy and helped drive income inequality nationally.
While the stock market has not been
as frenzied this decade as it was at
the end of the 1990s, rampant speculation took over many other financial
markets, Mr. Wieting said. “In the last
couple of years, financial activity be-
MARK LENNIHAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
After Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on September 15,
thousands faced layoffs. The headquarters in New York early that day.
came less related than we’ve seen before to real economic developments,”
he said.
Now Wall Street is reeling. Because
banks have limited capital to absorb
losses, investors worry that those
losses will overwhelm them.
The problem has been worsened by
the financial instruments that banks
and hedge funds and insurance companies have created to swap loans
and risk with each other. In theory,
those products can help investors and
companies diversify risk, but they are
nearly impossible to value.
“Investors just don’t know what
these assets are worth,” said Ed
Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research. “There’s no transparency. It’s
totally up to management to decide
what these assets are worth and tell
their accountants.”
For example, Lehman said recently
that it had $20 billion in tangible equity. But shareholders valued Lehman
at only $2 billion as of September 12,
proof that they did not have confidence
in the way Lehman had calculated its
assets.
Now investors are demanding that
banks like Washington Mutual raise
capital or sell their assets to raise
cash and prove that they are solvent.
But when banks are under pressure,
they cannot easily find new investors
or purchasers for their assets. It is as
if a family were told to sell their home
overnight, for cash, or lose it. They
would surely receive a far lower price
than the property would generate in a
more orderly sale.
So, one by one, the banks that took
on the most risk are facing the real
possibility of going under. Those with
stronger balance sheets, such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs and
JPMorgan Chase, are suffering much
less.
For Wall Street, the lesson has
been sobering — and is unlikely to be
forgotten for several years, said Dr.
Sohn, the California State economist.
“The restraint in the credit markets
will last quite some time,” Dr. Sohn
said.
In the mortgage business, which saw
the worst excesses, loan practices may
remain stricter for at least a decade, he
said, with both positive and negative
results.
The speculation that has produced
wide swings in commodities prices
and vacant subdivisions across California and Florida may become less
prominent. But people who want to
buy homes may continue to struggle to
get mortgages, even if they have excellent credit. Companies that need loans
to expand, or just to survive rough economic patches, will also have a harder
time finding financing.
“We went overboard,” Dr. Sohn said.
“As a result, the financial market is imposing some discipline on our behavior, and it’s painful. But that’s how the
system works.”
The old Wall Street is giving way to
a new one.
As the tectonic shifts within the
American financial industry are shaking the world’s markets, many experts
are predicting a new period of painful
change for Wall Street.
The predictions were sobering. Investment banks will be smaller. Their
profits will be leaner. Jobs in finance
will be scarcer. And the outsize role of
Wall Street in the American economy
will shrink.
It is still unclear what lies ahead for
Wall Street now that only two major
American investment banks, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, remain independent. While Wall Street
has gone through tough times before
only to emerge bigger and stronger,
some question whether the industry
can rebound quickly after using high
levels of leverage, or borrowed money,
to binge on risky investments. Those
investments have proved to be disastrous. Worldwide, financial companies
have reported more than $500 billion in
charges and losses stemming from the
credit crisis — a figure some experts
say could eventually exceed $1 trillion.
“We’ve gone from a golden era of
banking and financial services,” Kenneth D. Lewis, the chief executive of
Bank of America, said in a press briefing on September 15, as the bank he
heads prepared to buy Merrill Lynch.
“It’s going to be tougher,” Mr. Lewis
said. “There are going to be fewer companies, and we are going to have to be
better at what we do.”
As investors tried to comprehend the
abrupt downfall of two of Wall Street’s
mightiest firms — Lehman Brothers,
which spiraled into bankruptcy, and
Merrill Lynch, which was bought by
Bank of America — even optimists said
the immediate future would be difficult. United States Treasury Secretary
Henry M. Paulson Jr. and the United
States Federal Reserve are paving the
way for the few strong survivors to lead
an industry turnaround, while letting
the weaker ones fail or be subsumed by
larger rivals.
Missteps in the mortgage market
cost Merrill Lynch more than $45 billion over the last year. Its sale could be
a step toward the broader consolidation
within the industry.
“We are all in this business conditioned to cycles in crises and we’re also
conditioned to markets snapping back
relatively quickly because the crisis can
be identified and measured,” said Donald B. Marron, chief executive of the
private equity firm Lightyear Capital,
which is focused on financial services,
and former chief of PaineWebber Group.
“What’s different now is you can’t do either.”
Executives like John A. Thain, the
chief executive of Merrill and a former
Goldman executive, say investment
banks will need large bases of deposits to shore up their capital for times of
trouble. “As we go forward, size is going
to matter,” Mr. Thain said.
Mr. Paulson has said to executives
that greater consolidation on Wall
Street could increase risk in the financial system, because the risks will be
concentrated in a smaller number of
firms. But Treasury officials view risk
as the lesser of two evils, if the alternative is to prop up sick firms and increase
instability.
What seems to be clear to most everyone on Wall Street is that the era of large
trading profits and deals fed by extreme
bank borrowing is over, at least for now.
That will clamp down profits across the
industry for some time.
Wall Street has always used other
people’s money to amplify its profit,
but in recent years, the use of debt ballooned. The finance industry’s credit
market instruments increased more
than one and a half times in the last decade, to $15 trillion last year, according
to Moody’sEconomy.com, and climbed
at a pace that was two times faster than
the growth of the broad economy.
At its peak last year, investment
banks had borrowed $32 on average for
every dollar of their assets, according to
research from Ladenburg Thalmann,
a financial services company. The bor-
With fewer firms, the
risks in the financial
system are concentrated.
rowing helped the industry turn record
profits, hire more people and pay out immense bonuses. And it pumped up financial stocks, making them the largest segment of the Standard & Poor’s 500-share
index from 2001 until this spring.
