MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 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

LENS

RUTH FREMSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES

The dress code or an exercise schedule may pale beside the economic crisis, but even in such minor areas, President Obama has changed the White House.

Rod R. Blagojevich, the disgraced

former governor of Illinois, was

caught on tape trying to “sell’’ Presi-

dent Obama’s old senate seat for a

high price. Yet he recently

compared himself to Gan-

dhi, Martin Luther King

and Nelson Mandela.

In a seemingly bottom-

less Ponzi scheme, Bernard

L. Madoff is accused of

swindling legions of in-

vestors to the tune of $50

billion. Yet despite the epic

scale of his fraud, and the inevitability

of its collapse, some experts speculate

that he may have had the psychopath’s

belief that he was invincible.

Such people “believe, ‘I’m above

the law,’ and they believe they can-

not be caught,” J. Reid Meloy, a fo-

rensic psychologist, told The

Times’s Julie Creswell and

Landon Thomas Jr. “But the

Achilles’ heel of the psycho-

path is his sense of impunity.’’

Self-delusion is not limited

to internationally notori-

ous scoundrels, however.

As several recent articles

have noted, so-called normal

people often engage in mental tricks,

whether they are looking in the mir-

ror, seeking a bit of extra motivation

or warding off a crushing blow to the

ego.

We can always put off that next bit

of work or our exercise regime for

another hour or another day, we con-

vince ourselves. Or can we?

As Alina Tugend reported in The

Times, most people procrastinate

at some time or other. But those who

believe they do their best work under

the frantic pressure of a deadline

may find that objective reality is not

on their side.

“My research showed that they do

not perform better,’’ Joseph R. Fer-

rari, a professor of psychology at De-

Paul University in Chicago, told Ms.

Tugend. “They just think they do.’’

Those very same procrastinators

may find that they are fooling them-

selves if they rationalize purchasing

another expensive home exercise

machine is the painless way to

achieve fitness, behavioral scientists

caution.

“When you buy these machines,

you probably end up focusing on one

or two attributes, like how easy it

is to use or having it in your home,’’

Ravi Dhar, a professor of marketing

and psychology at Yale University,

told Tara Parker-Pope of The Times.

“You’re not thinking about the bar-

riers, what you’re giving up, like the

time with friends or the Internet.’’

Those pesky behavioral scientists,

taking away our delusions.

For instance, a psychologist ex-

plained to The Times’s Benedict

Carey how many people “self-

handicap,’’ creating ready-made

excuses for their poor performance

or failure, even before they begin to

pursue a goal.

“This is real self-sabotage, like

drinking heavily before a test, skip-

ping practice or using really poor

equipment,’’ the psychologist, Ed-

ward R. Hirt of Indiana University,

told Mr. Carey.

Mr. Carey also wrote of people

with two opposite delusions: the

so-called “impostor phenomenon”

in which people envision their suc-

cesses as undeserved, and those who

see their achievements as greater

than they really are.

The “impostor phenomenon” may

lower expectations, to alleviate

pressure, Rory O’Brien McElwee,

of Rowan University in New Jersey,

told Mr. Carey. But for those who in-

flate their achievements, Mr. Carey

wrote that “self-serving delusion

probably helps people to get out of

bed and chase their pet projects.’’

Mr. Blagojevich of Illinois was no

doubt self-serving. At his impeach-

ment trial, he said in his own de-

fense: “I did a lot of things that were

mostly right.’’

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON

THE CAPITAL BECAME flustered when, on

his first full day in the White House, President

Obama was photographed in the Oval Office

without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logi-

cal explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had

cranked up the thermostat.

“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior

adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but

strategically located office next door to his boss. “He

likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”

Thus did a rule of the George W. Bush administra-

tion — coat and tie in the Oval Office at all times —

come to an end, only the first of many signs that a more

informal culture is growing up in the White House un-

der new management. Mr. Obama promised to bring

change to Washington and he has — not just in sub-

stance, but in presidential style.

Some of Mr. Obama’s work habits are already be-

coming clear. He shows up at the Oval Office shortly

before 9 in the morning, roughly two hours later than

his early-to-bed, early-to-rise predecessor. Mr. Obama

likes to have his workout first thing in the morning, at

6:45. (Mr. Bush slipped away to exercise midday.)

He reads several papers, eats breakfast with his

family and helps pack his daughters, Malia, 10, and

Sasha, 7, off to school before making the 30-second

commute downstairs — a definite perk for a man try-

ing to balance work and family life. He eats dinner

with his family, then often returns to work; aides have

seen him in the Oval Office as late as 10 p.m., reading

briefing papers for the next day.

“Even as he is sober about these challenges, I have

Who’s Fooling Whom?

III VI VIIIWORLD TRENDS

Lithium is in demand.

Bolivia has a lot of it.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Stories of the oceans,

told grain by grain.

ARTS & STYLES

Recalling the glitter

of Busby Berkeley.

INTELLIGENCE: Overcoming irrationality in the Middle East, Page III.

For comments, write to nytweekly@nytimes.com.

Audacity in Shirt Sleeves

Con tin ued on Page IV

OBAMA’S WASHINGTON/PAGE IV

● Will stimulus plan bring a resurgence of liberal ideals?

● Envoys and cabinet members jockey for power.

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O P I N I O N & C O M M E N TA R Y

II MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2009

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Rules of the Game

New Day on Climate Change

President George W. Bush, and his

aides, could hardly wait to get rid of all

those tiresome arms-control treaties

when they took office. They tore up

the 1972 antiballistic missile treaty to

make way for a still largely imaginary

missile defense system. They opposed

the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban

Treaty and never made a serious ef-

fort to win a ban on the production of

fissile material (the core of a nuclear

weapon).

Mr. Bush grudgingly signed his one

and only arms-reduction treaty with

the Russians in 2002. That means that

today — 20 years after the fall of the

Berlin Wall — the United States and

Russia still have more than 20,000 nu-

clear weapons, with thousands ready

to launch within minutes.

The bad news, of course, didn’t stop

there.

While Mr. Bush and his team were

ridiculing treaties and arms control

negotiations as “old think,” North Ko-

rea tested a nuclear device, Iran has

been working overtime to produce

nuclear fuel (usable for a reactor or a

bomb) and many other countries are

weighing whether they need to get into

the nuclear game.

President Obama pledged to ad-

dress these dangers when he was

campaigning. In her recent confirma-

tion hearing, Secretary of State Hil-

lary Rodham Clinton argued that this

country’s best hope of doing that is to

restore treaties and a rules-based sys-

tem. Now they have to translate that

lofty intent into urgent action.

The first challenge is Russia, the

only other country besides the United

States with enough weapons to blow

up the planet. The administration can

start by negotiating a follow-on to the

1991 Start Treaty, which is set to expire

in December. The pact contains the

only rules for verifying any nuclear

agreement, and it provides an oppor-

tunity for making even deeper cuts.

The two sides could easily go to 1,000

weapons each in this next round, down

from the 1,700 to 2,200 deployed weap-

ons agreed on in the 2002 Moscow

treaty.

We applaud the administration’s

pledge to work for Senate ratification

of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

and to revive negotiations on a fissile

material production ban. Neither will

be easy to achieve, but both are essen-

tial .

During the campaign, Mr. Obama

opposed plans to build a new nuclear

warhead. He was right. There is no

military or scientific need. Defense

Secretary Robert Gates is a strong

advocate of the program. Mr. Obama

should resist. If the United States is go-

ing to have any credibility in arguing

that others must restrain their nuclear

ambitions, it must restrain its own.

