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MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2009 Copyright © 2009 The New York Times
Supplemento al numero
odierno de la Repubblica
Sped. abb. postale art. 1
legge 46/04 del 27/02/2004 — Roma
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
LENS
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
and ANDREW C. REVKIN
MOSCOW
FOR HUNDREDS OF years, mariners have
dreamed of an Arctic shortcut that would allow
them to speed trade between Asia and the West.
Two German ships are navigating that transit for the first
time this month, aided by the retreat of Arctic ice that sci-
entists have linked to global warming.
The ships started their voyage in South Korea in late July
and began the last leg of the trip on September 12, leaving
a Siberian port carrying 3,175 metric tons of
construction materials. They are due to ar-
rive in Rotterdam in late September.
Russian ships have long moved goods
along the country’s sprawling Arctic
coastline. And two tankers, one Finn-
ish and the other Latvian, hauled fuel
between Russian ports using the route,
which is variously called the Northern
Sea Route or the Northeast Passage.
But the Russians hope that the German
ships will inaugurate the passage as a reliable
shipping route, and that the combination of
the melting ice and the economic benefits
of the shortcut — it is thousands of ki-
lometers shorter than southerly routes
— will eventually make the Arctic pas-
sage a summer competitor with the
Suez Canal.
“It is global warming that enables us to
Do you sleep well? For $400, the Zeo
alarm clock will tell you.
Wear the accompanying headband
to bed, David Pogue wrote in a review
for The Times, and the clock will chart
the time you spend
in the various sleep
stages: light, deep
or rapid eye move-
ment — REM —
sleep. Then you can
upload the data to
a Web site and get
a numerical sleep
quality score.
“It’s truly amazing, if not a little
creepy, to see all of this data about
a part of your existence that you’ve
known nothing about until now,” Mr.
Pogue wrote.
You may know little about what hap-
pens while you’re asleep, aside from
a few bizarre dreams. But scientists
have made several recent discoveries
about the third of our lives we spend
resting up, or at least trying to.
About 5 percent of the population can
wake up fully rested, without an alarm
clock, after limited sleep, wrote Tara
Parker-Pope of The Times. Ying-Hui
Fu, a professor of neurology at the Uni-
versity of California, San Francisco,
and her colleagues found a mutation of
a gene linked to circadian rhythms in
two naturally short sleepers, a mother
and daughter who slept six hours a
night. The mutation could be a key in
understanding sleep disorders.
“We know sleep is necessary for
life, but we know so little about sleep,”
Dr. Fu told Ms. Parker-Pope. “As we
understand the sleep mechanism more
and more and all the pathways, we’ll
be able to understand more about what
causes sleep problems.”
If you are tossing and turning at
night, online counseling can help. Stud-
ies in the United States and Canada
have shown that Web-based cognitive
behavioral therapy can ease insomnia,
Amanda Schaffer wrote in The Times.
“I liked that it was over the Internet,”
one study participant, Kelly Lawrence,
51, of Canada, told Ms. Schaffer, “be-
cause when you don’t get your sleep
you don’t want to have to get up and go
to appointments.”
If all else fails, do as Albert Einstein,
Winston Churchill and Thomas Edison
did: take a nap. A new study shows
napping helps with problem solving,
wrote Nicholas Bakalar of The Times.
Study participants took two word as-
sociation tests. Those who took a nap
between tests that included REM sleep
— the kind that includes dreams — per-
formed 40 percent better on the second
test than on the first.
“Dreams are fanciful,” Sara Med-
nick, the associate professor of psychi-
atry who led the study, told Mr. Baka-
lar. “They incorporate strange ideas
that you would never have put together
in waking life.”
Some sleep questions remain unan-
swered. For example, why do giraffes
sleep for 5 hours a day while bats sleep
for 20? One theory, Benedict Carey
wrote in The Times, is that animals
sleep when finding food is the most
risky. The bat feeds on insects that
come out at night, and sleeping during
the day keeps it hidden from predators.
A corollary to this theory is that
we are the most awake when we are
inclined to be the most productive, ac-
cording to Mr. Carey. An inability to hit
the pillow at 10 p.m., therefore, may not
be a sign of a disorder.
“If sleep has evolved as the ultimate
time manager,” he wrote, “then being
wired at 2 a.m. may mean there is valu-
able work to be done.”
Pillow Science
Con tin ued on Page IV
V VI VIIIWORLD TRENDS
Russia’s shrinking
linguistic empire.
MONEY & BUSINESS
Lego’s toys change as
well as the company.
FASHION
High fashion faces a
redefining moment.
INTELLIGENCE: The new financial centers, Page II.
For comments, write [email protected].
UNITED STATES
RUSSIA
Yokohama
Rotterdam
Arctic
Ocean
Pacific
Ocean
Northeast Passage
13,600 KMS.
Southerly route
20,750 KMS.THE NEW YORK TIMES
A Coveted PassageBELUGA GROUP
German ships, with help from a Russian ice breaker, are pioneering the melting Arctic as a shipping route. A northern voyage would save time and fuel over the southern journey.
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O P I N I O N & C O M M E N TA R Y
II MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2009
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The Iran Deadline
In the debate over health care,
here’s an inequity to ponder: Nikki
White would have been better off ifshe
had been a convicted bank robber.
Nikki was a slim, athletic college
graduate who had health insurance,
had worked in health care and knew
the system. But she had systemic lu-
pus erythematosus, a chronic inflam-
matory disease diagnosed when she
was 21, which gradually left her too
sick to work. And once she lost her
job, she lost her health insurance.
In any other rich country, Nikki
probably would have been fine,
notes T. R. Reid in his important and
powerful new book, “The Healing of
America.” Some 80 percent of lupus
patients in the United States live a
normal life span. Under a doctor’s
care, lupus should be manageable.
Indeed, if Nikki had been a felon, the
problem could have been averted, be-
cause courts have ruled that prison-
ers are entitled to medical care.
As Mr. Reid recounts, Nikki tried
everything to get medical care, but
no insurance company would accept
someone with her pre-existing con-
dition. She spent months painfully
writing letters to anyone she thought
might be able to help.
Finally, Nikki collapsed at her
home in Tennessee and was rushed
to a hospital emergency room, which
was then required to treat her with-
out payment until her condition sta-
bilized. Since money was no longer
an issue, the hospital performed 25
emergency surgeries on Nikki, and
she spent six months in critical care.
“When Nikki showed up at the
emergency room, she received the
best of care, and the hospital spent
hundreds of thousands of dollars on
her,” her stepfather, Tony Deal, told
me. “But that’s not when she needed
the care.”
By then it was too late. In 2006, Nik-
ki White died at age 32. “Nikki didn’t
die from lupus,” her doctor, Amylyn
Crawford, told Mr. Reid. “Nikki died
from complications of the failing
American health care system.”
“She fell through the cracks,” Nik-
ki’s mother, Gail Deal, told me grim-
ly. “When you bury a child, it’s the
worst thing in the world. You never
recover.”
We now have a chance to reform
this cruel and capricious system. If
we let that chance slip away, there
will be another Nikki dying every
half-hour. That’s how often someone
dies in America because of a lack of
insurance, according to a study by a
branch of the National Academy of
Sciences. Over a year, that amounts
to 18,000 American deaths.
After Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000
Americans eight years ago , we went
to war and spent hundreds of billions
of dollars ensuring that this would not
happen again. Yet every two months,
that many people die because of our
failure to provide universal insur-
ance — and yet many members of
Congress want us to do nothing?
Mr. Reid’s book is a rich tour of
health care around the world. Be-
cause he has a bum shoulder, he
asked doctors in many countries to
examine it and make recommenda-
tions. His American orthopedist
recommended a titanium shoulder
replacement that would cost tens of
thousands of dollars and might or
might not help. Specialists in other
countries warned that a sore shoul-
der didn’t justify the risks of such
major surgery, although some said
it would be available free if Mr. Reid
insisted. Instead, they offered physi-
cal therapy, acupuncture and other
cheap and noninvasive alternatives,
some of which worked pretty well.
That’s a window onto the flaws in
our health care system: we offer ti-
tanium shoulder replacements for
those who don’t really need them,
but we let 32-year-old women die if
they lose their health insurance. No
wonder we spend so much on medi-
cal care, and yet have some health
care statistics that are worse than
Slovenia’s.
My suggestion for anyone in Nik-
ki’s situation: commit a crime and
get locked up. In Washington State,
a 20-year-old inmate named Melissa
Matthews chose to turn down parole
and stay in prison because that was
the only way she could get treatment
for her cervical cancer. “If I’m out,
I’m going to die from this cancer,” she
told a television station.
Mr. and Mrs. Deal say they are
speaking out because Nikki wouldn’t
want anyone to endure what she did.
“Nikki was a college-educated, mid-
dle-class woman, and if it could hap-
pen to her, it can happen to anyone,”
Mr. Deal said. “This should not be
happening in our country.”
Struggling to get out the words,
Mrs. Deal added: “The loss of a child
is the greatest hurt anyone will ever
suffer. Because of the circumstances
she endured with the health care sys-
tem, I lost my daughter.”
Complex arguments are being
raised in the debate over health care,
yet the central issue isn’t technical
but moral. Do we wish to be the only
rich nation in the world that lets a
32-year-old woman die because she
can’t get health insurance? Is that
really us?
An Assault on the Press
E D I T O R I A L S O F T H E T I M E S
The United States and the other ma-
jor powers have given Iran until late
September to begin substantive nego-
tiations on restraining its nuclear pro-
gram. And Tehran has now announced
that it is ready to resume talks, and the
Obama administration says it is ready,
too. Unfortunately, there is no sign that
Iran is serious about doing much more
than buying more time.