Wall Street reinvents itself all the
time. Many executives say it will do so
again, even as historical firms and others face questions about their futures.
As Wall Street firms of all size reduce
their borrowing to reduce risk, it comes
in some cases at the cost of higher profits. The shift has forced senior executives to rethink business models, and
more firms are focusing on their tried
and true asset management units.
Already, Wall Street firms are reducing their debt levels, and regulators are
expected to create new rules about leverage (the degree to which an investor
is using borrowed money), liquidity and
capital levels. The rules, if strict, could
force Goldman and Morgan Stanley to
merge with a bank that has customer
deposits, a steady source of capital, and
thus is buffered from collapse.
The financial sector seems poised for
lower paydays across the board. “They
can’t borrow, so they’re going to have
cut down,” said Peter J. Solomon, chairman of an independent investment
bank that bears his name. “As they cut
down, they will have to fire people.”
Hedge Funds Losing Glamour. Also Money.
By LOUISE STORY
Making millions — or even a few billion — by managing a hedge fund has
been a running dream on Wall Street
in recent years. But suddenly even the
masters of this $2 trillion universe are
falling on hard times, at least by their
own gilded standards.
Hedge funds, those secretive investment vehicles for the rich and, increasingly, the not-so-rich, are supposed to
make money whether markets go up
or down. But many of them are being
swept up in the turmoil in the financial
world.
The funds’ returns are sinking, and so
are those big paydays for their managers, whose riches have helped redefine
modern notions of wealth and helped
drive up the price of everything from
Picassos to Manhattan penthouses.
Several big funds have faltered in recent weeks, some of them spectacularly
so. While many funds are still flying
high, the average hedge fund has lost
more than 4 percent this year, according to Hedge Fund Research, putting
the industry on course for its worst year
on record.
The dimming fortunes of the industry have implications far beyond the
rarefied world of hedge funds. Over
the last decade, the size of this industry
grew fivefold, as public pension funds,
corporate pension funds and university
endowments poured billions of dollars
into these vehicles, in hopes of marketbeating returns.
A prolonged downturn might prompt
some investors to rethink these investments or demand lower fees from
managers, who typically collect annual management fees of 2 percent and
then take a 20 percent cut of any profits.
Trouble at hedge funds also might draw
government scrutiny, given the amount
of pension money sitting within these
unregulated firms.
“Everyone is looking for a panacea,
everyone is looking for a quick way to
make money fast, and everyone is pinning their dreams on the backs of these
hedge funds,” said Dan McAllister, the
treasurer and tax collector of San Diego
County, whose pension fund lost money
when a hedge fund called Amaranth collapsed two years ago. “But maybe it’s
time to be a little cautious, and it’s time to
look at things with a more discreet eye.”
While big hedge funds have gone under in the past, and many small ones fail
every year, the current problems are
more far-reaching than in the past.
Funds are warning investors that the
markets have become increasingly difficult to predict. They are having a tougher time making money now that Wall
Street banks have reduced the amount
of money they are willing to lend to the
funds in order to safeguard themselves.
It is now 5 to 10 percent more expensive for hedge funds to borrow from
banks than it was a year ago, and banks
are increasingly hesitant to lend to
hedge funds for long periods.
In recent weeks, several funds have
closed, most notably a fund run by Ospraie Management. Rumors about troubled hedge funds like Atticus Capital
have unsettled the broader markets.
Already, hedge funds are planning
for harder times ahead. Fund managers
are planning to slash employee bonuses
in December, according to study to be
released this week by Glocap, a hedge
fund recruiting firm.
“This is probably one of the worst
Jonathan
Weiss quit
the Glenview
Capital fund
because he
believed the
industry
is going in
the wrong
direction.
NICOLE BENGIVENO/THE NEW YORK TIMES
years for performance of hedge funds
— it’s been a bloodbath,” said Adam
Zoia, chief executive of Glocap, which
began tracking hedge fund compensation in 2001 and has never recorded a
down year until now.
Some of the young people who flocked
to the hedge fund industry have begun
to doubt its future.
Jonathan Weiss quit his job at Glen-
view Capital, a large hedge fund in New
York, in January, despite earning a
large bonus last year. He said he did not
like the way the industry was moving
away from its entrepreneurial roots.
His friends called him crazy. “They
called me up wondering why was I
walking away from this supposed golden ticket,” Mr. Weiss, 28, said. “It’s because I knew it wasn’t a golden ticket.”
Repubblica NewYork
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2008
V
MONEY & BUSINESS
A Harsh Disparity in Pay for Working Women in Germany
By SARAH PLASS
FRANKFURT — Maria Schaad, an ambitious
41-year-old businesswoman, considers herself
lucky. After the birth of each of her sons, now 7 and
3, her employer, a major pharmaceutical company,
allowed her to work flexible, reduced hours — a
perk that is far from a given in Germany.
But her luck extended only so far: though Ms.
Schaad had once set her sights on a position in
management, her career stagnated after she
started a family, she said, even though she had
earned an M.B.A. after she became a mother.
“At some point, women have to make a decision,”
she said matter-of-factly. “Having children means
you have to make compromises” at work.
Millions of working mothers — and sometimes
fathers — have to make often difficult trade-offs
when it comes to work and family, but labor experts say the calculus is especially harsh in Germany, a country that despite having a woman
Wage gap narrows across E.U.,
but is stagnant in Germany.
chancellor and sitting at the center of supposedly
liberal Europe, has one of the widest gender wage
gaps on the Continent.
Only Cyprus, Estonia and Slovakia have equal
or greater gaps, according to a study by the European statistics service, Eurostat.
Across the Continent, women on average made
15.9 percent less than men in 2007. That gap has
narrowed each year since 2001, when women made
20.4 percent less than men, according to a recent
report released by the European Union foundation
that has studied the trend for years.