Mr. Bush repeatedly warned about

the dangers of nuclear weapons fall-

ing into the hands of terrorists. He

was right. But he never put in place

the strategy needed to ensure that

that never happens. President Obama

must do better. He can start by restor-

ing the rules of the game.

WASHINGTON

The president’s disgust at Wall

Street looters was good. But we need

more. We need disgorgement.

Disgorgement is when courts

force wrongdoers to repay ill-gotten

gains. And I’m ill at the gains gotten

by scummy executives while they’re

getting bailed out by us.

With the equally laconic Tim Gei-

thner beside him, President Obama

called it “shameful” and “the height

of irresponsibility” for Wall Street

bankers to give themselves $18.4 bil-

lion worth of bonuses for last year.

They should know better, he

coolly chided. But big shots — even

Mr. Obama’s — seem impervious to

knowing better. (Following fast on

Geithner’s own tax oversight, Tom

Daschle withdrew his nomination

after it was publicized that he was

forced to pay $140,000 in back taxes

he owed partly for three years’ use of

a car and a driver provided by a pri-

vate equity firm.)

At least the old robber barons made

great products. When you make mon-

ey out of money, unmoored from mo-

rality and regulators, it must unhinge

you. How else to explain corporate

welfare executives partridge hunt-

ing in England, buying French jets

and shopping for Lamborghinis?

Mr. Obama was less bracing than

during the campaign, when A.I.G.

executives were caught going to posh

retreats after taking an $85 billion

bailout. He called for them to be fired

and to reimburse the federal Trea-

sury. Now that he has the power to

act, Mr. Obama spoke, as his spokes-

man Robert Gibbs put it, “like that

disappointed parent that doesn’t em-

barrass you in the mall, but you feel

like you’ve let somebody down.”

That’s not enough, not with the pres-

ident and Geithner continuing to dole

out what may end up being a trillion

dollars to these “malefactors of great

wealth,” as Teddy Roosevelt put it.

USA Today, the national daily

newspaper wrote about “the A.I.G.

effect:” executives finding ways

to spend more discreetly, choosing

lesser-known luxury hotels and $110

pinot noir instead of the $175 variety.

More than a disappointed parent,

they need a special prosecutor. Any-

one who gave bonuses after accept-

ing federal aid should be fired, and

that money should be disgorged to

the Treasury.

Senator Claire McCaskill popped

out a bill to limit the pay of anyone

at firms taking federal money to no

more than the president makes —

$400,000. This was before Obama

proposed a cap of $500,000 in cash

compensation for executives.

“These people are idiots,” she said

on the Senate floor. “You can’t use

taxpayer money to pay out $18 billion

in bonuses. ... Right now they’re on

the hook to us. And they owe us some-

thing other than a fancy wastebasket

and $50 million jet.”

Senator Chuck Grassley urged the

administration to snatch back the

bonuses. “They ought to give ’em

back or we should go get ’em,” the Re-

publican told me. “If this were Japan

and a corporate executive did what

is being done on Wall Street, they’d

either go out and commit suicide or

go before the board of directors and

the country and take a very deep bow

and apologize.”

He added, “Once in a while, some

C.E.O. comes and talks to me and

I wonder if they’re laughing under

their breath at having to talk to some-

one who makes 1 percent of what they

make.”

Treasury officials and Representa-

tive Barney Frank are dubious about

recouping bonuses. “Paulson let the

cat out of the bag,” Frank said of Hen-

ry Paulson, Geithner’s predecessor,

“and it can’t be gotten back.”

But aren’t taxpayers shareholders

in these corporations now, and can’t

shareholders sue or scream “You

misspent my money!” like Judy Hol-

liday?

“In ‘The Solid Gold Cadillac,’ ” said

Frank, who knows the movie.

“We got some preferred shares,”

he mused, “but I don’t think we could

sue on that basis.”

Rudy Giuliani resurfaced recently

to defend corporate bonuses, telling

CNN that cutting them would mean

less spending in restaurants and

stores.

Stupid. Even without bonuses,

these gazillionaires can still eat out.

Some Obama policy makers still

buy into the notion that if they’re too

strict, these economic royalists, to

use F.D.R.’s epithet, might balk at

the bailout, preferring perks over the

prospect of their banks going out of

business.

The president needs to think like

New York state’s attorney general,

Andrew Cuomo. “ ‘Performance

bonus’ for many of the C.E.O.’s is

an oxymoron,” he said. “I would tell

them, a) you don’t deserve a bonus,

b) where are you going to go? and c) if

you want to go, go.”

E D I T O R I A L S O F T H E T I M E S

In one dramatic stroke, President

Obama has removed any doubts that

he intends to break sharply from

President George W. Bush’s passive

approach to climate change. At a news

conference on January 26, Mr. Obama

directed the Environmental Protec-

tion Agency to consider immediately

California’s application to set its own

rules on greenhouse-gas emissions

from cars and trucks. Mr. Bush had

rejected that application.

Once California receives permission

to move ahead — as it surely will — 13

states, and possibly more, are expect-

ed to impose similar rules. The result

will be to force automakers here and

overseas to begin producing cars and

trucks that are considerably more fuel

efficient than today’s models.

The California decision is of great

significance not only for that reason

but for what it says about Mr. Obama’s

commitment to the cause of reversing

the rise in greenhouse gases. Mr. Bush

began his tenure by breaking a cam-

paign promise to regulate carbon di-

oxide and by withdrawing the United

States from the Kyoto agreement on

climate change. Mr. Obama begins

his with a clear signal that he will not

hesitate to use the Clean Air Act and

other federal statutes to fight global

warming.

California has long had the right to

set stronger air pollution standards

than the rest of the nation, provided

it has federal permission. Its earlier

requests to set stronger air pollution

standards were routinely approved,

but in this case the Bush administra-

tion said no, dredging up all manner

of arguments to support its case. One

was that California had not demon-

strated “extraordinary and compel-

ling” reasons to limit greenhouse

gases; another was that a national

regulatory system was preferable to

state-by-state laws — even though the

administration itself had shown no in-

terest in a national system.

In a companion move, Mr. Obama

directed the Transportation Depart-

ment to finalize the interim nation-

wide fuel-efficiency standards called

for in the 2007 energy bill. These stan-

dards would eventually require fuel-

efficiency increases in the American

car and light-truck fleet to roughly 35

miles per gallon (15 kilometers per li-

ter) by 2020 from the current average

of 27 m.p.g. (11.5 k.p.l.). The California

standards would require automakers

to reach the same 35 m.p.g. target four

years ahead of the federal timetable.

The California rules cannot by them-

selves stop the rise in greenhouse gas-

es. In addition to regulatory controls,

Mr. Obama must eventually embrace

a broader strategy involving major

federal investments in clean-energy

technologies and, down the road, some

effort to put a price on greenhouse-gas

emissions in order to unlock private

investment. But after eight years of

inaction, this is a wonderful start.

MAUREEN DOWD

Disgorge, Wall Street Fat Cats

In the documentary film “Pray the

Devil Back to Hell,” a woman whose

family had endured the agony of civil

war in Liberia talks about a dream

she had in 2003 in which someone

urged her to organize the women of

her church to pray for peace.

“It was a crazy dream,” she said.

Prayer seemed like a flimsy coun-

terweight to the forces of Charles

Taylor, the tyrannical president at

the time, and the brutally predatory

rebels who were trying to oust him

from power. The violence was ex-

cruciating. People were dying by the

tens of thousands. Rape had become

commonplace. Children were starv-

ing. Scenes from the film showed

even small children whose limbs had

been amputated.