Tehran has presented a proposed
agenda with vague suggestions about
dealing with global issues, but insist-
ed that the file on its nuclear efforts is
closed.
In the seven years since its nuclear
fuel program was revealed, Iran has
managed to deflect any real punish-
ment by promising to talk. It contin-
ues to defy a United Nations Security
Council order to stop producing nu-
clear fuel and has shrugged off three
sets of watered-down sanctions that
either failed to target Iran’s economic
vulnerabilities or were listlessly en-
forced .
American and European officials
say they are developing a more per-
suasive list of sanctions if Tehran
continues to resist; a ban on new en-
ergy investment in Iran and a possible
cutoff of gasoline exports to Iran are
two leading possibilities. If Washing-
ton and Europe cannot get Russia and
the Security Council to go along, they
must be ready to move on their own
this time.
Most experts agree that Iran has al-
ready produced enough low-enriched
uranium for at least one bomb, but
they disagree on how close Iran is to
building a weapon. There is almost no
disagreement on Iran’s ultimate goal.
Even the top nuclear inspector for the
United Nations, Mohamed ElBaradei,
who too often gives Iran the benefit of
the doubt, has acknowledged a “gut
feeling” that Tehran wants the tech-
nology to build a bomb.
Iran’s economy is vulnerable. Un-
employment and inflation are high;
foreign investment is low. Banking
sanctions imposed by the United Na-
tions and separately by the United
States and Europe have had some bite.
The incentives package on offer from
the major powers — including an end
to diplomatic isolation and carefully
monitored cooperation on peaceful
nuclear energy — should be re-empha-
sized. Iranians need to see that there
is a real choice.
Iran’s stolen presidential election
and the crackdown that followed have
deepened fissures in Iranian society
and complicated engagement. But
President Obama is right to remain
open to broader talks.
That is not meant to legitimize the
government. If done deftly, it could un-
dercut the mullahs’ attempts to blame
the United States for their own failures
and make clear the price of continued
obstructionism.
There is not a lot of time left for the
world to forge a common position. The
negative rumblings out of Russia —
which is again playing down the need
for sanctions — are disturbing. We are
worried about the growing drumbeat
in Israel for military action.
An attack on Iran would be a disas-
ter. So would allowing Iran to build a
nuclear weapon. The United States
should never have to choose between
those two disastrous courses. If diplo-
macy shows promise, it should contin-
ue. But if Iran is playing the same old
game, the major powers must be ready
to exact a real economic price.
There are too many ways to silence
journalists who do not always follow
the government line.
The Committee to Protect Journal-
ists catalogs deaths and imprison-
ments — 14 journalists murdered so
far this year and an estimated 150 un-
fairly imprisoned around the world.
Now Turkey has provided a particu-
larly chilling example of another way
to shut down independent voices — a
fine of $2.5 billion that appears to be
designed to put a media company out
of business.
The media group, Dogan Yayin, is
a widely respected conglomerate of
newspapers and television stations.
Dogan journalists have not shied away
from stories that the government of
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s iron-
willed prime minister, does not like.
That makes it all the more suspicious
that the Erdogan government levied a
tax penalty on the Dogan group that
is almost as much as the value of the
entire company.
Executives of the European Union,
which has been considering the addi-
tion of Turkey to its powerful group,
quickly noted their concern. “When
the sanction is of such magnitude that
it threatens the very existence of an
entire press group, like in this case,
then freedom of the press is at stake,”
a spokesman said.
Turkey has made important strides
in the last decade, amending its Consti-
tution and bringing Turkish law more
in line with European standards. Steps
like this undermine that progress.
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The Body Count at Home
The death toll mounts. The enemy is a broken health care system.
GENEVA
Here in the home of money the
streets still purr with prosperity and
the bankers’ serene expressions say
it all: a year on from financial Arma-
geddon, things could be a lot worse.
Of course, it’s taken the equivalent
of several Marshall Plans to save
capitalism. The trillions of dollars
thrown by Western governments at
the gaping hole left by the great lever-
age binge dwarf the postwar United
States aid to a shattered postwar Eu-
rope. Ordinary taxpayers, many of
them now without jobs, have bailed
out the sobered Masters of the Uni-
verse. It’s not surprising there’s a lot
of anger about.
But there have been other forces
at work in sparking a fragile recov-
ery, and they are more encouraging.
During a recent visit to Brazil, I was
struck by the country’s confidence.
When I asked about the crisis, the an-
swer was: “What crisis?”
The last global financial meltdown
of 1997 flattened developing-world
economies from Indonesia to Brazil.
This time, in a measure of significant
power shifts, these economies have
shown resilience and helped buoy
demand. The only major stock in-
dexes in positive or neutral territory,
measured in American dollars, for
the past year were in China, Brazil,
Indonesia, South Africa and India.
China and Brazil led the pack, up 50
percent and 16 percent respectively.
The five leaders, taken together, are
emerging powerhouses of the 21st
century. They have not “decoupled”
from the United States, but they’ve
ended their dependency. Their inter-
nal markets are growing. So, too, are
their trade with each other, their re-
serves and their self-confidence.
Despite the crisis, China is ex-
pected to grow 8 percent this year. It
has just overtaken Germany as the
world’s largest exporter and the Unit-
ed States as the world’s largest auto
market. The question is not whether,
but when exactly in the first quarter
of this century, China will become the
largest global economy.
These are head-turning transfor-
mations, lifting myriad people from
poverty, even as they create intrac-
table environmental and social pres-
sures. Without such new centers of
growth, robust enough now to with-
stand United States disaster, the
economic tailspin would have been
still more violent. And of course the
emerging 21st-century powers —
some of them financing a lot of Amer-
ica’s debt — have been bolstered by
the very mobility of capital that left
Icelandic or German banks vulner-
able to toxic mortgages in Kansas.
So let’s be wary of too much re-
formist zeal. I said there’s a lot of un-
derstandable anger. Politicians are
responding with several proposals,
including the German finance min-
ister’s recent call for a tax on global
financial transactions. The French
president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been
ranting about bankers’ bonuses and
calling for new measures of econom-
ic performance that would factor in
health and happiness.
I’ve nothing against happiness, but
I’m skeptical. Of course companies
receiving government money should
cap salaries and bonuses in line with
guidance from their new owners: the
state. Leverage must be regulated.
But President Obama is dreaming if
he thinks what he called “unchecked
excess” can be banished forever.
In general, for all their failings,
all their heady and then calamitous
excesses, markets are more efficient
than regulators. They have deliv-
ered the startling growth of the new
economic powers. They have also
— with massive emergency surgery
in the form of injected public money
— shown unexpected bounce. The
global financial system needs adjust-
ment, not dismantlement.
INTELLIGENCE/ROGER COHEN
The New Powerhouses
Emerging economiesgain confidence inthe downturn.
Send comments to [email protected].
• An article last week about
China’s tightening control
over the production of rare
earth minerals misidentified
the country in which Avalon
Rare Metals, a non-Chinese
producer, was trying to open
a new mine. It is Canada, in
the northwest area, not Aus-
tralia.
•Because of an editing error,
an article in the July 20 issue
about a glass box installed on
the 103rd floor of the Sears
Tower in Chicago referred
incorrectly to how high it is
above the sidewalk. It is 412
meters, not a kilometer.
CORRECTIONS
Repubblica NewYork
W O R L D T R E N D S
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2009 III
Pacific
Ocean
Caribbean
Sea
Medellín
ANTIOQUIA
Bogotá
PuertoBerrío
Doradal
COLOMBIAPANAMA
Kms. 160
Hacienda Nápoles
Short Memories and Big DreamsSome memorable “bubbles” from history:
1637: Tulip Mania
The Dutch bid up prices for these flowers to astounding heights. One sailor
was allegedly jailed for eating a bulb -- worth more than the cost of feeding
the ship’s entire crew for a year -- that he mistook for an onion. When the
bubble popped, tulip traders begged the government to prop up the market.
1840s - 1870s: Railroads
Railroads revolutionized industry and transportation, but railway speculation
ballooned, and then popped, in Britain in the 1840s and then America in
the 1870s. Debt-burdened railroad investments helped unleash the Panic
of 1873 in the U.S.
1720: The South Sea Bubble
Britain’s South Sea Company was granted a trade monopoly with Spain’s
South American colonies in exchange for assuming England’s national
debt — a burden it could not carry when relations with Spain deteriorated.
Investors lost fortunes after bidding up prices of stock in this and other
“bubble companies” that sprang up around England. With a financially
burned populace out for blood, many government and South Sea
Company officials were prosecuted.
By SIMON ROMERO
DORADAL, Colombia — Even in Colombia,
a country known for its paramilitary death
squads, this hunting party stood out: more
than a dozen Colombian Army soldiers, two
men with long-range rifles, their assistant and
a taxidermist.
They stalked Pepe for three days in June
before executing him in a clearing about 100
kilometers from here with shots to his head
and heart. But after a snapshot emerged of
soldiers posing over his carcass, the group
suddenly found itself on the defensive.
As it turned out, Pepe — a hippopotamus who
escaped from his birthplace near the pleasure
palace built here by the slain drug lord Pablo
Escobar — had a following of his own.
The operation to hunt Pepe down, carried
out with the help of environmentalists, has be-
come the focus of a fierce debate over animal
rights and the containment of invasive species
in a country still struggling to address a broad
range of rights violations during four decades
of guerrilla war.
Sixteen years after the infamous Mr. Esco-
bar was gunned down on a Medellín rooftop
in a manhunt, Colombia is still wrestling with
the mess he made.