The wage difference
in Germany is just one of
the disparities between
working men and women,
especially mothers, that
government and union
leaders say are creating a
drag on female participation in the work force and,
consequently, on economic growth, at a time when
Germany may be teetering on the edge of recession. And they point to a
range of societal and governmental barriers that
are hindering change.
Since 2000, German
working women on average have gone from earnROLF OESER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
ing 26 percent less than
Maria
Schaad,
at
her
home
office
in
Germany,
says: ‘‘Having
men to making 24 percent
less than men in 2006, the children means you have to make compromises’’ at work.
last year for which statistics are available, according to data provided by the government statistics ern Germany, largely because the average hourly
wage for men in this part of the country is almost
bureau, Destatis.
Ingrid Sehrbrock, deputy chairwoman of the 50 percent more than for men in the former East
German Federation of Trade Unions, calls Ger- Germany.
Some human resources experts even point to
man pay inequity a “scandal.” Europe’s commissioner for employment and social affairs, Vladimir less aggressive salary negotiations by women.
Spidla, recently called on German employers “to (Coaching programs aimed at women have mushreally apply the principle of equal pay for equal roomed over the last decade.)
But there are also societal and policy pressures.
work.”
New data suggests that Germany is going in the For example, mothers who work are sometimes
opposite direction. While the wage gap between derided as Rabenmutter, or “raven mothers.”
women and men is narrowing across the Euro- The phrase — based on the erroneous belief that
pean Union and in the United States, it is stagnant ravens fly away, leaving their nests behind — refers to women who pursue careers instead of being
in Germany.
There are many reasons that Germany has homemakers. It is more common in the west than
continually been in the European cellar. Outright in the east of the country.
Silke Strauss, 42, said she could not have atgender discrimination is one, researchers say. Maternity leave is another: men get promoted while tained her present position had she decided to have
their female colleagues take time off to have chil- children. She was just named managing partner
of a management consulting firm, and is the only
dren.
“The dilemma is that while 50 percent of the ju- female partner among eight men. “It would simnior employees are female, they pretty much dis- ply not work with children, not with the amount of
appear on their way to middle management,” said flexibility that is expected,” she said.
Ms. Schaad said young women who want both a
Heiner Thorborg, a human resources consultant in
career and children had better hurry. In business,
Frankfurt and a vocal critic of gender inequality.
The income gap is smaller for younger women she said, “Realistically, a woman who has not
who have not had children. It is greatest in west- made it by 40 has no chance to make it at all.”
ROBERT STOLARIK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Money often creates problems for many married couples. They should keep
a budget and make big financial decisions together, experts say.
Financial Compatibility
Is One Key to Marital Bliss
By TARA SIEGEL BERNARD
Marrying a person who shares your attitudes
about money might just be the smartest financial
decision you will ever make. In fact, when it comes
to finances, your marriage is likely to be your most
valuable asset — or your largest liability.
While most of us marry for romantic reasons,
marriage at its core is a financial union. The economies achieved by pairing up are fairly obvious.
However, the costs of divorce can be financially
devastating, especially when children are involved. And, not surprisingly, money often creates
problems for many couples.
“Most people think people break up over sex issues and children issues — and those are issues
— but money is a huge factor in breaking up marriages,’’ said Susan Reach Winters, a divorce lawyer in Short Hills, New Jersey.
These guidelines are compiled from the successfully married and from experts on psychology, divorce and finance:
TALK AND SHARE GOALS Before marrying, couples
should have a talk about their financial health and
goals. They should ask each other tough questions.
“In my ideal plan for couples, they would have
a meeting every week on their finances,’’ said
Karen Altfest, a financial planner who runs the
New York firm L. J. Altfest & Company, with her
husband. “That way, they are in sync with each
other’s goals.’’
Eric Gundlach, 53, of Owings Mills, Maryland,
who has been married for 29 years, said he and his
wife, Ann-Michele, “made our expectations explicit.’’ These included sending their son to private
school and having big experiences, like traveling,
in lieu of purchasing things.
RUN A HOME LIKE A BUSINESS Make a budget and
keep track of earnings, expenses and debts. And
structure your business as a partnership; when it
comes to making big financial decisions and setting
goals, do it together. “When they are making the decisions together, they really have ownership of those
decisions and any results of those decisions,’’ said
Mary Ann Sisco, national wealth adviser at JPMorgan’s private wealth management division. “Even
if you have negative results, you tend to weather the
storm better.’’ Share responsibilities, too. Though
one partner tends to control the finances, advisers
recommend rotating tasks.
BE SUPPORTIVE OF CAREERS Having a supportive partner helps you professionally, which should
trickle down to your mutual bottom line. “Marrying the right person helps you succeed in your
career through encouragement and support, the
only kind of support that comes through a supportive, intimate relationship,’’ said Mr. Gundlach.
ENJOY, BUT WITHIN REASON Create a cash cushion, and live a lifestyle you can sustain. Many
people who were earning a lot of money at hedge
funds or financial firms that went bust are learning these lessons now.
MAINTAIN SOME INDEPENDENCE Pooling resources is important, but so is maintaining a degree of
financial independence.
Carve out some money for both partners to
spend on things that make them happy. And when
cutting back, it’s essential that each person make
sacrifices.
INVEST IN YOUR MARRIAGE Spend it — time and
money — together. Go on dates. “What that does
is enliven the marital foundation,’’ said Gary S.
Shunk, a Chicago therapist who specializes in
wealth issues. “It’s a kind of investment into the
heart and soul of the relationship.’’
Repubblica NewYork
VI
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2008
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
For the Brain, Recalling Is Like Reliving
By BENEDICT CAREY
Scientists have for the first time recorded individual brain cells in the act
of summoning a spontaneous memory,
revealing not only where a remembered experience is registered but also,
in part, how the brain is able to recreate it.