The movie, for me, was about much

more than the tragic, and then ulti-

mately uplifting events in Liberia.

It was about the power of ordinary

people to intervene in their own fate.

The first thing that struck me about

the film was the way it captured the

almost unimaginable horror that

war imposes on noncombatants: the

looks of terror on the faces of people

fleeing gunfire in the streets; chil-

dren crouching and flinching, almost

paralyzed with fear by the sound of

nearby explosions; homes engulfed

in flames.

It’s the kind of environment that

breeds feelings of helplessness. But

Leymah Gbowee, the woman who

had the crazy dream, would have

none of that, and she should be a les-

son to all of us.

The filmmakers Abigail Disney

and Gini Reticker show us how Ms.

Gbowee not only rallied the women

at her Lutheran church to pray for

peace, but organized them into a

full-blown, all-women peace initia-

tive that spread to other Christian

churches — and then to women of the

Muslim faith.

They wanted an end to the maim-

ing and the killing, especially the de-

struction of a generation of children.

They wanted to eradicate the plague

of rape. They wanted all the things

that noncombatants crave whenever

the warrior crowd — in the United

States, the Middle East, Asia, wher-

ever — decides it’s time once again to

break out the bombs and guns and let

the mindless killing begin.

When the Liberian Christians

reached out to “their Muslim sisters,”

there was some fear on both sides

that such an alliance could result in a

dilution of faith. But the chaos and the

killing had reached such extremes

that the religious concerns were set

aside in the interest of raising a pow-

erful collective voice.

The women prayed, yes, but they

also moved outside of the churches

and the mosques to demonstrate, to

protest, to enlist all who would listen

in the cause of peace. Working with

hardly any resources, save their ex-

traordinary will and intense desire to

end the conflict, the women’s initial

efforts evolved into a movement, the

Liberian Mass Action for Peace.

Thousands of women showed up

day after day, praying, waving signs,

singing, dancing, chanting and agi-

tating for peace.

Nothing could stop the rallies at the

market, not the fierce heat of the sun,

nor drenching rainstorms, nor the

publicly expressed anger of Mr. Tay-

lor, who was embarrassed by the pro-

tests. Public support for the women

grew and eventually Mr. Taylor, and

soon afterward the rebel leaders, felt

obliged to meet with them.

The moral authority of this move-

ment that seemed to have arisen

from nowhere had become one of the

significant factors pushing the war-

ring sides to the peace table. Peace

talks were eventually held in Accra,

the capital of Ghana, and when it

looked as if they were about to break

down, Ms. Gbowee and nearly 200 of

her followers staged a sit-in at the site

of the talks, demanding that the two

sides stay put until an agreement was

reached.

A tentative peace was established,

and Mr. Taylor went into exile in Ni-

geria. The women continued their

activism. Three years ago, on Janu-

ary 16, 2006, in a triumph for the

mothers and wives and sisters and

aunts and grandmothers who had

worked so courageously for peace,

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was sworn in

as the president of Liberia — the first

woman elected president of a country

in Africa.

“Pray the Devil Back to Hell” re-

minds us of the incredible power

available to the most ordinary of peo-

ple if they are willing to act with cour-

age and unwavering commitment.

BOB HERBERT

A Crazy Dream

Liberian women demonstrate the power of commitment.

Repubblica NewYork

W O R L D T R E N D S

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2009 III

By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

MOSCOW — Over the last eight

years, as Vladimir V. Putin has

amassed ever more power, Russians

have often responded with a collec-

tive shrug, as if to say: Go ahead,

control everything — as long as we

can have our new cars and amply

stocked supermarkets, our sturdy

ruble and cheap vacations in the

Turkish sun.

But now the worldwide financial

crisis is abruptly ending an oil-driv-

en economic boom here, and the un-

spoken contract between Mr. Putin

and his people is being thrown into

doubt. In newspaper articles, among

political analysts, even in corners of

the Kremlin, questions can be heard.

Will Russians admire Mr. Putin as

much when oil is at $40 a barrel as

they did when it was at $140 a barrel?

And if Russia’s economy seriously

falters, will his system of hard, per-

sonal power prove to be a trap for

him? Can it relieve public anger, and

can he escape the blame?

“We talk about a lack of democracy

in Russia, but I like my own formula

for the country, which is authoritari-

anism with the consent of the gov-

erned,” said Dmitri Trenin, director

of the Carnegie Moscow Center. “And

it can be taken away.”

“The present rulers know they

will not be toppled by Kasparov,” Mr.

Trenin said, referring to Garry K.

Kasparov, the former chess cham-

pion whose political challenges to

Mr. Putin can seem quixotic. “But if

the working people of Russia decide

that they have had enough, that will

be the end of it. It happened to Gor-

bachev, and it almost happened to

Yeltsin.”

Few are predicting Mr. Putin’s

downfall any time soon, especially

considering how methodically he has

undermined the opposition. Many

Russians believe he rescued them

from the misery of the 1990s, and the

polls say his popularity remains very

high.

But those polls also show his popu-

larity slipping a bit, amid far darker

indicators. The unemployment rate

is soaring, banks are failing and the

ruble has dropped so fast in value

that Russians are again hiding their

money in dollars in their apartments.

Sporadic protests have broken out as

some factories close or cut produc-

tion.

For now, the Kremlin is desper-

ately spending down the hundreds of

billions of dollars in reserves that it

put away in good times, all the while

trying to quell comparisons to Rus-

sia’s economic meltdown in 1998,

when the government, under Boris

Yeltsin, defaulted on its debt. Mr. Pu-

tin, the current prime minister and

former president, and his protégé,

President Dmitri A. Medvedev, try

to assure the public that they are ad-

dressing its pain.

Yet Mr. Putin has created a gov-

ernment so highly centralized and so

resistant to criticism that it is unclear

whether it can respond adeptly to

rising dissatisfaction. Government

officials are unaccustomed to vying

in contested elections, let alone to

reaching out for popular support.

Aleksandr A. Auzan, an econo-

mist at a research institute set up by

President Medvedev, said that in the

Putin system, “there is not a relation-

ship between the authorities and the

people through the Parliament or

through nonprofit organizations or

other structures. The relationship to

the people is basically through televi-

sion. And under the conditions of the

crisis, that can no longer work.”

In other words, if people feel their

government is not heeding their

complaints, they may think their

only option is to take to the streets.

Recently, Mr. Putin has begun

blaming the United States. He began

his keynote address at the World

Economic Forum in Davos, Swit-

zerland by saying, “In the last few

months, virtually every speech on

this subject has started with criti-

cism of the United States. But I will

do nothing of the kind.” And then he

went on to do just that.

By SIMON ROMERO

UYUNI, Bolivia — In the rush to

build the next generation of hybrid

or electric cars, a sobering fact con-

fronts both automakers and govern-

ments seeking to lower their reli-

ance on foreign oil: almost half of the

world’s lithium, the mineral needed

to power the vehicles, is found here in

Bolivia — a country that may not be

willing to surrender it so easily.

Japanese and European companies

are busily trying to strike deals to tap

the resource, but a nationalist senti-

ment about the lithium is building

quickly in the government of Presi-

dent Evo Morales, an ardent critic

of the United States who has already

nationalized Bolivia’s oil and natural

gas industries.

Adding to the pressure, indigenous

groups here in the remote salt desert

where the mineral lies are pushing

for a share in the eventual bounty.

“We know that Bolivia can become

the Saudi Arabia of lithium,” said

Francisco Quisbert, 64, the leader of

Frutcas, a group of salt gatherers and

quinoa farmers on the edge of Salar

de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat.