Wildlife experts brought here from Africa to
study Colombia’s growing numbers of hippos,
a legacy of Mr. Escobar’s excesses, have sup-
ported the government’s plan to prevent them
— by force, if necessary — from spreading into
areas along the nation’s principal river. But
some animal-rights activists oppose the idea
of killing them.
“In Colombia, there is no documented case
of an attack against people or that they dam-
aged any crops,” said Aníbal Vallejo, presi-
dent of the Society for the Protection of Ani-
mals in Medellín, referring to the hippos.
Peter Morkel, a consultant for the Frankfurt
Zoological Society in Tanzania, compared the
potential for the hippos to disrupt Colombian
ecosystems to the agitation caused by alien
species elsewhere, like goats on the Galápa-
gos Islands, cats on Marion Island between
Antarctica and South Africa, or pythons in
Florida.
“As much as I love hippos,” he said, “they
are an alien species and extremely dangerous
to people who disrupt them.”
The uproar has its roots in 1981, when Mr.
Escobar was busy assembling a luxurious
retreat here called Hacienda Nápoles that
included a mansion, swimming pools, a bull
ring and an airstrip. Part of the estate is now a
theme park.
“He needed a tranquil place to unwind
with his family,” said Fernando Montoya,
57, a sculptor from Medellín who built giant
statues here of Tyrannosaurus rex and other
dinosaurs .
But Mr. Escobar was not content with bull-
fights and fake dinosaurs. He also imported
zebras, giraffes, rhinoceroses and, of course,
hippos.
Some of the animals died or were trans-
ferred to zoos around the time Mr. Escobar
was killed. But the hippos largely stayed put,
flourishing in the artificial lakes dug at his
behest.
Carlos Palacio, 54, head of animal husband-
ry at Nápoles, said Mr. Escobar started with
four hippos. Now at least 28 live here. “Some
experts see this herd as a treasure of the natu-
ral world in case Africa’s hippo population suf-
fers a sharp decline,” Mr. Palacio said. “Oth-
ers view our growth as a kind of time bomb.”
More hippos may be on the loose. Mr. Pala-
cio said at least one was lurking at a neighbor-
ing ranch. Mr. Morkel said one or two others
could have wandered off .
On the grounds of Hacienda Nápoles, a sign
warns visitors to the theme park. “Stay in
your vehicle after 6 p.m.,” it reads. “Hippo-
potamuses on the road.”
This time is different.
That’s what people argue every time a bubble
inflates, and what they think every time they
are chastened by its popping. But century after
century, decade after decade and year after
year, human beings let irrational
hopes get the better of them.
Not long ago, the housing
bubble burst, bringing the global
economy to a standstill. Now
economists are on the lookout for
the next market to fizzle. They
say governments, central banks and interna-
tional bodies should scrutinize markets that
look likely to froth over in the next few years,
like capital markets in China, commodities like
gold and oil, and government bonds in heavily
indebted countries like the United States.
“Globally, a lot of money is now seeking higher
returns once again,” said Rachel Ziemba, senior
analyst at RGE Monitor. The steadying of the
economy, liquidity injections by governments
and big returns reaped early this year by invest-
ment banks are encouraging more traders to
return to the market.
“As long as compensation and bonuses are
based on short-term performance in the mar-
ket,” Ms. Ziemba said, “that’s going to encour-
age risk-seeking behavior.”
Bubbles are episodes of collective human
madness — euphoria over investments whose
skyrocketing values are unsustainable.
They tend to arise from perceptions of pend-
ing shortages (as happened last year, with the
oil bubble); from glamorized new technologies
or investment frontiers (like the dot-com bubble
of the 1990s); or from faddish cultural obses-
sions (like the Dutch tulip bubble of the 17th
century).
Often they are based on legitimate expecta-
tions of high growth that are “extrapolated
into the stratosphere,” as the economist Daniel
Yergin, chairman of IHS-Cambridge Energy
Research Associates, put it.
Such is the fear over investment in emerging
markets like China.
When Markets Lose Their Moorings
CARLOS VILLALON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES THE NEW YORK TIMES
DORADAL JOURNAL
A Drug Lord’s Legacy:
Hippos on the Loose
Jenny Carolina González contributed report-ing from Bogotá.
CATHERINE
RAMPELL
ESSAY
“I’m a long-term bull on Asia, but right now
it’s premature to be celebrating the ‘Asian Cen-
tury,’ like some investors seem to be doing,”
said Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stan-
ley Asia.
The Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite
Index, for example, nearly doubled from No-
vember to July before pulling back last month.
“People seem to believe the baton of global
economic leadership is being seamlessly passed
from the West to the East,” Mr. Roach said.
“That’s going to happen,
but not for another 5 to 10
years at least.”
Similar premature
excitement inflated the
South Sea bubble, an 18th
century mania over Brit-
ish trade with emerging
Latin American markets.
(Even the brilliant Sir
Isaac Newton lost a lot in
the South Sea bubble —
which is ironic, given his
famous recognition that
what goes up must come
down.)
Economists also worry
that commodity bubbles,
which tend to be more cy-
clical, may strike again.
Oil and gold prices are
rising, and though both of
those commodities have
boomed and busted many
times in the last cen-
tury, investors may bet on unrealistically high
growth once more. Gold prices have risen more
than 30 percent from a year ago.
In each of these markets, the inflation and
deflation of prices would be painful to investors
but may not have as far-reaching consequences
as the recent housing and credit collapses.
But a sovereign debt bubble — which many
argue is driving the acceleration in gold prices
— could prove far more dangerous.
So many countries, like the United States,
are running up such large national debts that
they could risk eventual default. Even without
outright default on their obligations, the value of
government bonds sold to finance these deficits
could plunge, costing investors a lot.
The pain of the housing bust has led political
leaders and central bankers to reconsider their
duties to pre-empt, rather than just respond to,
bubbles.
China has started to tighten monetary policy
to lower high expectations about its stocks. Oth-
er measures under discussion around the world
include additional regulation, guidelines for
financial compensation and possibly require-
ments for more market transparency.
But however stringent new rules may be,
economists say, they cannot defeat human na-
ture.
“Ultimately, bubbles are a human phenom-
enon,” said Robert Shiller, a Yale University
economics professor who warned of the current
crisis. “People just get a little crazy.”
Colombia is debating the fate of hipposfrom the estate of the drug lord PabloEscobar, where a theme park nowstands. Scientists say the hippos must becontained to avert ecological damage.
Repubblica NewYork
W O R L D T R E N D S
IV MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2009
think about using that route,” Verena
Beckhusen, a spokeswoman for the
shipping company, the Beluga Group
of Bremen, Germany, said in a tele-
phone interview.
Lawson W. Brigham, a professor of
geography at the University of Fair-
banks who led the writing of an inter-
national report on Arctic commerce,
confirmed that the passage of the two
German ships appeared to be the first
true commercial transit of the entire
Northeast Passage from Asia to the
West. He credited Beluga for taking on
both the summertime Arctic waters,
which still pose threats despite the sea-
ice retreats, and Russian bureaucracy,
a maze of permits and regulations.
“This may be as much of a test run
for the bureaucracy as for the ice,” said
Dr. Brigham, an oceanographer. But
he also said it would be a long while be-
fore Arctic shipping routes took busi-
ness from the Suez or Panama Canal.
Sheets of pack ice still descend in
100-kilometer-long tongues off the
northern ice cap, and glaciers on the
archipelagos off the coast shed ice-
bergs that now drift more dangerously
in the otherwise ice-free summer seas.
But the route is rarely wholly impass-
able these days, according to the Rus-
sian Transport Ministry.
The pair of ice-hardened, 11,500-met-
ric-ton ships, the Beluga Fraternity
and Beluga Foresight, were accompa-
nied for most of the trip by one or two
Russian nuclear icebreakers as a pre-
caution, although they encountered
only scattered small floes.
At the most perilous leg of the jour-
ney, the passage around the northern-
most tip of Siberia, the Vilkitsky Strait,
ice covered about half the sea.
“Apart from the stress, it is an eco-
nomically and ecologically beneficial
shortcut between Europe and Asia,”
Valery Durov, captain of the Beluga
Foresight, wrote in response to e-
mailed questions about the treacher-
ous stretch.
Sailors and shipping companies
have dreamed of a Northeast Passage
since 1553, when the British explorer
Hugh Willoughby died with his crew
while trying to navigate the route.
But as the Arctic has warmed and
sea ice in summers has retreated from
coasts, countries and companies have
become ever more focused on the re-
sources, trade routes and security
issues that are surfacing in what was
once an ice-locked backwater.
Neils Stolberg, the president of the
Beluga Group, said this month that the
Arctic transit was not an experiment
but the beginning of opening the route
to outside traffic.
The passage requires a permit be-
cause it crosses Russian territorial wa-
ters. Aleksandr N. Olshevsky, director
of the Federal Agency for Marine and
River Transport, said he and others in
the agency favored lowering the fees
as a means to increase traffic and gen-
erate revenue for maintaining the ice-
breakers. “The ice conditions were far
more severe 20 years ago,” he said.
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
LOKORI, Kenya — As Philip Lolua
waits under a tree for a scoop of food,
heat waves dance up from the desert
floor, blurring the dead animal car-
casses sprawled in front of him.
So much of his green pasture land
has turned to dust. His once mighty
herd of goats, sheep and camels have
died of thirst. He says his 3-year-old
son recently died of hunger. And Mr.
Lolua does not look to be far from
death himself.
“If nobody comes to help us, I will
die here, right here,” he said, emphati-
cally patting the earth.