The recordings, taken from the brains
of epilepsy patients being prepared for
surgery, demonstrate that these spontaneous memories reside in some of the
same neurons that fired most furiously
when the recalled event was experienced. Researchers had long theorized
as much, but until now had only indirect
evidence.
Experts said the study was all but
conclusive: For the brain, remembering is a lot like doing (at least in the
short term, as the research says nothing about more distant memories).
The experiment, which was reported
September 5 in the journal Science,
is likely to open a new avenue in the
investigation of Alzheimer’s disease
and other forms of dementia, some experts said. It could also help explain
JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES
Charting individual
cells solves a part
of the memory puzzle.
how some memories seemingly come
out of nowhere. The researchers were
even able to identify specific memories
in subjects a second or two before the
people themselves reported experiencing them.
“I cannot think of any recent study
that’s comparable,” said Michael J. Kahana, a professor of psychology at the
University of Pennsylvania, who was
not involved in the research. “It’s a really central piece of the memory puzzle
and an important step in helping us fill
in the detail of what exactly is happening when the brain performs this mental time travel.”
The new study moved beyond most
previous memory research in that it focused not on recognition or recollection
of specific symbols but on free recall
— whatever came into people’s heads
when, in this case, they were asked to
remember short film clips they had just
seen.
This ability to richly reconstitute past
experience often deteriorates quickly
in people with Alzheimer’s and other
forms of dementia, and it is fundamental to so-called episodic memory, the
catalog of vignettes that together form
our remembered past.
In the study, a team of American and
Israeli researchers threaded tiny electrodes into the brains of 13 people with
severe epilepsy. The implants are standard procedure in such cases, allowing
doctors to pinpoint the location of the
Scientists are learning more about
how we create a remembered past.
mini-storms of brain activity that cause
epileptic seizures.
The patients watched a series of 5- to
10-second film clips, some from popular
television shows and others depicting
animals or landmarks like the Eiffel
Tower.
The researchers recorded the firing
activity of about 100 neurons per person; the recorded neurons were concentrated in and around the hippocampus, a sliver of tissue deep in the brain
known to be critical to forming memories. In each person, the researchers
identified single cells that became
highly active during some videos and
quiet during others. More than half the
recorded cells hummed with activity in
response to at least one film clip; many
of them also responded weakly to others.
After briefly distracting the patients,
the researchers then asked them to
think about the clips for a minute and
to report “what comes to mind.” The
patients remembered almost all of the
clips. And when they recalled a specific
one — say, a clip of Homer Simpson —
the same cells that had been active during the Homer clip reignited. In fact, the
cells became active a second or two before people were conscious of the memory, which signaled to researchers the
memory to come.
“It’s astounding to see this in a single
trial; the phenomenon is strong, and we
were listening in the right place,” said
the senior author, Dr. Itzhak Fried, a
professor of neurosurgery at the University of California, Los Angeles, and
the University of Tel Aviv.
Dr. Fried said that the single neurons
recorded firing most furiously during
the film clips were not acting on their
own; they were, like all such cells, part
of a circuit responding to the videos, including thousands, perhaps millions, of
other cells.
In studies of rodents, including a paper that appeared the same day in the
journal Science, neuroscientists have
%3').-1+ ' #*6321 &,-/* 5,* "3'-1 $*0*0(*34
Scientists measuring brain activity in epilepsy patients have recorded
individual brain cells in the act of recalling a spontaneous memory.
Watching film clips
Below, a single neuron was monitored while a patient watched a series
of 48 five-second film clips. The neuron was quiet during almost all of
the clips but responded strongly to a clip of ‘‘The Simpsons.’’
5 SECONDS
Baseline
firing rate
Hollywood clip
5 SECONDS
Response
firing rate
Statue of Liberty clip
Remembering the clips
The patient was then asked to think about
the clips and say what came to mind. The
neuron began firing rapidly a second or two
before the patient named “The Simpsons.”
5 SECONDS
Hertz
15
10
5
‘‘The Simpsons’’ clip
5 SECONDS
Hertz
15
10
5
SPEAKING
WORDS
SPOKEN
‘‘The Hollywood sign’’
Sources: Itzhak Fried; Science
‘‘ahmm ...’’ ‘‘The Simpsons’’
THE NEW YORK TIMES
shown that special cells in the hippocampus are sensitive to location,
activating when the animal passes a
certain spot in a maze. The firing pattern of these cells forms the animals’
spatial memory and can predict which
way the animal will turn, even if it
makes a wrong move.
Some scientists argue that as humans evolved, these same cells adapted to register a longer list of elements
— including possibly sounds, smells,
time of day and chronology — when
an experience occurred in relation to
others.
Single-cell recordings cannot capture the entire array of brain circuitry
involved in memory, which may be
widely distributed beyond the hippocampus area, experts said. And as
time passes, memories are consolidated, submerged, perhaps retooled and
often entirely reshaped when retrieved
later.
Though it did not address this longerterm process, the new study suggests
that at least some of the neurons that
fire when a distant memory comes to
mind are those that were most active
back when it happened, however long
ago that was.
“The exciting thing about this,” said
Dr. Kahana, the University of Pennsylvania professor, “is that it gives us direct biological evidence of what before
was almost entirely theoretical.”
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New Zealand is home to 2,065 native plants
found nowhere else on Earth.
When Europeans began arriving in New
Zealand, they brought with them alien plants
— crops, garden plants and stowaway weeds.
Today, 22,000 non-native plants grow in New
Zealand. Most of them can survive only with the
loving care of gardeners and farmers. But 2,069
have become naturalized: they have spread out
across the islands on their own. There are more
naturalized invasive plant species in New Zealand than native species.