“We are poor, but we are not stupid

peasants. The lithium may be Boliv-

ia’s, but it is also our property.”

The new Constitution that Mr. Mo-

rales managed to pass last month

bolstered such claims. One of its pro-

visions could give Indians control

over the natural resources in their

territory .

None of this is dampening efforts

by foreigners, including the Japanese

conglomerates Mitsubishi and Sumi-

tomo and a group led by a French in-

dustrialist, Vincent Bolloré. In recent

months all three have sent represen-

tatives to La Paz, the capital, to meet

with Mr. Morales’s government about

gaining access to the lithium, a criti-

cal component for the batteries that

power cars and other electronics.

“There are salt lakes in Chile and

Argentina, and a promising lithium

deposit in Tibet, but the prize is clear-

ly in Bolivia,” Oji Baba, an executive

in Mitsubishi’s Base Metals Unit, said

in an interview in La Paz.

Demand for lithium, long used in

small amounts in mood-stabilizing

drugs and thermonuclear weapons,

has climbed as makers of batteries

for electronic devices use the miner-

al. But the automotive industry holds

the biggest untapped potential for

lithium, analysts say. Since it weighs

less than nickel, also used in batter-

ies, it would allow electric cars to

store more energy and travel longer

distances.

With governments, including the

Obama administration, seeking to

increase fuel efficiency and reduce

their dependence on imported oil, pri-

vate companies are focusing their at-

tention on this desolate corner of the

Andes, where Quechua-speaking In-

dians subsist on the remains of an an-

cient inland sea by bartering the salt

they carry out on llama caravans.

The United States Geological Sur-

vey says 4.9 million metric tons of

lithium could potentially be extracted

in Bolivia, compared with 2.7 million

in Chile, 1 million in China and just

370,000 in the United States.

Amid such potential, foreigners

seeking to tap Bolivia’s lithium re-

serves must navigate the policies of

Mr. Morales, 49, who has clashed re-

peatedly with American, European

and even South American investors.

Mr. Morales shocked neighboring

Brazil, with whom he is on friendly

terms, by nationalizing its natural

gas projects here in 2006 and seeking

a sharp rise in prices. He carried out

his latest nationalization before the

vote on the Constitution, sending sol-

diers to occupy the operations of Brit-

ish oil giant BP.

Comibol, the state agency that

oversees mining projects, is invest-

ing about $6 million in a small plant

near the village of Río Grande on the

edge of Salar de Uyuni. It hopes to

begin Bolivia’s first industrial-scale

effort to mine lithium from the white,

moon-like landscape. Mr. Morales

wants the plant finished by the end of

this year.

Over a meal of llama stew and a

Pepsi, Marcelo Castro, 48, the manag-

er overseeing the project, explained

that along with processing lithium,

the plant had another objective.

“Of course, lithium is the mineral

that will lead us to the post-petroleum

era,” said Mr. Castro. “But in order to

go down that road, we must raise the

revolutionary consciousness of our

people, starting on the floor of this

very factory.”

Geologists and economists are

fiercely debating whether the lith-

ium reserves outside of Bolivia are

enough to meet the climbing global

demand.

On the flat salt desert of Uyuni,

such debate seems remote to those

still laboring as their ancestors did,

scraping salt off the ground into cone-

shaped piles. The lithium found under

the surface of this desert seems even

more remote for these 21st-century

salt gatherers.

“I’ve heard of the lithium, but I only

hope it creates work for us,” said Pe-

dro Camata, 19, his face shielded from

the unforgiving sun by a ski mask.

“Without work out here, one is dead.”

Growing up in Israel, we heard one

piece of news almost as predictably

as the arrival of Hanukkah. Amid

fanfare and expectations, a United

States president would announce

plans to broker Mideast peace. But

with the exception of Jimmy Carter’s

Egypt-Israel accords, these ambi-

tious attempts have fallen short. As

recent violent eruptions in Gaza dem-

onstrate, the Israelis and Palestin-

ians are just as entangled in conflict

as they have ever been.

As President Obama begins his

own efforts, placing calls to Mideast

leaders on his first day in office, we

fear he may follow in his predeces-

sors’ footsteps. His biggest challenge

isn’t finding a reasonable solution —

there have been plenty of those. It’s

overcoming human irrationality.

From a purely rational perspective,

the Mideast problem has at least one

obvious solution: Israel agrees to give

the Palestinians autonomy over Gaza

and the West Bank and the Palestin-

ians cease their aggression against the

Jewish state. Negotiators and presi-

dents must have felt bewildered at the

rejection of such perfectly reasonable

solutions. Two findings in behavioral

economics help explain the problem.

In one study, researchers gave

subjects $10 to split with another,

unknown, participant in the next

room. They could split the money any

way they wanted ($5 and $5, $7 and

$3, etc.). The catch was that the other

subject could decide whether to accept

the split. If the “decider” accepted

the split, each subject got to keep the

money. But if the decider declined,

both parties left empty-handed. There

was only one round to the game, and

no negotiation was allowed.

Most people presented their coun-

terparts with a 50/50 split, which was

always accepted. But when a splitter

got greedy and kept a larger portion of

the money, the decider almost always

rejected the offer. From a rational

perspective, of course, it made sense

to accept any monetary offer, however

uneven, because some money is bet-

ter than none. But the receivers could

not help feeling a small cut was just

not fair. Fairness overrules economic

sense.

In the Mideast conflict, negotiators

should focus on perceptions of fair-

ness, and specifically on framing any

proposal as a 50-50 split.

The second force in play is process.

Researchers find that employees up

for a raise care as much about the

evaluation process and whether they

felt heard as about the amount of the

raise.

While it would be naïve to imagine

that Mideast peace could be achieved

just by giving each side a voice, as

long as either side feels the process is

unfair, no solution, however reason-

able, will be accepted. Perhaps the

answer, counterintuitive as it sounds,

is to stop looking for a solution and

focus on the process.

We hope President Obama tackles

the issues of fairness and process

underlying any peace negotiation. As

long as these core issues of human be-

havior are not addressed, any compro-

mise, even a reasonable one, will fail.

Bolivia Keeps Tight Grip on Resource of the Future

NOAH FRIEDMAN-RUDOVSKY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Demand is soaring for lithium to make batteries, and Bolivia controls almost half of the world’s supply. The mineral lies beneath flats like these in Uyuni, Bolivia, where residents harvest salt into large piles.

NEWS ANALYSIS

Harsh Times Present a Threat to Putin’s Plans

For the Mideast,process matters asmuch as solutions.

JAMES HILL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

INTELLIGENCE

ORI AND ROM BRAFMAN

SeekingPeace

Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman are co-authors of “Sway: The IrresistiblePull of Irrational Behavior.” Ori is aninternational speaker on manage-ment; Rom is a psychologist who lec-tures on interpersonal dynamics. Sendcomments to brafmans@nytimes.com.

Moscow’s nightlife still thrives, but economic strains are growing.

Repubblica NewYork

O B A M A' S WA S H I N G T O N

IV MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2009

By PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — In her first days

as America’s top diplomat, Secretary

of State Hillary Rodham Clinton found

the Middle East portfolio handed off

to a special envoy. Afghanistan and

Pakistan were assigned to a special

representative. And administration of-

ficials expect another special envoy to

be tapped soon to deal with Iran.

So with much of her turf already par-

celed off, Mrs. Clinton made a bid to

take over the China file, which in recent

years has been primarily the respon-

sibility of the Treasury Department

since the major issues with Beijing

tend to be economic. Mrs. Clinton said

the administration needed “a more

comprehensive approach.” The only

problem is that Treasury Secretary

Timothy F. Geithner has no intention of

giving that up.