A devastating drought is sweeping
across Kenya, killing livestock, crops
and children. It is stirring up tensions
in the ramshackle slums where the
water taps have run dry, and spawn-
ing ethnic conflict in the hinterland
as communities fight over the last re-
maining pieces of fertile grazing land.
The twin hearts of Kenya’s economy,
agriculture and tourism, are especial-
ly imperiled. The fabled game animals
that safari-goers fly thousands of ki-
lometers to see are keeling over from
hunger and the picturesque savanna is
now littered with sun-bleached bones.
Ethiopia. Sudan. Somalia. Maybe
even Niger and Chad. These countries
have become almost synonymous with
drought and famine. But Kenya? This
nation is one of the most developed
in Africa, home to a typically robust
economy, countless United Nations
offices and thousands of aid workers.
The aid community here has been
predicting a disaster for months,
saying that the rains had failed once
again and that this could be the worst
drought in more than a decade. But the
Kenyan government, paralyzed by in-
fighting and political maneuvering,
seemed to shrug off the warnings.
Some government officials have
even been implicated in a scandal to
illegally sell off thousands of metric
tons of the nation’s grain reserves as
a famine was looming.
So far, a huge, international aid op-
eration to avert mass hunger has not
kicked in, or at least not to the degree
needed. The United Nations World
Food Program recently said that
nearly four million Kenyans — about
a tenth of the population — urgently
needed food. “Red lights are flashing
across the country,” the agency said.
But donor nations have been slow
to respond, and a United Nations-led
emergency appeal for $576 million is
less than half financed.
Part of the reason may be the grow-
ing disappointment with Kenya’s lead-
ers. They have been poked and prod-
ded by Western ambassadors — and
their own citizens — to overhaul the
justice system, the police force and
the electoral commission. The outcry
followed a widely discredited election
in 2007 that set off a wave of violence,
claiming more than 1,000 lives.
But Kenyan politicians seem more
preoccupied with positioning them-
selves for the next election in 2012
than with cleaning up the mess from
A Lush Land Dries Up,Withering Kenya’s Hopes
A Coveted Passage OpensAs the Arctic Ice Retreats
As Rivals RaceTo Go Electric,Toyota Waits
From Page I
JEHAD NGA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
A woman from the Turkana tribe received water. Life in Lokori is precarious even when rains are plentiful.
the last one. Few reforms have been
accomplished and corruption contin-
ues to flourish.
“At a time like this, we need donor
confidence,” said Nicholas Wasunna,
a humanitarian adviser for the aid
group World Vision. But he said that
donors might be put off by “the politics
of what’s happening in the country.”
The arid lands of northern Kenya
have been the hardest hit. In some vil-
lages, it has not rained in years. But
the drought has become a problem
nationwide.
In Baringo, in the Rift Valley, people
are eating cactus because corn and
wheat have gotten so expensive. In
Nyeri, in central Kenya, some have
turned to pig feed. In Nairobi, the capi-
tal, even the fanciest neighborhoods
often go without running water for a
week. Kenya relies on hydropower for
electricity, so less rainfall means less
power.
The Kenyan government has begun
to respond, organizing some highly
publicized food deliveries to famine-
prone areas. But many Kenyan offi-
cials almost seem in denial.
Chaunga Mwachaunga is the acting
district officer in Lokori, an especially
parched town in northern Kenya. He
bristled when presented with reports
that dozens of children in his area had
recently died of hunger.
“Hunger? How do we know they died
of hunger?” he said. “I know there’s
not enough food for people, but we can
be sure that nobody will die of hunger
while the Kenyan government is here.
Show me the death certificates.”
It is hard to find any death certifi-
cates when there are few hospitals.
Entering this area is like stepping
back in time.
Turkana children are hiking 30 ki-
lometers for three liters of water. Tur-
kana men are abandoning families
because they cannot face the shame of
being unable to feed their children.
World Vision is distributing emer-
gency rations to the worst-off areas.
Meteorologists predict rains will be
coming by October, and they may even
bring the other extreme from present
conditions. Another El Niño cycle is
forecast, which after years of drought
and earth baked to a rock-hard crust
could bring the opposite problem:
floods.
By HIROKO TABUCHI
TOKYO — Despite Toyota’s image
as the world’s greenest automaker,
the company that brought us the Pri-
us — totem of the environmentally
conscious — has fallen behind in the
race for the all-electric car.
Mitsubishi Motors started leasing
its all-electric vehicle, the i-MiEV, in
June. Next year, Nissan Motor is set
to release its electric car, the Leaf.
But Toyota does not plan to introduce
an all-electric car until 2012. Instead,
later this year, it plans to introduce a
plug-in electric-gasoline hybrid.
“Why is Toyota waiting on elec-
tric cars?” asked Tadashi Tateuchi,
a former race car designer turned
electric-car evangelist.
Electric technology could help de-
termine winners and losers in the au-
to industry of the future, but Toyota
has been highly skeptical of electri-
cal vehicles.
“The time is not here,” Masatami
Takimoto, Toyota’s executive vice
president, said earlier this year.
If Toyota is right, its competitors
will have spent billions on a technolo-
gy that will be slow to take off. If elec-
tric cars win drivers over, Toyota’s
rivals could take the lead.
“In a world where vehicles run on
electrons rather than hydrocarbons,
the automakers will have to reinvent
their businesses,” Russell Hensley,
an analyst at the consulting compa-
ny McKinsey, told clients in a recent
report.
But that world is not here yet. Toy-
ota would like to profit all it can from
the current technology before shift-
ing to a new one, analysts say, espe-
cially because the company is facing
a second down year after a loss last
year of about $4.4 billion.
“At first, electric cars will all be
small, making profit margins small
also,” said Maho Inoue, an automo-
bile analyst at the Daiwa Institute
of Research, a research group in To-
kyo.
Toyota executives list several rea-
sons to be skeptical of electric cars:
They do not travel far enough on a
charge; their batteries are expensive
and unreliable; the electrical infra-
structure is not in place to recharge
them. Even when electric cars are
sold widely, Toyota says, they will be
suitable only for short trips and serve
a decidedly niche market.
Electric-car enthusiasts say Toyo-
ta is being overly cautious. Advances
in batteries, as well as in the strong
magnets needed for motors, have
made electric vehicles viable, auto-
motive analysts say.
“Toyota could launch an electric
car tomorrow if it wanted to,” Mr. Ta-
teuchi, the former race car engineer,
said. “Toyota tells people the age of
electric cars is not yet here. That’s
not true.”
Both Nissan and Mitsubishi have
their own reasons for rushing out an
all-electric car. Having invested lit-
tle in hybrids, they hope to leapfrog
straight to the next technology.
Mitsubishi’s i-MiEV was released
in limited numbers in Japan this year.
Nissan is introducing some hybrids,
but its chief executive, Carlos Ghosn,
said he hoped the Leaf would be the
world’s first mass-produced electric
vehicle. It travels up to 145 kilometers
an hour, goes 160 kilometers between
recharges and carries a price tag of
$25,000 to $33,000.
There is an environmental impera-
tive as well: Though the newest Prius
uses 4.7 liters per 100 kilometers (21
kilometers per liter), as a hybrid it
still burns gasoline and emits car-
bon. Mr. Ghosn, in a gibe at Toyota’s
hybrids, said, “Whether you smoke a
lot or you smoke a little, you’re still a
smoker.”
PHOTOGRAPHS BY YULI WEEKS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
A once-elusive Siberianroute may one day rival the Suez Canal.
In one of Africa’s mostdeveloped countries, a devastating drought.
Andrew E. Kramer reported fromMoscow, and Andrew C. Revkin from New York.
Tadashi Tateuchi, who develops electric-car technology, left, saysToyota is moving too slowly.
Repubblica NewYork
W O R L D T R E N D S
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2009 V
KAZAKHSTAN
BELARUS
MOLDOVA
UKRAINE
GEORGIA
ARMENIA
AZERBAIJAN
TAJIKISTAN
KYRGYZSTAN
UZBEKISTAN
ESTONIA
LATVIA
LITHUANIA
TURKMENISTAN
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Estonia An Estonian language test
must be passed to obtain citizenship.
Latvia A Latvian language test must
be passed to obtain citizenship.
Lithuania Russian is banned from
government offices; the government
maintains a language inspection service.
Ukraine Russian is widely spoken by
both Ukrainians and a sizeable minority
of ethnic Russians, but government
is mandating use of Ukrainian in
schools and other areas.
Georgia Russian-language
programs are banned from
many television channels
and radio stations.
Turkmenistan Russian-language
schools and newspapers shut down.
Belarus Russian is
an official language,
along with
Belarusian.
KazakhstanRussian is an official
language, along
with Kazakh.
Kyrgyzstan Official
language, although
presidential
candidates must
pass a language
test in Kyrgyz.
Armenia and AzerbaijanRussian is not an official
language, although top officials
and people in large cities speak it.
MoldovaSemi-official
language.
Uzbekistan Russian is not
an official language, but
some schools use it as a
primary language.
Tajikistan Russian is still used,
but a recently proposed law would
require government documents to
be written only in Tajik.
NYET!
DA! NYET!
DA!
Russia’s Shrinking Linguistic Empire
FORMER SOVIET REPUBLICS HOSTILE TO RUSSIAN
MIXED FEELINGS
FRIENDLY TO RUSSIAN
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
WASHINGTON — American poli-
tics has been defined by gender gaps,
racial gaps, geographic gaps and the
gap between the religious and the
secular.
Now comes the geriatric gap. As the
population ages and the United States
faces intense battles over rapidly ris-
ing health care and retirement costs,
American politics seems increasingly
divided along generational lines.