It sounds like the makings of an ecological disaster: an epidemic of invasive species that wipes
out the delicate native species in its path. But in
a paper published in August in The Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, Dov Sax, an
ecologist at Brown University in Rhode Island,
and Steven D. Gaines, a marine biologist at the
University of California, Santa Barbara, point out
that the invasion has not led to a mass extinction
of native plants. The number of documented extinctions of native New Zealand plant species is a
grand total of three.
Exotic species receive lots of attention and create lots of worry. Some scientists consider biological invasions among the top two or three forces
driving species into extinction. But Dr. Sax, Dr.
Gaines and several other researchers argue that
attitudes about exotic species are too simplistic.
While some invasions are indeed devastating,
they often do not set off extinctions. They can even
spur the evolution of new diversity.
“I hate the ‘exotics are evil’ bit, because it’s so
unscientific,” Dr. Sax said.
Dr. Sax and his colleagues do not agree with
many other experts on invasive species. Their
critics argue that the speed with which species
are being moved around the planet, combined
with other kinds of stress on the environment, is
having a major impact.
There is little doubt that some invasive species
have driven native species extinct. But Dr. Sax argues that they are far more likely to be predators
than competitors.
In their new paper, Dr. Sax and Dr. Gaines analyze all of the documented extinctions of vertebrates that have been linked to invasive species.
Four-fifths of those extinctions were because of
introduced predators like foxes, cats and rats. The
Nile perch was introduced into Lake Victoria in
1954 for food. It then began wiping out native fish
JOHN KLEBER
Most traditional views of ecology see
alien plants and animals as invaders that
are usually harmful to native species. But
the “exotics are evil” view may be wrong.
by eating them.
“If you can eat something, you can eat it everywhere it lives,” Dr. Sax said.
But Dr. Sax and Dr. Gaines argue that competition from exotic species shows little sign of causing
extinctions. This finding is at odds with traditional concepts of ecology, Dr. Sax said. Ecosystems
have often been seen as having a certain number
of niches that species can occupy. Once an ecosystem’s niches are full, new species can take them
over only if old species become extinct.
But as real ecosystems take on exotic species,
they do not show any sign of being saturated, Dr.
Sax said. In their paper, Dr. Sax and Dr. Gaines
analyze the rise of exotic species on six islands and
island chains. Invasive plants have become naturalized at a steady pace over the last two centuries,
with no sign of slowing down.
In fact, the total diversity of these islands has
doubled.
Fish also show this pattern, said James Brown
of the University of New Mexico. “The overall
pattern almost always is that there’s some net increase in diversity,” he said.
But critics, including Anthony Ricciardi of
McGill University in Montreal, argue that today’s
biological invasions are fundamentally different
from those of the past.
It is estimated that humans are now moving
7,000 species a day. In the process, species are
being thrown together in combinations that have
never been seen before.
“If you pour on more species, you don’t just increase the probability that one is going to arrive
that’s going to have a high impact,” Dr. Ricciardi
said. “You also get the possibility of some species
that triggers a change in the rules of existence.”
Repubblica NewYork
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2008
VII
E D U C AT I O N
In Clash of Faith and Science, a Delicate Task
By AMY HARMON
ORANGE PARK, Florida — David Campbell
wrote “Evolution” and displayed it on a screen.
He scanned the faces of the sophomores in his
Biology I class. Many of them, he knew from years
of teaching high school in this Jacksonville suburb,
had been raised to take the biblical creation story
as fact. His gaze rested for a moment on Bryce
Haas, a football player who attended the 6 a.m.
prayer meetings of a Christian athletes group in
the school gymnasium.
“If I do this wrong,” Mr. Campbell remembers
thinking on that humid spring morning, “I’ll lose
him.”
In February, the Florida Department of Education modified its standards to explicitly require, for the first time, the state’s public schools
to teach evolution, calling it “the organizing
principle of life science.” Spurred in part by legal
rulings against school districts seeking to favor
religious versions of natural history, over a dozen other states have also given more emphasis
in recent years to what has long been the scientific consensus: that all of the diverse life forms
on Earth descended from a common ancestor,
through a process of mutation and natural selection, over billions of years.
But in the United States, where evangelical Protestantism and other religious traditions stress a
literal reading of the biblical description of God’s
individually creating each species, students often
arrive at school fearing that evolution, and perhaps science itself, is hostile to their faith.
Some come armed with “Ten questions to ask
your biology teacher about evolution,” a document
circulated on the Internet that highlights supposed weaknesses in evolutionary theory. Others
write their opposition on homework assignments.
Many just ignore it.
With a mandate to teach evolution but little guidance as to how, science teachers are contriving
their own ways to turn a culture war into a lesson
plan. How they fare may bear on whether a new
generation of Americans embraces scientific evidence alongside religious belief.
“If you see something you don’t understand,
you have to ask ‘why?’ or ‘how?’ ” Mr. Campbell
often admonished his students at Ridgeview High
School.
Yet their abiding mistrust in evolution, he
feared, jeopardized their belief in the basic power
of science to explain the natural world — and their
Allie Farris, far left, and Bryce Haas
with their teacher, David Campbell,
who helped develop Florida’s rules
on teaching evolution. Kenny Krantz
studied a fossil.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY DARON DEAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Evolution theory for some who
believe God created all species
in the last 10,000 years.
ability to make sense of it themselves.
Passionate on the subject, Mr. Campbell had
helped to devise the state’s new evolution standards, which are being phased in this fall. A former Navy flight instructor with a straightforward
manner, he fought hard for their passage. But with
his students this spring, he found himself treading
carefully, as he tried to bridge an ideological divide
that stretches well beyond his classroom.
The poor treatment of evolution in some state
education standards may reflect the public’s wide-
ly held creationist beliefs. In Gallup polls over the
last 25 years, nearly half of American adults have
consistently said they believe God created all living things in their present form, sometime in the
last 10,000 years. But a 2005 defeat in federal court
for a school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, that
sought to cast doubt on evolution gave legal ammunition to evolution proponents on school boards
and in statehouses across the country.