The opening phase of any admin-

istration involves a certain amount

of jockeying as new players struggle

to define their territory and establish

boundaries with colleagues.

Under Mr. Obama, that may prove

even more complicated. More than any

president in years, he came into office

creating new White House czars and

special envoys to supervise various

issues at home and abroad, overlaying

an additional set of actors upon a bu-

reaucracy already wondering who’s in

charge. Mr. Obama concluded that new

high-powered figures were needed to

force change, but they pose a delicate

management challenge for a president

with no real management experience

beyond his presidential campaign.

“I think it’s actually quite a work-

able model,” said John D. Podesta, who

helped design it as Mr. Obama’s transi-

tion co-chairman. “It doesn’t subjugate

the cabinet officers.” While there will

be multiple players in every key arena,

Mr. Podesta said the new White House

chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, would

be a firm umpire. “It puts a burden

on Rahm to discipline the intramural

sports,” Mr. Podesta said, “but he’s a

strong chief of staff and I don’t think it’s

going to be a problem.”

In addition to naming special envoys

for critical regions, Mr. Obama also cre-

ated a new White House office to over-

see health care, a new White House

office to oversee climate change and

energy, a new White House office to

oversee urban policy and a new White

House office to oversee technology. He

also created a new group of economic

advisers to go along with the two eco-

nomic councils the president already

has. He plans to name a czar to oversee

the economic rescue of the auto indus-

try.

Many of the players bring long, inter-

woven histories to the table. Mrs. Clin-

ton, for example, reportedly once got

Mr. Emanuel demoted when he worked

in Bill Clinton’s White House, though

they later grew closer. And when Mr.

Clinton considered making former

Senator George J. Mitchell secretary

of state, Mrs. Clinton was believed to

have favored Madeleine K. Albright.

Now Mr. Mitchell is the special envoy

to the Middle East.

The economic arena had the most

potential for overlap overload, particu-

larly because Mr. Obama appointed

Mr. Geithner to be Treasury secretary

but recruited Lawrence H. Summers,

a former Treasury secretary himself,

to head the National Economic Council

in the White House. In theory, Mr. Gei-

thner has the more prominent position.

Mr. Summers, who once had all that,

now officially has a staff job charged

with coordinating policy across agen-

cies. But anyone who knows Mr. Sum-

mers understands the outsize role he

will play.

By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON — As President

Obama and Congress barrel toward the

latest emergency program to resusci-

tate the American economy, one ques-

tion is looming over their search for a

cure: Can the government fashion a fast

and efficient economic stimulus while

also seizing the moment to remake

America?

For now, Mr. Obama and his aides

are insisting they can accomplish both

goals, following their mantra of using

the urgency of the economic crisis to ac-

complish larger — and long-delayed —

reforms that never garnered sufficient

votes in ordinary times.

In fact, at various times in American

history, moments like this one have

been used for big programs, from in-

tegrating the armed forces to creating

Social Security and, later, Medicare.

So it is little wonder that everyone

with a big, stalled, transformative proj-

ect — green energy programs, broad-

band networks that reach into rural

America, health insurance for the newly

unemployed or uninsured — is citing

the precedent of Franklin D. Roosevelt,

and declaring that a new New Deal is

overdue.

But the question that the Senate has

begun debating is whether grand ambi-

tions are getting in the way of pulling

the United States out of a downward

spiral. And so there are warnings that

much of his social experimentation did

not have a big impact on America’s eco-

nomic recovery, which took years.

“When you are filling a hole this

big and adding to America’s debt on

such a large scale, you need to make

sure every dollar is aimed for the eco-

nomic boost you need,” said Martin S.

Feldstein, a Harvard economist who

warned more than a year ago that the

United States economy was about to

be hit.

Mr. Feldstein has provided the eco-

nomic arguments behind Republican

objections that Mr. Obama is starting

a long-term expansion of government,

after decades in which the United States

has relied on market solutions and en-

couraged nations around the world to

do the same.

After years of battling with a White

House that questioned the science be-

hind global warming, Democratic law-

makers see a chance to begin programs

aimed at environmental protection,

using economic justifications for efforts

like developing low-emission cars. And

with a Democrat in the White House,

they also see an opening to push for in-

creased spending on education.

The efforts are fueled by a liberal base

that supported Mr. Obama’s promise

that he would tackle the biggest issues.

That same base is concerned that the

long slog ahead will force a delay or an

abandonment of those ambitions.

As a result, there is $54 billion in the

House bill for new forms of “American

energy,” a phrase with an air of na-

tionalism, along with a series of “Buy

America” requirements of dubious le-

gality under trade treaties; $141 billion

for education; $24 billion for lowering

health care costs; and $6 billion for

broadband service.

A piece of “emergency” legislation

that would spend heavily to stanch the

killing of jobs is now transforming into

a series of long-term commitments

that are sure to add enormously to the

national debt, and keep adding to it long

after the Panic of 2008 and the reces-

sion — or worse — that it set off are con-

signed to history.

In the Republican response to Mr.

Obama’s address, Senator Mitch McCo-

nnell of Kentucky argued that “perma-

nent spending would be expanded by

about $240 billion” in the House, which

would “lock in bigger and bigger deficits

every year.”

Alice M. Rivlin, an economist at the

Brookings Institution, an independent

research and policy institute, and a

former member of the Federal Reserve,

supports a major stimulus package.

“Because we’re doing this outside the

budget process, it means no one has to

talk about what the long-term effects of

any of this might be,” she said.

She testified recently in Congress

about the need to separate short-term

economic stimulus from a broader

agenda — which embraces everything

from fixing America’s schools to im-

proving health care for children.

“We seem to be counting on the Chi-

nese to keep investing to pay for this,”

Ms. Rivlin said, referring to the huge

amount of United States government

debt held by China, “and we’re assum-

ing that the rest of the world isn’t going

to lose confidence once we use this mo-

ment to spend on a whole range of pro-

grams. And I’m just not sure that’s the

right assumption.”

PETE SOUZA/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY—WHITE HOUSE PHOTO

George W. Bush required a coat and tie at all times, but Mr. Obama has loosened that dress code.

NICHOLAS KAMM/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE—GETTY IMAGES

NEWS ANALYSIS

In a Stimulus Package,Reinvention or Recovery?

Audacious, and Dressed in Shirt Sleeves

New White House Structure Creates Potential for Conflicts

Pushing green energy, health insurance and broadband networks.

never seen him happier,” Mr. Axel-

rod said. “The chance to be under the

same roof with his kids, essentially

to live over the store, to be able to see

them whenever he wants, to wake up

with them, have breakfast and din-

ner with them — that has made him

a very happy man.”

In the West Wing, Mr. Obama is

a bit of a wanderer. When Mr. Bush

wanted to see a staff member, the

aide was summoned to the Oval Of-

fice. But Mr. Obama roams the halls;

one day he turned up in the office of

his press secretary, Robert Gibbs,

who was in the unfortunate posi-

tion of having his feet up on the desk

when the boss walked in.

“Wow, Gibbs,” the press secre-

tary recalls the president saying.

“Just got here and you already have

your feet up.” Mr. Gibbs scrambled

to stand up, surprising Mr. Obama,

who is not yet accustomed to having

people rise when he enters a room.

Under Mr. Bush, punctuality was a

virtue. Meetings started early — the

former president once locked Secre-

tary of State Colin L. Powell out of

the Cabinet Room when Mr. Powell

showed up a few minutes late — and

ended on time. In the Obama White

House, meetings start on time and

often finish late.