The question is how defining this
gap is going to be.
As distasteful as the notion of inter-
generational conflict may seem, the
fight over health care suggests that
something is going on. Older Ameri-
cans are more likely to oppose Presi-
dent Obama’s initiative than any
other age group. The White House
views this dynamic as one of the big-
gest obstacles to assembling a legis-
lative coalition to get a bill passed in
Congress.
Older voters were one of the few
groups Mr. Obama did not win in the
presidential election last year, leav-
ing him and his party particularly
reliant on younger voters, who do
not show up at the polls as reliably as
older people do. They have a dimmer
view of his presidency than the rest of
the nation.
Americans are living longer and
staying healthier longer. With that
has come a more active approach to
life in retirement. Older Americans
are more engaged. They are more
likely to watch television news, show
up at town hall meetings and call
their members of Congress. That has
proven especially true when it comes
to health care.
Certainly, the friction is driving
the strategies of both sides in the
health care battle. The Republican
National Committee has financed
an advertising campaign directed at
older Americans, asserting that what
the Democrats propose would ration
health care and would involve the
government in end-of-life decisions.
Democrats have responded by at-
tacking Republicans for past efforts
to cut Medicare, the government-run
health plan that covers Americans
over 65 that conservatives say poses
a threat to the deficit.
David Axelrod, a senior adviser to
Mr. Obama, acknowledged the obsta-
cle the president faces as Republicans
argue that his proposal to cut Medi-
care spending to help expand overall
health coverage would result in cut-
ting services to Medicare recipients.
“Older Americans all have cover-
age,” he said. “I’m not saying they
don’t care about anybody else. But
it’s a natural impulse to want to keep
that. It doesn’t take great strategic
insight to say, ‘Let’s go rattle older
voters and make them oppose this.’ ”
There is no evidence that this de-
mographic votes as a bloc or bases
voting decisions primarily on issues
of concern to older Americans, said
Robert H. Binstock, a professor of
aging at Case Western Reserve Uni-
versity in Ohio. Mr. Binstock said that
older voters favored Senator John
McCain over Mr. Obama in the elec-
tion last year — 53 percent to 45 per-
cent — because, in part, it is a popula-
tion that tends to be more Republican.
It may also be harder for some older
voters to adjust to the novelty of the
first African-American president.
Meredith Minkler, a professor of
health and social behavior at the
University of California at Berkeley,
contends that the whole notion of
generational warfare has been exag-
gerated anyway: polling suggests
that on issues other than health care
reform, older Americans are no dif-
ferent from the rest of the country in
how they divide on issues.
“This whole business of intergener-
ational conflict has been blown out of
proportion,” Professor Minkler said.
Yet it is hard to blame politicians,
who are reading these same polls
and watching their offices get over-
whelmed by telephone calls, e-mail
messages and faxes, for not taking
comfort in that history. Their fear, as
Mr. Binstock put it, is of inadvertently
“mobilizing a sleeping giant.”
No matter how they vote, older
voters turn out in heavy numbers in
midterm elections, like the one loom-
ing next year.
NEWS ANALYSIS
Politics, Health Care and the Age Gap
SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine — In a
corner of Bukvatoriya, a bookstore
here in the capital of the Crimean
Peninsula, are some stacks of litera-
ture that may be as provocative to the
Kremlin as any battal-
ion of NATO soldiers
or wily oligarch.
The books are clas-
sics — by Oscar Wilde,
Victor Hugo, Mark
Twain, and Shake-
speare — that have been translated
into Ukrainian, in editions aimed at
teenagers. A Harry Potter who casts
spells in Ukrainian also inhabits the
shelves.
Two decades ago, there would have
been little if any demand for such
works, given that most people in this
region are ethnic Russians. But the
Ukrainian government is increas-
ingly requiring that the Ukrainian
language be used in all facets of soci-
ety, especially schools, as it seeks to
ensure that the next generation is ori-
ented toward Kiev, not Moscow. Chil-
dren can even read Pushkin, Russia’s
most revered author, in translation.
The Ukrainian policy has become
a flashpoint in relations between
the two countries and reflects the
diminishing status of the Russian
language in not just the former Soviet
Union, but the old Communist bloc as
a whole.
The Kremlin has tried to halt the
decline by setting up foundations to
promote the study of Russian abroad
and by castigating neighbors who
push the language from public life.
In some nations, a backlash against
Russian has stirred its own backlash
in the language’s defense.
Still, the challenge is considerable.
At stake is more than just words on a
page.
Language imparts power and
influence, binding the colonized to
the colonizers, altering how native
populations interact with the world.
Long after they gave up their terri-
tories, Britain and France and Spain
have retained a certain authority in
far-flung outposts because of the lan-
guages that they seeded.
Czars and Soviet leaders spread
Russian in the lands that they con-
quered, using it as a kind of glue to
unite disparate nationalities, a so-
called second mother tongue, and
connect them to their rulers. That leg-
acy endures today, as exemplified by
the close relationship between Russia
and Germany, which stems in part
from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
ability to speak Russian. She learned
it growing up in Communist East
Germany.
For the Kremlin, could there be a
more bitter reminder of how history
has turned than the sight of young Es-
tonians or Georgians or Uzbeks (not
to mention Czechs or Hungarians)
flocking to classes in English instead
of Russian?
“The drop in Russian language
usage is a great blow to Moscow, in
the economic and social spheres, and
many other respects,” said Aleksei V.
Vorontsov, chairman of the sociology
department at the Herzen State Peda-
gogical University in St. Petersburg.
“It has severed links, and made Russia
more isolated.”
Russian is one of the few major lan-
guages to be losing speakers, and by
rough estimates, that total will fall to
150 million by 2025, from 300 million in
1990. It will probably remain one of the
10 most popular languages, but barely.
Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish,
Arabic and Hindi head the list.
The situation has not been helped
by the demographic crisis in Russia
itself, which is expected to shed as
much as 20 percent of its population
by 2050.
The fall in Russian speakers has
not been uniform across the former
Soviet Union, and Russian officials
praise former Soviet republics like
Kyrgyzstan where Russian is em-
braced.
But countries that felt subjugated
by Soviet power, like the Baltic States,
have taken vengeance by mandating
knowledge of the native language to
obtain citizenship or other benefits.
Ukraine’s pro-Western president,
Viktor A. Yushchenko, indicated this
month that a deepening understand-
ing of the Ukrainian language is one
key to keeping Moscow at bay. “With
our native language, we preserve
our culture,” Mr. Yushchenko told
the German magazine Spiegel. “That
greatly contributes to preserving our
independence. If a nation loses its lan-
guage, it loses its memory, its history
and its identity.”
CLIFFORD J.
LEVY
ESSAY
The Waning Influence of the Tongue of the Czars
Moscow’s power ebbs when Pushkin is readin Ukrainian.
ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
Support for President Obama is stronger among younger Americans, who vote less often than the elderly.
Repubblica NewYork
M O N E Y & B U S I N E S S
VI MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2009
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
BILLUND, Denmark — Five years
after a near-death experience, Lego
has emerged as an unlikely winner in
an industry threatened by the likes of
video games, iPods, the Internet and
other digital diversions.
Even as other toymakers struggle,
this Danish maker of toy bricks is en-
joying double-digit sales gains and
swelling earnings. In recent years,
Lego has increasingly focused on
toys that many parents wouldn’t rec-
ognize from their own childhood.
Hollywood themes are command-
ing more shelf space, a far cry from
the idealistic, purely imagination-
oriented play that drove Lego for
years and was as much a religion as a
business strategy in Billund.
Just as the toys are changing, so is
the company. Jorgen Vig Knudstorp,
40, a father of four and a McKinsey &
Company alumnus who took over as
Lego’s chief executive in 2004, made
it clear that results, not simply feel-
ing good about making the best toys,
would be essential if Lego was to suc-
ceed.
“We needed to build a mind-set
where nonperformance wasn’t ac-
cepted,” Mr. Knudstorp says. Now,
“there’s no place to hide if perfor-
mance is poor,” he says. “You will be
embarrassed, and embarrassment is
stronger than fear.”
Last month, Lego opened its first
“concept store” in Concord, North
Carolina, where parents can bring
children for birthday parties and
classes with master builders. It’s all
part of a broader retail expansion
that will give Lego 47 retail stores
worldwide by year-end, up from 27
in 2007.
Founded in 1932 by a local car-
penter, Ole Kirk Christiansen, this
privately held company had a very
Scandinavian aversion to talking
about profits, much less orienting the
company around them.
Before Mr. Knudstorp’s arrival,
deadlines came and went, and de-
velopment time for new toys could
stretch out for years; in 2004, the
company lost $344 million.
Now, employee pay is tied to mea-
suring up to management’s key per-
formance indicators. And cost-sav-
ing touches are encouraged when it
comes to designing new toys. That
has helped to lower development
time by 50 percent.
Nevertheless, Lego hasn’t entirely
shed its Scandinavian sense of so-
cial mission. It kept quality high and
never moved any manufacturing to
China, avoiding the lead paint scare
and grabbing market share when ri-
vals stumbled amid multiple recalls.
Now, with profits swelling and the
turnaround firmly in place, Lego is
preparing for a future that moves
well beyond the basic brick but car-
ries big risks as well.
Video games are increasingly im-
portant to the company, as are Lego’s
legions of adult fans, who can now
buy kits to build architect-designed
models of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fall-
ingwater and the Guggenheim Mu-
seum. What’s more, the company is
in talks with Warner Brothers about
a mixed live-action and animation
Lego-themed movie.