Mr. Campbell, 52, who majored in biology while
putting himself through Cornell University on a
Reserve Officers Training Corps scholarship,had
been teaching evolution anyway. But like nearly a
third of biology teachers across the country, and
more in his politically conservative district, he
regularly heard from parents voicing complaints.
One morning at Ridgeview, he bounced a pink
rubber ball on the classroom floor.
“Gravity,” he said. “I can do this until the
end of the semester, and I can only assume
that it will work the same way each time.” He
grabbed the ball and held it still. “Can anybody
think of a question science can’t answer?”
“Is there a God?” said a boy near the window.
“Good,” said Mr. Campbell, an Anglican who
attends church most Sundays. “Can’t test it. Can’t
prove it, can’t disprove it. It’s not a question for
science.”
Bryce raised his hand.
“But there is scientific proof that there is a
God,” he said. “Over in Turkey there’s a piece of
wood from Noah’s ark that came out of a glacier.”
Mr. Campbell chose his words carefully.
“If I could prove, tomorrow, that that chunk of
wood is not from the ark, is not even 500 years old
and not even from the right kind of tree — would
that damage your religious faith at all?”
Bryce thought for a moment. “No,” he said.
The room was unusually quiet.
“Faith is not based on science,” Mr. Campbell
said. “And science is not based on faith. I don’t
expect you to ‘believe’ the scientific explanation
of evolution that we’re going to talk about over
the next few weeks.”
“But I do,” he added, “expect you to understand
it.”
By TAMAR LEWIN
and class (“so refreshing”) and her classmates’
Women’s colleges are a dwindling breed in the engagement in politics.
On their trip to the Middle East, the American
United States.
So earlier this year the admissions deans of deans visited American international schools,
the five leading women’s colleges — Bryn Mawr, British-model schools, Indian-model schools, coBarnard, Mount Holyoke, Wellesley and Smith, educational schools filled with children of expaall in the northeastern United States — went re- triates and schools of local girls who do not much
cruiting to a place where single-sex education is mix with men.
more than a niche product: the Middle East.
Reactions varied, according to e-mail messagFor three weeks they visited schools in Jor- es from counselors and students at the schools,
dan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and the United but over all the region seemed fertile ground for
Arab Emirates, describing what a liberal-arts recruiting. For some families, the colleges reprewomen’s college can offer academically ambi- sented a compromise between the familiarity of
home and an all-out plunge into American ways.
tious students.
“You could almost see light bulbs going off
Everywhere, they talked about how women
benefited from having their own colleges where in students’ minds, as if, ‘Why didn’t I think of
them a while ago?’ ” said Jenwomen make up a large part
nifer Melton, a counselor at the
of the faculty and students are
American School in Dubai.
encouraged to excel in maleIn the 1960s, there were
dominated fields like science
about 300 women’s colleges in
and math. And they flaunted
the United States; now there
their accomplished alumnae,
are fewer than 60. But Bryn
including Hillary Rodham
Mawr, Barnard, Mount HolyClinton, Katharine Hepburn
oke, Wellesley and Smith —
and Madeleine K. Albright.
known as the Sisters, those of
“We still prepare a disprothe storied Seven Sisters left
portionate number of women
after Radcliffe merged with
scientists,” Jenny Rickard,
Harvard and Vassar began
dean of admissions at Bryn
admitting men — are thriving,
Mawr, near Philadelphia,
attracting record numbers of
said in describing the presentations. “We’re really about
high-achieving applicants,
the empowerment of women
who are drawn by their history
and enabling women to get a
of academic prominence.
top-notch education.”
Still, most American high
Like universities across
school girls never consider apthe United States, the five
plying to a women’s college. So
women’s colleges are expand- All-women schools say single- an influx of applications from
the Middle East would be espeing their overseas recruiting, sex education is beneficial.
cially welcome.
and although reaching out to Wellesley College in 1906.
Over all, the deans said, sellthe Middle East seems logical
ing single-sex education was
to them, in some ways it is an
less difficult than selling the liberal arts in a reodd fit.
While single-sex schools in the Middle East gion where professional education is more the
are protected environments, reflecting women’s norm.
“The question we got most often was, ‘What
traditional roles in Muslim society, the American
colleges are liberal strongholds where students would I do afterwards?’ ” said Ms. Rickard.
Several high school counselors said their stufiercely debate political action and gender identity. Middle Eastern students who already attend dents had been impressed with the lively confithese colleges tell of a transition that can be jar- dence of the deans, viewing them as role models.
Diane Anci, dean of admission at Mount Holyoke,
ring.
Pasangi Perera Weerasingag, who attended in Massachusetts, recalls a like moment.
“After one long presentation in Dubai, where
a coeducational British-model high school in
Dubai, said that when she arrived at Mount Holy- the audience was rapt,” she said, “one of the girls
oke last year, she was shocked by the presence of came up afterward, very bright-eyed, and said: ‘I
so many lesbians among the students. But she ad- don’t know exactly what I want to do, but I know
justed, she says, and now loves the environment, I want to do great things. And I know if I come to
with the widespread willingness to discuss race one of your schools, I will do great things.’ ”
Siège social : 27, avenue de Friedland - 75008 Paris - RCS 187 500 038 - Imprimeur : Contrast
Women’s Colleges Look to the Mideast
Learn on Monday
Lead on Tuesday
Gil Mendelson, HEC MBA 2009
HEC Part Time MBA. The MBA with immediate impact.*
www.mba.hec.edu
Repubblica NewYork
VIII
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2008
ARTS & STYLES
The Endless Runway’s Fading Aura
ROSENBACH MUSEUM AND LIBRARY, PHILADELPHIA
Maurice Sendak says he is thrilled with the coming film by Spike
Jonze based on his book “Where the Wild Things Are” (1963).