When the president recently in-

vited Congressional leaders to 1600

Pennsylvania Avenue to talk about

his economic stimulus package, the

session ran so long that Mr. Obama

wound up apologizing to the law-

makers — even as he kept them talk-

ing, engaging them in the details of

the legislation far more than was

customary for Mr. Bush.

“He was concerned that he was

keeping us,” said Representative

Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republi-

can whip. “He said, ‘I know we need

to get you all out of here at a certain

time.’ But we continued the discus-

sion. What are you going to say? It’s

the president.”

If Mr. Obama’s clock is looser than

Mr. Bush’s, so too are his sartorial

standards. His aides did not quite

know how to dress. Some showed up

in jeans (another no-no under Mr.

Bush), some in coats and ties.

So the president issued an infor-

mal edict for “business casual” on

weekends — and set his own ex-

ample. He showed up for a Saturday

briefing with his chief economic

adviser, Lawrence H. Summers,

dressed in slacks and a gray sweater

over a white buttoned-down shirt.

Veterans of the Bush White House

are shocked.

“I’ll never forget going to work on

a Saturday morning, getting called

down to the Oval Office because

there was something he was mad

about,” said Dan Bartlett, who was

counselor to Mr. Bush. “I had on

khakis and a buttoned-down shirt,

and I had to stand by the door and

get chewed out for about 15 minutes.

He wouldn’t even let me cross the

threshold.”

Mr. Obama’s schedule seems flex-

ible. Mr. Bush began each day, Mon-

day through Saturday, with a top-se-

cret intelligence briefing on security

threats against the United States.

Mr. Obama gets the “president’s dai-

ly brief” on Sundays as well, though

unlike his predecessor, he does not

necessarily put it first on his agenda.

Sometimes Mr. Obama’s economic

briefing, a new addition to the presi-

dential schedule, comes first.

Mr. Obama has not gotten around

to changing the décor. A collection of

decorative green and white plates is

one item remaing from the Bush era.

During a meeting with retired mili-

tary officials Mr. Obama surveyed

the Oval Office with a critical eye.

“He looked around,” said one of his

guests, retired Rear Admiral John

D. Hutson, “and said, ‘I’ve got to do

something about these plates. I’m

not really a plates kind of guy.’ ”

Hillary Clinton may be the top American diplomat, but as a special envoy, George Mitchellhas the Middle East portfolio.

From Page I

Repubblica NewYork

M O N E Y & B U S I N E S S

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2009 V

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By ROXANA POPESCU

SAN ANTONIO DE PINTUYACU, Peru

— Women in this remote Amazon village can

weave fibers from the branch of the chambira

palm tree into practically anything they need

— fishing nets, hammocks, purses, skirts and

dental floss.

But for the last year they have put their hopes

in baskets, weaving hundreds to build inven-

tory for export to the United States. Their first

international buyers are the San Diego Natural

History Museum and San Diego Zoo, and they

plan to sell to other museums and home décor

purveyors.

The enterprise is one of many ventures here

in the Amazon aimed at “productive conserva-

tion,” which advocates say will save the rain

forest by transforming it into a renewable

economic resource for local people — just as

some eco-tourism lodges and other ventures

in places like Africa and Southeast Asia have

tried to do.

The government of Loreto, Peru’s densely

forested and least populous region, organized

the basket project, which is financed by grants

from two nonprofit groups, Nature and Culture

International and the Moore Foundation.

But the program is not without challengers.

Iván Vásquez, president of the Loreto region,

said he had made some enemies for supporting

conservation in a region where fishing and log-

ging have been the primary sources of revenue

for decades.

He called himself “the Quixote of the Ama-

zon.”

“We are part of nature. When we destroy na-

ture, we destroy ourselves,” Mr. Vásquez said.

The basket project was the idea of Noam Sh-

any, an Israeli agronomist and entrepreneur. A

bird-watching trip in 2005 led him to a remote

village on the Tahuayo River, an Amazon tribu-

tary. There, he said, he noticed striking local

baskets for sale in a tourist lodge.

Mr. Shany decided to put his retail experi-

ence to an environmental use. In 2006 he helped

found Procrel, a biodiversity program that has

worked with the regional government to estab-

lish three vast protected reserves. The basket

program is one of several conservation initia-

tives intended to help indigenous peoples.

Artisans get $10 to $12 for each basket, which

sells for $40 in the United States. About a third

of that goes into shipping and distribution, and

the rest is retailer profit, meaning the company

that distributes the baskets gets a little more

per unit than each maker. Mr. Shany and Pro-

crel receive nothing.

The artisan’s cut may not seem substan-

tial, Mr. Shany said, but it is more than double

previous monthly earnings. Two years ago,

households in this region earned as little as

$30 a month selling fish and palm frond roof-

ing at city markets, he said. Today, experienced

weavers can earn up to $100 a month.

The baskets are bringing staples, and stabil-

ity. “Already we’re buying more from the bode-

gas. Rice, sugar, soap,” said Erika Catashunga,

who has just received the first business license

granted to a basket weaver with Procrel, es-

tablishing her as the manager of a nine-village

communal enterprise. Its name is Mi Esper-

anza, or My Hope.

By ERIC PFANNER

PARIS — Two generations ago, the Isle of Man

gave the world the Bee Gees. Now it says it wants

to help the wounded music industry stay alive.

The island, a rainy outpost in the Irish Sea, is

promoting an offbeat remedy for digital piracy,

which the music labels blame for billions of dol-

lars in lost sales. Instead of fighting file-sharing,

the local government wants to embrace it — and

it is trying to enlist a skeptical music industry’s

help.

Under a proposal announced this month, the

80,000 people who live on the Isle of Man would

be able to download unlimited amounts of mu-

sic — perhaps even from notorious peer-to-peer

pirate sites. To make this possible, broadband

subscribers would pay a nominal fee of as little

as £1, or $1.38, a month to their Internet service

providers.

Ron Berry, director of inward investment for

the Isle of Man, said the music industry needed

radical approaches because of the “utter failure”

of its current strategies. Global music sales have

fallen nearly 25 percent since 2000.

Despite nearly a decade of campaigning

against piracy, the industry’s international trade

group estimates, 95 percent of tracks distributed

online are pirated, generating no revenue for the

recording companies.

“A lot of people in the business are concerned

with how much money they are losing, but not

with how much money they could make,” Mr.

Berry said.

Under his proposal, the money collected by

the Internet providers would be sent to a special

agency that would distribute the proceeds to the

copyright owners, including the record labels and

music publishers. They would receive payments

based on how often their music was downloaded

or streamed over the Internet, as they now do in

many countries when it is performed live or on

the radio.

ROXANA POPESCU FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Angela Pacaya, the head of an artisans cooperative in Peru, teased apart a palm branch to get at the fiber used to make baskets for export to the United States.

If You Can’t Eliminate Music Piracy, Charge for It

Basket Enterprise Aids Villagers,And Nature

The Isle of Man did not invent this idea. The

concept of a so-called blanket license to distrib-

ute music digitally has been discussed since the

days at the turn of the century when Napster, be-

fore its rebirth as a legal service, defied the music

industry.

There are precedents for such systems in Eu-

rope, where many countries have mandatory li-

cense fees for television owners to finance public

broadcasting.

Several European countries also impose taxes

on blank CDs as well as audiovisual and comput-

er equipment; the money typically goes to sup-

port cultural industries.

In 2006, a French proposal similar to the one

being discussed on the Isle of Man made it to Par-

liament, but it was rejected after fierce lobbying

from copyright owners. The government later

supported a new approach: requiring Internet

service providers to disconnect persistent pi-

rates.