“Developing a movie doesn’t come
cheap,” says Soren Torp Laursen, a
23-year Lego employee who heads
its North American operations. “But
five years ago, we were in the midst
of a crisis, and now we’re in a growth
phase. We are definitely taking big-
ger risks than we previously did.”
While that shift has disappointed
purists and prompted worries from
experts that some of what has long
made Lego special may be in jeopar-
dy, it’s paying off, at least in the short
term.
Amid a 5 percent drop in total
United States toy sales last year and
the industry’s worst holiday season
in three decades, according to Sean
McGowan, an analyst at Needham
& Company, Lego’s sales surged 18.7
percent in 2008. And despite a wors-
ening global recession, Lego pow-
ered through the first half of 2009,
with a 23 percent sales increase over
the period a year earlier.
“In the end, you’ve got to go where
your consumer is going,” says John
Barbour, a former top executive of
the Toys “R” Us chain. “And the re-
ality is that themes and movies are
what kids want. There’s no point in
developing the best product in the
world if you can’t put it on the shelf.”
For Americans, failure tends to be
accepted as an intrinsic feature of
an economic system in which risk-
taking often brings great reward.
In Japan, by contrast, failure tra-
ditionally carries a
deeper stigma, an en-
during shame that lim-
its the appetite for risk,
in the view of many of
the nation’s cultural
observers. This makes
the Japanese far less comfortable
with choices that increase the pros-
pect of failure, even if they promise
greater potential gains.
Recent Japanese governments
have sought to inculcate greater tol-
erance for failure — often at the urg-
ing of American officials — to inject
new life in a long-stagnant economy.
The Tokyo government even char-
tered an Association for the Study of
Failure, which aimed to “turn failure
experience into knowledge at the
society, corporation and individual
levels.”
But on August 30, the differing
cultural conceptions of the United
States and Japan snapped into view,
as Japanese voters emphatically
dismissed the party that had ruled
almost uninterrupted for more than
half a century. The results offered up
a palpable message: Enough with the
failure.
In the two decades since Japan
devolved from a supposedly indomi-
table economic juggernaut in the
1980s into a stagnant economy mired
in a Lost Decade, the country tried
myriad reforms in the name of rein-
vigorating its economy. It made at-
tempts at rooting out bad loans from
the banking system and ending the
inside dealing that had long defined
Japanese business culture. It sought
to pare down government-financed
public works projects, a major source
of jobs.
Yet all the while, Japan remained
an economic laggard, a shadow of
the nation that had previously occa-
sioned overheated talk of Japanese
global dominance. Despite the pain
of reform, Japan never seemed to get
the benefit.
Many economists argue that Ja-
pan never shook off the hangover of
speculative excesses on real estate
that fueled the 1980s because it never
genuinely reformed. Money-losing
“zombie” companies were allowed
to keep drawing fresh credit and sur-
vive. Insolvent banks were spared
from collapse because they were
deemed “too big to fail.”
Regardless, among ordinary
people, the sense took hold that the
reforms were both harsh and inef-
fective. Amid the attempts to rein in
government spending and pressure
banks to cut off money-losing clients,
Japanese workers learned the humili-
ation of unemployment; Japanese
companies confronted the embar-
rassment of going out of business.
More than an economic event, this
tore at the fabric of Japanese life.
Many Japanese seemed perplexed
by the dire talk that accompanied
the push for reform. In Nagano, a city
that had boomed with construction
during the 1980s, suspicions about
the reform trajectory were intense
as Japan’s reformist prime minister,
Junichiro Koizumi, pushed to cleanse
the banks of bad loans. Newspapers
and television were full of grim talk
about the corporate failures this
would entail.
“I don’t really see how the economy
will get better if you just close a big
company and fire people,” said a
37-year-old housewife whose hus-
band worked at the electronics giant
Fujitsu. His pay had been cut by one-
fifth. The local work force had been
slashed by half.
By the time Japanese voters went
to the polls, they did not appear to be
approving a coherent economic poli-
cy so much as rejecting a seemingly
bankrupt one. The new ruling Demo-
cratic Party of Japan gained votes
with vague promises of subsidies and
job protections.
Ultimately, the vote seemed to sig-
nal Japan’s verdict that the embrace
of failure had, in the end, proven a
failure, opting instead for the comfort
of trying to muddle through.
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Alarmed that genetically engi-
neered crops may be finding their way
into organic and natural foods, an in-
dustry group has begun a campaign to
test products and label those that are
largely free of biotech ingredients.
With farmers using gene-altered
seeds to grow much of North Ameri-
ca’s corn, soybeans, canola and sugar,
ingredients derived from biotech crops
have become hard for food companies
to avoid. But many makers of organic
and natural foods are convinced that
their credibility in the marketplace
requires them to do so.
The industry group, the Non-GMO
Project, says its new label is aimed
at reassuring consumers and will be
backed by rigorous testing.
The initials GMO stand for geneti-
cally modified organism. The project
will try to guarantee the same thresh-
old used in Europe, where labeling
is required if products contain more
than 0.9 percent of biotech material.
The project will not try to guarantee
that foods are entirely free of geneti-
cally modified ingredients, but rather
that manufacturers have followed pro-
cedures and undergone testing.
“There’s a vulnerability here that
the industry is addressing,” said
Michael J. Potter, the founder and
president of Eden Foods and a board
member of the Non-GMO Project, the
organization responsible for the test-
ing and labeling campaign.
As plantings of conventional crops
with genetic modifications soared in
recent years, Mr. Potter put in place
stringent safeguards to ensure that
the organic soybeans he bought for
tofu, soy milk and other products did
not come from genetically engineered
plants. He even supplies the seed that
farmers use to grow his soybeans.
But many other companies have not
been so careful, and as a result, Mr.
Potter said, the organic and natural
foods industry is like “a dirty room” in
need of cleaning.
“What I’ve heard, what I know, what
I’ve seen, what’s been tested and the
test results that have been shared with
me, clearly indicate that the room is
very dirty,” Mr. Potter said.
Hundreds of products already claim
on their packaging that they do not
contain genetically modified ingredi-
ents, but with little consistency in the
labeling and little assurance that the
products have actually been tested.
The new labeling campaign hopes to
clear up such confusion.
Dag Falck, a project board member,
said testing and labeling were needed
to protect the industry from the steady
spread of biotech ingredients. His
company has been testing for such
ingredients for several years and is
strengthening those measures.
“The thing is, if we have a contami-
nation problem that’s growing in or-
ganics, what will happen one day when
someone tests something and finds
out that organics is contaminated be-
yond a reasonable amount, say 5 or 10
percent?” he said. “Consumers would
lose all faith in organics.”
The Non-GMO project works with
companies to test their ingredients
and improve manufacturing pro-
cesses. It will also spot test products
in stores.
Sandra Kepler, the chief executive
of Food Chain Global Advisors, a con-
sulting company that administers the
project, said that it was too early to
draw conclusions and that much of the
testing had been done on ingredients
used by companies with safeguards
already in place.
The executives of several compa-
nies participating in the project said
their products had come up clean in
the tests. But several executives also
said they were aware of positive tests
for other companies, which they would
not identify.
“People are going to be reluctant
to say, ‘My brand of cereal, we found
some contaminated products and we
changed sources,’ ” said Michael S.
Funk, a project board member who
is co-founder and chairman of United
Natural Foods, a major distributor.
“Nobody wants to have that informa-
tion out there.”
LegoIs MovingBeyond Blocks
Failure Offers Lessons That Japan Would Rather Forget
HIROKO MASUIKE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
ILLUSTRATION BY THE NEW YORK TIMES
Peter S. Goodman, a reporter for The Times, spent nearly a decade report-ing from Asia.
A toy icon rebuildsitself. (Some risks included.)
Organic Food MakersMake a Pitch for Purity
LEGO
Ineffective reforms led Japanesevoters to switch loyalties toDemocratic Party candidates, in these posters, in the election.
PETER S.
GOODMAN
NEWSANALYSIS
Lego kitsnow feature
popularHollywoodthemes like
Indiana Jones.
Repubblica NewYork
S C I E N C E & T E C H N O L O GY
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2009 VII
By CARL ZIMMER
If you could travel back 130 million
years, you might not be impressed
with the flowers of that time. They
were small and rare, living in the shad-
ows of far more successful nonflower-
ing plants.
Around 120 million years ago, a new
line of flowers evolved that came to
dominate many forests. Today, flower-
ing plants make up the majority of liv-
ing plant species. Out of flowers come
most of the calories humans consume,
in the form of foods like corn, rice and
wheat. Flowers are also impressive in
their diversity of forms and colors, from
lush, full-bodied roses to spiderlike or-
chids to calla lilies shaped like urns.
But for centuries, the history of
flowers has vexed scientists. Charles
Darwin, who surrounded himself with
flowers and experimented on them un-
til his death, once wrote that their evo-
lution was “an abominable mystery.”
Today, experts sound a note of
guarded optimism. The discovery of
new fossils is one reason. Scientists
are also finding
clues in living flow-
ers and their genes.
DNA studies
show that a handful
of species represent
the oldest lineages
alive today. The
oldest branch of all
is represented by
just one species: a
shrub called Amborella that is found
only on New Caledonia in the South
Pacific.
All flowers, from Amborella on, have
the same basic anatomy. Just about all
of them have petals or petal-like struc-
tures that surround male and female
organs. Over time, flowers became
more complicated. They evolved an
inner ring of petals that became big
and showy, and an outer ring of leaf-
like growths called sepals.