Concerns Beyond Where
The Wild Things Are
By PATRICIA COHEN
Maurice Sendak’s 80th year which ONLINE: MAURICE SENDAK
ended with his birthday earlier this More on the author and illustrator,
summer was a tough one. He has been including interviews, articles and
gripped by grief since the death of reviews: nytimes.com/books
his longtime partner; a recent triplebypass has temporarily left him too
weak to work or take long walks with
his dog; and he is plagued by Norman was a boy); he hates anything to do
with God or religion, and Judaism
Rockwell.
Or, to be more accurate, he is (“We were the ‘chosen people,’ chosen
plagued by the question that has re- to be killed?”); he hates Salman Rushpeatedly been asked about Norman die (for writing an excoriating review
Rockwell: was he a great artist or a of one of his books); he hates syrupy
animation, which is why he is thrilled
mere illustrator?
“Mere illustrator,” he said, repeat- with Spike Jonze’s coming film of his
ing the phrase with contempt. It’s not book “Where the Wild Things Are.”
Was there anything he had never
that Mr. Sendak, who has illustrated
more than 100 books, including many been asked in interviews? He paused
he wrote, is angry that people question for a few moments and answered,
Rockwell’s talent; rather, he fears he “Well, that I’m gay.”
He lived with Eugene Glynn, a psyhas not risen above the “mere illustrachoanalyst, for 50 years
tor” label himself.
before Dr. Glynn’s death
Never mind that Mr.
in May 2007. He never told
Sendak’s originality and
his parents: “All I wanted
emotional honesty have
was to be straight so my
changed the shape of chilparents could be happy.
dren’s literature; that his
They never, never, never
work is featured in museknew.”
ums; that he has designed
Children protect their
costumes and sets for opparents, Mr. Sendak said.
eras, ballets and theater;
JOYCE DOPKEEN/
It was like the time he had
that he has won a chest
THE NEW YORK TIMES
a heart attack at 39. His
full of awards and prizes.
Mr.
Sendak
has
had
mother was dying from
As the playwright Tony
cancer, and he decided
Kushner, one of his collab- a year of turmoil.
to keep the news to himorators, said, “He’s one of
self, something he now
the most important, if not
the most important, writers and artists regrets.
His latest book is one he started
ever to work in children’s literature. In
fact, he’s a significant writer and artist about four years ago, right after Dr.
Glynn became sick with lung cancer.
in literature. Period.”
Mr. Sendak protested, “But Tony is Mr. Sendak is mostly finished with it,
but he admitted that for the first time,
my friend.”
Even his heart attack isn’t good “I feel extremely vulnerable.”
He is afraid, not of death, but of not
enough. People aren’t impressed with
a triple bypass, he lamented; now it being able to finish his work: “I feel
has to be a quadruple: “You feel like like I don’t have a lot of time left.”
He spends his days pondering his
such a failure.”
That Mr. Sendak fears that his work heroes: Mozart, Keats, Blake, Melis inadequate, that he is racked with ville and Dickinson. He admires and
insecurity and anxiety, is no surprise. yearns for their “ability to be private,
For more than 50 years that has been the ability to be alone, the ability to folthe hallmark of his art. The extermi- low some spiritual course not written
nation of most of his relatives and mil- down by anybody.”
Mr. Sendak is quick to insist that a
lions of other Jews by the Nazis; the
intrusive, unemployed immigrants vast distance stands between his own
who survived and crowded his par- accomplishments and theirs. “I’m not
ents’ small apartment; his sickly one of those people,” he said. “I can’t
childhood; his mother’s dark moods; pretend to be.”
Still, he has the feeling that “I will do
his own ever-present depression — all
lurk below the surface of his work.
something yet that is purely for me but
He is not, as children’s book writers will create for someone in the future
are often supposed, an everyman’s that passion that Blake and Keats did
grandpapa. His hatreds are fierce and in me.”
grand. He hates his uncle (who made
What he has failed to consider,
a cruel comment about him when he though, is that he may already have.
NEW YORK — The catwalks at
Fashion Week in early September
were filled with nude, the color no one
has ever been.
The talented and obscure young designer Patrik Rzepski,
whose clothes are sold
in three boutiques in
Asia, opened the week
with a show in which
ESSAY
the models came out
clad in nude-colored
skintight leggings that zippered up
the back like a stocking seam. “People
think beautiful means innocent,” Mr.
Rzepski said. “I think beautiful can be
tough as nails.”
When it comes to Fashion Week,
truer words have rarely been uttered.
The sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy offered a parade of nude dresses
as form-fitting as Band-Aids and
roughly the same color. Derek Lam
presented a veritable nude symphony
with a nude jersey tunic and a nude
double georgette onepiece and then a nude
striped knit pointelle
mesh dress.
If nude has been
everywhere, so too
have zippers and
flounces and dégradé
effects that recall the
Hollywood designer
Jean Louis and, lastly,
a million references to
the un-killable 1980s,
the decade that looks
even more insipid the
second time around
(or the third, if one
considers that much
seen on New York runways shamelessly reprises the collective homage to
“Dynasty,” the television soap opera,
on offer in Europe a season ago).
There is no putting off the rumblings
heard throughout Fashion Week that
the business, in its unprecedented international expansion, may have lost
sight of some key fundamentals. Like
music, fashion is a tribal business.
While it used to be the case that
mainstream designers observed this
by taking style cues from punks or hiphop artists or surfers or skateboarders,
they are now forced to contend with the
reality that those people are less readily exploited than before. These days
they all want their own lines.
“We’re living in a karaoke world,”
Malcolm McLaren, the music impresario, fashion visionary and cultural
gadfly, said recently, his voice rising
to an animated pitch as he stood on the
red carpet at the Calvin Klein anniversary party.