That plan is still wending its way through the

legislature, but it has drawn interest elsewhere,

including in Britain. (While the Isle of Man

shares a head of state with

the United Kingdom — the

queen — it has its own par-

liament and makes its own

laws.) There, policy makers

are dangling the threat of a

system like France’s plan

to disconnect pirates, to try

to get Internet providers

and the music companies to

agree on ways to stimulate

the development of legiti-

mate digital music sales and to curb piracy.

While the Recording Industry Association of

America, which represents the major labels in

the United States, has backed away from a nearly

six-year campaign of litigation against individual

file-sharers, the music companies’ effort to battle

piracy in other ways dismays some analysts.

“They spend 90 percent of their time trying

to keep me from doing what I want to do and 10

percent of their time trying to make it possible,”

said Gerd Leonhard, author of “The Future of

Music.”

The recording companies say their preferred

approach is to work with individual partners to

increase digital revenue, which accounted for

about 20 percent of the industry’s sales last year,

according to the industry’s global trade group,

the International Federation of the Phonograph-

ic Industry.

John Kennedy, chief exec-

utive of the federation, called

plans like that of the Isle of

Man effectively a “state-

imposed tax that would be

unworkable in practice and

discriminate against con-

sumers who want Internet

access without music ser-

vices.”

The island, perhaps best

known as a tax haven — the government prefers

“tax-efficient jurisdiction” — has taken an inter-

est in digital music and other high-technology

businesses as it seeks to diversify its economy

beyond financial services.

Mr. Berry, the director of inward investment,

said he had begun talks with music companies

to try to gain support for his plan. “Our size, de-

mographics and history of innovation means that

the island could be an ideal test bed,” he said.

GUY JACKSON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Douglas, the capital of the Isle of Man,which is promoting an offbeat idea toremedy pirated downloads of music.

One plan is to chargea tax in exchange for rights to music online.

Repubblica NewYork

S C I E N C E & T E C H N O L O GY

VI MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2009

$*) %./,(" #/&+- '0 #/&+-Rob Holman, a coastal oceanographer from Oregon State University, has collected more than 860 samples of sand, from all continents.

Rodeo Beach

Marin County, Calif.

Dark sand with a

range of metamor-

phic minerals. Grains

are large and round,

suggesting a steep

beach with high

waves.

Vainvamo Beach

Western Samoa

Black sand of

basaltic origin.

Phuket

Thailand

Coarse, angular

grains, possibly

brought in from afar

to replenish eroded

beaches.

Race Point Beach

Provincetown, Mass.

East Coast sand is

mostly clear quartz

mixed with darker,

heavier minerals ...

Lantana, Fla.

... which break up

and are lost offshore

as the sand moves

south, leaving fine

white quartz grains.

Old Course Beach

St. Andrews, Scotland

What most people

think of as “sand,” a

mix of quartz and

other minerals.

Red Beach

Santorini, Greece

Relatively fresh and

angular grains,

probably from a local

volcanic source.

Al Mamzar Beach

Dubai, U.A.E.

Fine grains from shell

fragments persist at

this site because the

beach is protected

from large waves.

Mahana Bay

Big Island, Hawaii

A green beach of

glassy olivine sands

from local volcanic

sources.

Pipeline

Oahu, Hawaii

With no large rivers

to provide sediment,

much of the sand is

shell fragments.

Isla Floreana

Galápagos Islands

Olivine-rich sand

from local volcanic

sources.

Ayers Rock

Australia

Not beach sand, but

a fine-grained sand

that is red from its

iron content.

Nouakchott

Mauritania

Very fine-grained

sand blown in from

the Sahara.

Biak Island

Indonesia

Well-rounded sand

composed mostly of

shell fragments.

THE NEW YORK TIMES; PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVE REINERTSources: Rob Holman; Oregon State University Coastal Imaging Lab

Sand images shown

approximately twice

actual size.

By CORNELIA DEAN

CORVALLIS, Oregon — As a young

geophysicist in the 1980s, Rob Hol-

man attended a conference in San

Francisco that included a field trip to

a beach. Dr. Holman, who grew up in-

land, in Ottawa, stared at the ocean,

assessing the strengths and vectors

of the waves and currents. But when

he looked around, everyone else was

studying the sand.

He realized, he recalled, that “sand

is not the same everywhere.” So he

started collecting it. “I collected a few

samples and put them in jars,” he said.

“Then I had so many I built a rack.

Then I built three more racks. Then I

built four more.”

Today Dr. Holman is best known as

a coastal oceanographer at Oregon

State University whose computerized

photography system, called Argus,

has given researchers new ways to

observe and measure beaches. But he

still collects sand, which he displays on

shelves in the corridor outside his of-

fice. By now he has almost a thousand

samples. They come from his travels

and from geologists and amateurs all

over the world (including this report-

er) who send him grainy shipments in

envelopes, plastic bags, paper towels

and other wrappings. Each offering is

dried and transferred to glass labora-

tory jars a few centimeters high, which

Dr. Holman labels by latitude and

longitude of their site, as best he can

determine them from the sometimes

sketchy information his contributors

provide.

The collection includes sand from all

continents, including Antarctica.

Geology students at the university

study his collection, and they can learn

a lot from it. “This row is a north to

south transect along the East Coast,”

he said one day recently, pointing to

tubes containing samples collected at

American sites from Cape Cod to Key

West. “It just gets lighter and finer.”

That is because most of the time sand

is not stationary on the beach. On the

East Coast, “the big waves come in

from the northeast, and they drive the

littoral drift predominantly from north

to south,” Dr. Holman said, referring

to the longshore movement of sand.

By the time a grain of sand washes

up on a beach in Florida, it has been

battered by waves for a long time.

“The physical action of being continu-

ally beaten causes the grains to break

down, the angular corners to break

off,” he said. “They become more

rounded.”

And relatively dense mineral grains,

like garnet, have settled out. The re-

sult is a row of samples shifting from

the relatively dark, coarse grains of

the Northeast to the fine white beach

sand of the Southeast.

“There are a number of characteris-

tics you can look at — the nature of the

sand and the shape, where would the

minerals come from, different trans-

port and aging,” he said. “Those all af-

fect the sand you see on the beach.”

Dr. Holman developed the Argus

system during research he began

about 20 years ago at the Army Corps

of Engineers research pier on the coast

at Duck, North Carolina. Today, there

are Argus installations at Duck and in

Oregon, California, Hawaii, England,

the Netherlands, Australia, New Zea-

land, Spain, Italy and Brazil.

Researchers assigned to the Duck

pier send instruments into the surf to

make precise measurements of the un-

derwater topography in the surf zone,

particularly the formation and move-

ment of sandbars.

Understanding these sandbars is

critical to the study of beach erosion

and climate-related sea level rise, but

the surf zone is a notoriously hostile

research environment. As a practi-

cal matter, the measurements made

routinely at Duck are unobtainable

almost anywhere else.

Dr. Holman used the Duck instru-

ment data and time-lapse film from a

camera he mounted on a tower at the

Corps installation to figure out how to

correlate photographic information to

changes in the topography under the

surf. The results were surprising. For

one thing, sandbars were not moving

in simple patterns, as many coastal

scientists had thought they did. “The

biggest thing we learned is how much

more complicated it is than we thought

it was,” he said. “There is a richness of

morphologies.”

Using Argus data, scientists can

watch, almost in real time, as sand-

bars appear, disappear, curve, drift,

breach and otherwise act up under the

camouflage of breaking waves. The

system can even be used to spot rip

currents in real time.