In the 1980s, scientists discovered
genes that guide development of flow-
ers. They observed that mutations in
a plant called Arabidopsis could set
off grotesque changes. Some caused
petals to grow where there should
have been stamens, the flower’s male
organs. Others turned sepals into
leaves.
The discovery echoed ideas first put
forward by the German poet Goethe,
who not only wrote “Faust” but was al-
so a careful observer of plants. In 1790
he wrote a visionary essay called “The
Morphology of Plants,” in which he ar-
gued that all plant organs, including
flowers, had begun as leaves. “From
first to last,” he wrote, “the plant is
nothing but a leaf.”
Two centuries later, scientists dis-
covered that mutations to genes could
cause radical changes like those
Goethe envisioned. Together, the
genes can set off the development of a
petal or any other part of an Arabidop-
sis flower.
Vivian Irish, an evolutionary bi-
ologist at Yale, and her colleagues are
learning how to manipulate poppy
genes. They have identified flower-
building genes by shutting some of
them down and producing monstrous
flowers as a result.
Their findings suggest that flowers
evolved in much the same way our
own anatomy evolved. Our legs, for
example, evolved independently from
the legs of flies, but many of the same
ancient appendage-building genes
were enlisted to build those limbs.
“I think it is pretty cool that animals
and plants have used similar strate-
gies,” Dr. Irish said.
When a pollen
grain fertilizes a
plant’s egg, it pro-
vides two sets of
DNA. While one
set fertilizes the
egg, the other is
destined for the sac
that surrounds the
egg. The sac fills
with endosperm, a
starchy material that fuels the growth
of an egg into a seed. It also fuels our
own growth when we eat grains.
In the first flowers, the endosperm
had one set of genes from the male par-
ent and another from the female. But
after early lineages branched off, flow-
ers bulked up their endosperm with
two sets of genes from the mother and
one from the father.
William Friedman, an evolutionary
biologist at the University of Colorado,
Boulder, does not think it was a coin-
cidence that flowering plants under-
went an evolutionary explosion after
gaining an extra set of genes in their
endosperm. “It’s like having a bigger
engine,” he said.
As he has studied how the extra set
of genes evolved in flowers, he has
once again been drawn to Goethe’s
vision .
“Nature just doesn’t invent things
out of whole cloth,” Dr. Friedman
said. “It creates novelty in very simple
ways. They’re not radical or mysteri-
ous. Goethe already had this figured
out.”
By TARA PARKER-POPE
This flu season is going to be stress-
ful for parents. Every sniffle and ev-
ery cough is going to be scrutinized,
awakening fears of the ominously
named swine flu virus. Here are some
answers to questions that will arise
during what experts predict will be a
very busy flu season:
Q.How worried should we be?A.When this new strain of H1N1 in-
fluenza emerged in spring, experts
feared it might follow the pattern
of the 1918 flu, the world’s deadliest
epidemic. That strain also showed up
as a relatively mild spring virus but
re-emerged in a more virulent form
in the fall.
The new strain of H1N1 is not follow-
ing that pattern. While it has account-
ed for about 90 percent of the flu virus
circulating in the Southern Hemi-
sphere, the strain is behaving a lot like
seasonal flu, said Dr. Neil O. Fishman,
an infectious-disease specialist at the
University of Pennsylvania.
“There is a sigh of relief that the
virus hasn’t mutated,” Dr. Fishman
told me. “Fortunately, the swine flu
that we’re seeing still is a moderate
disease that is behaving very much
like ordinary seasonal influenza.”
That said, Dr. Fishman noted that
the virus was unpredictable and
could still mutate. So people need
to be vigilant about washing their
hands, and if they develop symptoms
they need to stay home. And “ordi-
nary” flu is not to be taken lightly.
Each year in the United States, about
200,000 people are hospitalized with
severe flu symptoms, and 36,000 die.
Q.Are children at higher risk for swine flu?A.A main difference between swine
flu and seasonal flu is that people over
60 appear to have some immunity to
swine flu, while younger people seem
not to. And because children and
young adults are more likely to gather
in groups — at school and colleges —
they are more vulnerable to catching
all types of flu. So while the disease
does not appear to be more severe
than seasonal flu, a disproportionate
number of young people will probably
get it.
As with seasonal flu, some people
will get very sick and some of them
will die. Federal health officials report
that at least 36 children in the United
States have died of swine flu; most had
nervous system disorders like cere-
bral palsy or developmental delays.
Some, however, had been healthy;
they died of bacterial infections that
set in after the flu. Doctors speculate
that children with nerve and muscle
disorders can’t cough hard enough
to clear the airways, putting them at
higher risk for complications.
Q.What are the symptoms of swine flu? When does it become an emer-
The older girl was smart, neat
and perfectly behaved in school.
At every checkup, her mother
would tell me what a good girl she
was. She is the oldest, her mother
would say, so she
gets lots of atten-
tion, and she works
very hard.
When her
younger sister
turned out to be an
equally good student, the proud
mother explained that naturally
she wanted to be just like her older
sister.
Then a boy was born. When he
was a toddler, I began to worry
that his speech seemed a little
slow in coming. His mother was
perfectly calm about it. He is the
only boy, she said, so he gets lots
of attention, and he doesn’t have
to work very hard.
Everyone takes it personally
when it comes to birth order. After
all, everyone is an oldest or a mid-
dle or a youngest or an only child.
But that doesn’t mean the ef-
fects of birth order are as clear or
straightforward as we sometimes
make them sound. Indeed, birth
order can be used to explain ev-
ery trait and its precise opposite.
I’m competitive, driven — typi-
cal oldest child! My brother, two
years younger, is even more
competitive, more driven — typi-
cal second child, always trying to
catch up!
I surveyed pediatricians about
when parents are likely to bring
up birth order. Many cited the is-
sue of speech, especially when a
second child doesn’t talk as well
or as early as the first.
And parents are likely to talk
about mistakes they think they
made the first time around. This
time, we’re going to get it right
with toilet training. This time,
we’re going to sign the child up for
soccer.
“Too many parents are haunted
by experiences both good and bad
that they identify with their birth
order,” said Dr. Peter A. Gorski,
a professor of pediatrics, public
health and psychiatry at the Uni-
versity of South Florida.
That might lead them to clas-
sify their own children according
to birth order, he added, which
in turn can lead to “self-fulfilling
prophecies.”
Frank J. Sulloway, a visiting
scholar at the University of Cali-
fornia, Berkeley, and the author of
“Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Fam-
ily Dynamics and Creative Lives”
(Pantheon, 1996), points out that
second-born children tend to be
exposed to less language than el-
dest children. “The best environ-
ment to grow up in is basically two
parents who are chattering away
at you with fancy words,” Dr. Sul-
loway said.
He cited a Norwegian study,
published in 2007, which found
that eldest siblings’ intelligence
quotients averaged about three
points higher than their younger
brothers’.
Those differences in verbal
stimulation, like the differences
in I.Q., are “relatively modest,”
Dr. Sulloway said. But in a child
who is already vulnerable, a child
who may be temperamentally
less likely to attract adults’ atten-
tion or a child growing up in a less
stimulating home, being the sec-
ond child might be the added risk
that makes the difference, he said.
“Birth order doesn’t cause
anything,” Dr. Sulloway said.
“It’s simply a proxy for the actual
mechanisms that go on in family
dynamics that shape character
and personality.”
The MysteryOf Flowers
SANGTAE KIM/UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
SUSAN WALSH/ASSOCIATED PRESS
ESSAY
PERRIKLASS, M.D.
From obscure origins, astonishing biodiversity.
Firstborn,
Middle
Or Last?
Preparing Families for an Unusually Stressful Flu Season
Amborella trichopoda, found only on a South Pacific island,represents the oldest living lineage of flowering plants.
gency?A. In children, warning signs include
fast or troubled breathing, bluish or
gray skin, and persistent or severe
vomiting.
If a child isn’t drinking enough
fluids, is unusually hard to wake up,
is not interacting or is so irritable he
or she doesn’t want to be held, you
should call your doctor.
Adults with severe symptoms may
also complain about pain or pressure
in the chest or abdomen, sudden diz-
ziness and confusion.
Children with underlying neuro-
logical problems should be quickly
seen by a doctor if they run a fever. In
otherwise healthy children, the main
warning sign is that the child seems
to feel better, then appears to relapse
with a high fever.
This signals a bacterial infection
that must be treated with antibiot-
ics. Even though such infections are
seldom severe, the child should be
seen by a pediatrician as quickly as
possible.
Q.Should I bother getting a seasonalflu shot?A.Yes. Seasonal flu is as much of a
concern as it has always been. Given
that swine flu shots won’t be available
until late in the season, a regular shot
will protect you and your family from
the body aches, cough and misery of
seasonal flu, and allow you to cross
one worry from your list.
The new strain of H1N1 flu isbehaving a lot like seasonalflu, except that younger peopleseem morevulnerable to it.
Repubblica NewYork
FA S H I O N
VIII MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2009
By RUTH LA FERLA
Maya Yogev has a thing for leather
— her lambskin coats and jackets are
as malleable as wax. Her designs ex-
press a sensibility that is “on the dark-
er side,” she acknowledged, with their
somber colors, cascading lapels and
droopy shapes. They also bear more
than a passing resemblance to the de-
signs of Rick Owens, a fellow Califor-
nian whose brooding aesthetic is the
talk of the runways.
“I’ve been told it’s kind of copycat,”
Ms. Yogev said of her work. “That can
be kind of frustrating at times.” But
comparisons to Mr. Owens “can also
be useful,” she added. “Once you men-
tion his name, everyone is automati-
cally drawn.”