What specifically aroused Mr.
McLaren was next month’s auction at
Christie’s London of rarities from the
archives of the high-end vintage store
Resurrection, which includes a variety
of 1970s items attributed to Mr. McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, who if they
did not invent the aesthetics of punk,
formalized them commercially.
In Mr. McLaren’s view, which he has
pursued in the news media and also
in court, the McLaren and Westwood
garments are mostly modern copies.
Whether that is so (Christie’s stands
by their authenticity), the larger questions Mr. McLaren raises have bearing
on the hollowness of much contemporary aesthetic production, fashion not
excluded. What is the point of cultural
GUY
TREBAY
JASON DECROW/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Derek Lam had a parade
of nude dresses during
New York Fashion Week,
which some say may be
losing personality. Above,
the actress Mena Suvari,
left, with Simone Sestito
in the Prada store;
a Ruca party, right.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ELIZABETH LIPPMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
artifacts if they are not connected to
any specific culture?
“Warhol’s 15 minutes have gone
mad,” Mr. McLaren said as groups
of interchangeable demi-celebrities
marched by. “Everyone is going
around trying to authenticate the
fake.”
Versions of Mr. McLaren’s ideas
seemed to come up again and again
during Fashion Week.
Fashion, said the great model Veruschka — born Vera Gottliebe Anna
Gräfin von Lehndorff-Steinort in what
was then East Prussia in 1939 — was
still a tribal world when she came on
the scene in the 1960s. Her work is
celebrated, or memorialized, in a lavish new Assouline book as large as a
tombstone and, at $500, costing nearly
as much. “Diana Vreeland was always
open to the new, to interesting things,”
she remarked, referring to the Vogue
editor who had a keen eye for talent
and none for the bottom line.
“She didn’t look at the money market. She didn’t ask the cost of things.
Sometimes I ask myself, ‘Why are
people remembering me?’ My answer
is that the people I worked with, Dick
Avedon and the others, put so much
into the pictures. A photograph has an
aura, and so in many fashion images
you look at now, there is no aura. The
light is out.”
People in fashion and possibly even
the business itself have lost personality, the designer Miguel Adrover lamented one morning at his temporary
studio on Lower Broadway. Throughout the loft, people from his team
worked silently on a series of unique
garments, made under the sponsorship of the German organics manufacturer Hess Natur. “These days the
fashion culture feels so empty,” he said
in his idiosyncratic English.
Mr. Adrover quit New York four years
ago to open a bar in his native Majorca.
Back for a brief Fashion Week appearance, he remarked that his commitment to the scene is provisional. “Everything next, next, next, everything
V.I.P., it’s an empty idea,” he said.
Mr. Adrover said: “You don’t feel like
digging for meaning right now in fashion, because you dig and dig, and you
don’t find nothing.” And then he went
on digging regardless — as everyone
does, fueled by the often unaccountable optimism that the hunt for the new
and the next always seems to inspire.
Brooklyn Rapper Ventures Into the Independent Film Business
By MELENA RYZIK
NICOLE BENGIVENO/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Adam Yauch, once a Beastie Boy,
has added an independent-film
distribution division to his firm.
Every day the Beastie Boy known as
MCA, who spent years rapping about
girls and parties and the five boroughs
of New York, goes to work in an office.
Sure, it’s a cool one: the former headquarters of a paint company, it is a loftlike space filled with surfboards, skateboards, flea market paintings and his
fellow Beastie Mike D.’s records. In this
atmosphere of dudes, MCA has become
the Boss.
Of course, it’s been a long time since
MCA, born Adam Yauch, was known
only as a hip-hop artist. In the 1990s he
and his band mates founded an indie record label, Grand Royal, and a related
magazine; both eventually folded. Under the name Nathanial Hörnblowér, he
has directed many of the Beastie Boys’
music videos and their 2006 concert
film. This year, under his own name, he
released “Gunnin’ for That #1 Spot,” a
From music videos
for the Beastie Boys
to acclaim at Cannes.
documentary about high school basketball players.
Now, despite formidable odds, he is
pursuing his cinematic interests with
a new division of his company, Oscilloscope, which acquires, produces and
distributes independent movies.
Its latest release is “Flow,” a documentary about global water problems.
Also on the schedule is “Wendy and
Lucy,” a Cannes favorite starring Michelle Williams that will screen at the
New York Film Festival on September
27 and 28.
As part of Oscilloscope Laboratories,
which includes a recording studio and
production facilities, Oscilloscope Pictures will operate in a model similar to
an independent record label, Mr. Yauch,
44, said over green tea in a de facto conference room at his office in TriBeCa, in
lower Manhattan.
“What I really liked about indie record labels — the indie record labels
that I liked, anyway — is that things
were done in-house,” he said. Unlike
most independent film distributors,
which outsource nonglamorous aspects of moviemaking like poster design, marketing and DVD production,
Oscilloscope’s employees — a tour revealed 10 young guys in skate shoes and
headphones bent over laptops — will
handle everything themselves, including handpicking which theaters their
films will end up at.
The company’s hands-on style has
a built-in appeal for indie auteurs like
Kelly Reichardt, the director of “Wendy
and Lucy.”
“It seemed like a lot of ways that they
were working was similar to how I’ve
been making films,” Ms. Reichardt
said.
For now the office is more of a draw
than the stage for Mr. Yauch. “I don’t
know if I’ll ever keep playing music
in such a public way,” he said. “I don’t
know if I’ll always want to make records. Thrusting myself into that
world, having the record company kind
of like ramming records down people’s
throat, that can be a weird experience.
When you’re trying to market something on a large scale, sometimes it’s
nicer to just do something a little more
subtly.”
He sipped his green tea. “Yeah,” he
said, “I could see doing this for a long
time.”
Repubblica NewYork