Her affinity for washed-out, goth-
tinged leathers and stretched-out
shapes is understandable: Ms. Yogev,
the designer of Grai, based in Los An-
geles, apprenticed with Mr. Owens at
a formative stage in her career. But
she is far from the only fashion maker
indebted to that designer’s particular
brand of urban decay.
In recent months, a veritable indus-
try has sprung up around Mr. Owens,
who may be fashion’s most imitated
designer. Rival houses are racing to
produce their own distillations of his
angular flaps, zigzagging zippers,
gossamer T-shirts and biker jackets
pliant as second skins.
In the tradition of Giorgio Armani,
Vivienne Westwood and Tom Ford, Mr.
Owens’s ideas are absorbed or copied
outright in collections as diverse as
those of Alexander Wang and Rag &
Bone, or on a more patently commer-
cial level, by Topshop and American
Apparel.
“He has certainly captured the mo-
ment,” said Kathryn Deane, president
of the Tobé Report, a retail newslet-
By ERIC WILSON
Ten years ago, when Amy Astley,
then the beauty director of Vogue, be-
gan working on a prototype of a spinoff
magazine for teenagers, the question
she was most commonly asked by po-
tential readers was this: “How can I
become a fashion model?”
“It was really depressing,” said Ms.
Astley, now the editor of Teen Vogue.
Now they ask how they can get her
job.
What changed, Ms. Astley said, is
that teenagers around the world have
become interested in all sorts of ca-
reers in fashion as a result of the indus-
try’s increasingly outsize place in pop-
ular culture. “Project Runway,” the de-
signer competition on television origi-
nally set at Parsons the New School for
Design in New York, has alone been
credited with causing a spike in appli-
cations to fashion schools. At Parsons,
applications have gone up 41 percent
over the last five years.
But this wave of designers and edi-
tors in training is coming at a moment
when the industry is shrinking; retail-
ers are collapsing; several magazines
within Teen Vogue’s parent company,
Condé Nast, have closed; and jobs, of
any sort, are scarce.
The situation is not entirely grim for
new fashion graduates in the United
States, even though the National Asso-
ciation of Colleges and Employers said
in March that employers expected to
hire 22 percent fewer seniors gradu-
ating in 2009 for entry level positions.
Normally about 90 percent of Parsons
seniors find jobs, but that figure dipped
by only 10 percent.
So what is a young person trying to
break into fashion supposed to do?
Let us take the example of Sang A
Im-Propp, who was a pop star in Ko-
rea before she decided, while on a busi-
ness trip to New York, that she wanted
to be in fashion. Ms. Im-Propp’s com-
mand of English was tenuous, but she
enrolled at Parsons and in short or-
der found herself an internship with
Victoria Bartlett, a noted stylist and
designer whom she admired. Ms. Im-
Propp found it difficult to understand
Ms. Bartlett’s heavy British accent,
and at first she thought she had mis-
understood just what Ms. Bartlett was
asking her to do. Get cupcakes?
Not just any cupcakes, but the
glossy butter-cream confections from
the Cupcake Cafe, which is a long walk
from Ms. Bartlett’s studio through the
garment district in Midtown Manhat-
tan, and it was freezing outside.
“It made me cry a lot,” Ms. Im-Propp
said. “Vicky is an amazing artist, but
she can be difficult.”
But Ms. Im-Propp persisted, and af-
ter many cupcake runs, was entrusted
with the research projects, location
scouting and shopping collections
Ms. Bartlett did not have time to see.
When she decided in 2006 to start her
own collection of handbags, under the
label Sang A, Ms. Bartlett personally
recommended her to a showroom.
Ms. Bartlett admitted she had been
a deliberate taskmaster with interns.
“You can’t be a princess in this busi-
ness,” she said. “People see fashion
from the end result, which is kind of a
false facade. They only see this beauti-
ful, glamorous world, but I don’t think
they realize it is one of the hardest ca-
reers out there.”
Kelly Cutrone, a publicist and re-
ality-show fixture, often starts a job
interview by telling the applicant,
“You’ll be very lucky if you start and
end your career liking clothes.”
Among the current crop of interns at
Teen Vogue, there is little fear that the
future of fashion will happen without
their participation. They tell stories
about 12-hour days of sorting through
piles of shopping bags looking for a sin-
gle skirt; or blisters from running gar-
ment bags around the city; or the dis-
appointment of being sent to a famous
designer’s showroom and glimpsing
only the messenger center. Or the
thrill, in the case of Media Brecher,
who is 20 and a student at Barnard Col-
lege, of seeing a headline she suggest-
ed for a denim story, “Bleach Streak,”
appear in the August issue.
“The truth is,” said the designer
Phillip Lim, “a lot of doors are shut
right now, and no one is going to open
them.” But Mr. Lim cited his own start
as a reason not to give up hope. As a
young salesman at Barneys in Los
Angeles, he was so naïve that he sim-
ply picked up the phone and called the
office of Katayone Adeli and asked for
a job.
Ms. Astley said: “Don’t listen to
other people. If you want to work in
fashion, you should do it.”
By ALEX WILLIAMS
Nearly every morning, Renaud
Dutreil, the chairman of the North
American unit of the luxury and
fashion conglomerate LVMH, rides
to his Manhattan office on a black
Gazelle, a stylish Dutch commuter
bicycle.
From his desk — which sits be-
neath a 1952 Robert Randall photo-
graph of a woman pedaling through
the countryside in gray flannel
Christian Dior — Mr. Dutreil over-
sees the business operations of
LVMH, which has several brands
that have focused on bicycles of
late.
Fendi, for example, recently in-
troduced the Abici Amante Donna,
a handmade $5,900 bicycle with a
front-mounted beauty case and sad-
dlebags in Selleria leather ($9,500
for the version with the optional fur
saddlebags).
At Louis Vuitton, the designer
Paul Helbers evoked bike-messen-
ger style in his line at the Paris run-
way shows in June. Last spring an-
other LVMH brand, DKNY, helped
execute the Bike in Style Challenge,
in which aspiring designers were
asked to create fashionable bike
apparel. And in June, Hublot, the
luxury watchmaker, partnered with
BMC, the Swiss bikemaker, to cre-
ate a sleek black 11-speed, for about
$20,000.
Until recently, bikes were merely
fashionable. Lately, it
seems, they are fashion — and they
don’t have to be ultraexpensive nov-
elty items to qualify. As fashion com-
panies start marketing bicycles and
bike gear, Mr. Dutreil, a supporter of
bicycle-advocacy programs in New
York, said he wants to see more cy-
clists pedaling around in high style,
just like that woman in the Randall
photograph.
“An elegant lady or man,” he said,
“on a bike that is elegant, that’s re-
ally the new art of living.”
Some purists worry that their be-
loved bikes are being turned into a
showy status symbol.
“There is definitely a downside to
biking when bikes become a fashion
fad,” Wendy Booher, 39, a journal-
ist in Somerville, Massachusetts,
wrote in an e-mail message. “If you
unleash a herd of teetering, wobbly
fashionistas into city streets without
any real knowledge of how to ride a
bike in traffic, accidents can (and
likely will) happen.”
There is also the risk of an expen-
sive bike being stolen.
But designers have marketed en-
vironmentally sensitive clothing in
recent years, so it makes sense that
some of them would eventually adopt
the greenest form of transportation.
“The luxury industry has to show a
new way,” said Mr. Dutreil of LVMH.
“It’s very logical to connect the art of
living, and the elegance, to a new du-
ty, which is to respect
our environment.”
With fur saddlebags, the Fendi Abici Amante Donna sells for $9,500.
FRED R. CONRAD/THE NEW YORK TIMES
An Unglamorous PathTo a Career in Fashion
ImitateThat
Zipper!
Urban Cycling, in Style
DUSAN RELJIN
Rick Owens’s much-copied biker jacket. Right, a version
by Helmut Lang.
TONY CENICOLA/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Teen Vogue interns often work 12-hour days running
errands and doing other tedious jobs. Here, they work
in the fashion closet.
ter. Once every decade or so, she said,
“everybody seems to be on the same
wavelength, and for now that wave-
length is Rick Owens.”
Mr. Owens seems to speak most
persuasively to designers on the cut-
ting edge: Alexa Adams and Flora
Gill of Ohne Titel; Haider Ackermann,
whose fall collection was dominated
by supple draped leathers; Gareth
Pugh in London; and Nicole and Mi-
chael Colovos of Helmut Lang, whose
slant-zipper, funnel-newck jackets and
sheepskin and leather coats, cut away
to reveal softly draped underlayers
and scrunched-up leggings, unmis-
takably echo those of Mr. Owens.
The Colovoses, who say that their
style has been shaped by the angular
construction and
complex layering
of the Japanese
vanguard, and by
the ghostly pal-
ette of painters like
Marlene Dumas,
maintain that such
comparisons are in-
evitable. “At times
everyone just seems
to come together,”
Nicole Colovos said.
“We’re respond-
ing to a feeling that
just gets channeled
somehow.”
That “feeling” — a
confluence of rock
star and crypt chic — is one Mr. Ow-
ens has been peddling for years. Since
founding his fashion label in Los An-
geles in 1994, the 47-year-old designer
has rarely strayed from his signature
style.
“Today everyone wants access to
his club,” said Ed Burstell, the buying
director for Liberty of London.
Mr. Owens’s emergence as fashion’s
center of attraction is a paradox. He
was, after all, long a shadowy figure in
the industry, an outsider based in Los
Angeles. In an e-mail message, he re-
sponded with terse resignation to the
suggestion that others were copying
his designs. “When something’s in the
air,” he wrote, “no one can really own
it.”
Repubblica NewYork