S. Jeffress Williams, a coastal geolo-

gist with the United States Geological

Survey, called the system “a critical

piece of new technology.”

“The Argus system allows us to

quantify and document visually the

changes that take place along the

coast on a variety of different time

frames,” he said.

Grains of Sand Offer Lessons About the Oceans

LEAH NASH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Rob Holman, with sand samples from nearly 1,000 sites aroundthe world, developed a system toobserve beaches.

F I N D I N G S

The Wrong Foot ForwardThe way four-legged animals

walk has been well known since

the 1880s, when Eadweard Muy-

bridge’s motion-capture photo-

graphs revealed the sequence of leg

movements.

They walk this way: the left hind

leg moves forward, followed by the

left foreleg, right hind leg and right

foreleg, in order.

You’d think that artists, taxider-

mists, toy designers and others

responsible for depicting animals

would get it right.

But a study by Gabor Horvath

of Eotvos University in Hungary

and colleagues shows that this is

often not the case.

After analyzing more than 300

depictions of walking animals in

museums, veterinary books and

toy models, the researchers report

that to their surprise in almost half

of them the leg positions are wrong.

HENRY FOUNTAIN

Hunting and Fishing May Hasten EvolutionHot Liquids Ease a Cold

Like ice for a burn or a lozenge for

a cough, a cup of hot tea is an age-old

balm for sniffles, sneezing and stuffi-

ness.

Hot liquids, it is said, help loosen

secretions in the chest and sinuses,

making them easier to expel and ulti-

mately clearing up congestion.

The fluids are also meant to re-

verse dehydration.

But only recently have scientists

examined whether the effect is real.

In December, researchers at the

Common Cold Center at Cardiff Uni-

versity in Britain looked at whether

hot beverages relieved the symp-

toms of 30 people suffering from the

flu or common cold any better than

drinks at room temperature. They

found that the contrast was marked.

“The hot drink provided im-

mediate and sustained relief from

symptoms of runny nose, cough,

sneezing, sore throat, chilliness and

tiredness,” they reported, “whereas

the same drink at room temperature

only provided relief from symptoms

of runny nose, cough and sneezing.”

Other researchers have looked at

hot foods like chicken soup and had

similar results.

Chicken soup also contains

cold-fighting compounds that help

dissolve mucus in the lungs and sup-

press inflammation.

ANAHAD O’CONNOR

By CORNELIA DEAN

Human actions are increasing the

rate of evolutionary change in plants

and animals in ways that may hurt

their long-term prospects for survival,

scientists are reporting.

Hunting, commercial fishing and

some conservation regulations, like

minimum size limits on fish, may all

work against species health.

The idea that target species evolve

in response to predation is not new.

For example, researchers reported

several years ago that after decades

of heavy fishing, Atlantic cod had

evolved to reproduce at younger ages

and smaller sizes.

Based on an analysis of earlier stud-

ies of 29 species — mostly fish, but also

a few animals and plants like bighorn

sheep and ginseng — researchers

from several Canadian and American

universities found that rates of evo-

lutionary change were three times

higher in species subject to “harvest

selection” than in other species. Writ-

ing in The Proceedings of the National

Academy of Sciences, the researchers

say the data they analyzed suggested

that size at reproductive maturity in

the species under pressure had shrunk

in 30 years or so by 20 percent, and that

organisms were reaching reproduc-

tive age about 25 percent sooner.

In Alberta, Canada, for example,

where regulations limit hunters of

bighorn sheep to large animals, aver-

age horn length and body mass have

dropped, said Paul Paquet, a biolo-

gist at the University of Calgary who

participated in the research. And as

people collect ginseng in the wild, “the

robustness and size of the plant is de-

clining,” he said.

The researchers said that reproduc-

ing at a younger age and smaller size

allowed organisms to leave offspring

before they were caught or killed. But

some evidence suggests that they may

not reproduce as well, said Chris Da-

rimont, a postdoctoral fellow in envi-

ronmental studies at the University

of California, Santa Cruz, who led the

work. The fish they studied that are

reproducing earlier “on average have

far, far, far fewer eggs than those who

wait an additional year and grow a few

more centimeters,” he said.

Dr. Darimont said it was unknown

whether traits would change back if

harvesting were reduced, or how long

that might take.

The researchers also noted that the

pattern of loss to human predation like

hunting or harvesting is opposite to

what occurs in nature or even in agri-

culture. Predators typically take “the

newly born or the nearly dead,” Dr.

Darimont said. For predators, target-

ing healthy adults can be dangerous.

But commercial fishing nets and

other gear that comply with conserva-

tion regulations typically trap large

fish while letting smaller ones escape.

Trophy hunters seek out the largest

animals. “Targeting large, reproduc-

ing adults and taking so many of them

in a population in a given year — that

creates this ideal recipe for rapid trait

change,” Dr. Darimont said.

Bighorn sheep and Atlantic cod are generally killed by humans as mature adults.

LEIF PARSONS

Repubblica NewYork

H E A LT H & F I T N E S S

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2009 VII

By BETHANY LYTTLE

David Shack’s Type 1 diabetes had

been so out of control for so many

years that he had had more than 100

seizures.

So, of course, he decided to partici-

pate in an Ironman race.

Given that Mr. Shack, 31, a science

teacher and father of three in Boone,

North Carolina, had gone long stretch-

es avoiding medical care and enjoyed

nibbling on steak fat or chicken skin, he

made an unlikely candidate.

“Dave was a doctor’s worst night-

mare,” said John Moore, who lives in

Denver and sells annuities. “There’s

no question his life was at risk.”

Mr. Shack was recruited for the

2008 Ford Ironman Wisconsin by Mr.

Moore, 31, who also has Type 1 diabe-

tes. Participants would have to follow a

3.8-kilometer swim with a 180-kilome-

ter bike ride and a 42-kilometer run.

But, Mr. Shack said, “something

about the craziness of it got me go-

ing.”

And go he did.

Mr. Shack completed the race in

September. It took him about 16 hours.

“I was the last dude across the finish

line,” he said.

Faced with a chronic condition or a

terminal diagnosis, some individuals

start training regimens that even the

healthiest would find taxing. And the

result is fascinating if somewhat in-

congruous: people fighting sickness

or disease who are, at the same time,

in the best shape of their lives.

“It’s not always as simple as some

sort of headlong rush into denial or a

desire for supreme control,” said Dr.

Gail Saltz, a psychiatrist at New York-

Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell

Medical Center. “People who have a

close brush with their own mortality

sometimes experience a reaction akin

to separation anxiety. A separation

that, in this case, is from life.”

Some may push themselves too hard,

while others may put too much faith in

their new physicality, believing that

they can defeat disease and sickness

purely through physical exertion. But

experiencing the body as capable, ex-

perts say, can be a powerful, and em-

powering, way to cope.

Kim Klein, a student at

Loyola University Chicago

School of Law, experienced

such a shift. Until 2007,

she had managed to avoid

exercise for most of her 41

years.

“I was the person who

was always going to join a

gym and never did,” Ms.

Klein said. Then came

breast cancer.Ms. Klein

decided to train for a five-

kilometer run.

“ S o m e t h i n g h a d

changed,” she said. “I was

desperate to feel my body

again. I needed to know it

was still there.”

In April last year, she finished that

race — and went on to complete four

more.

“Look,” she said, “there’s no ques-

tion that I’m running away — yes, lit-

erally — from the cancer. Every step

feels like maybe I’m farther away,

maybe I’m stopping it from coming

back.”

But for some, the realization that

they can’t outrun an illness can be dev-

astating. Richard Brodsky, 56, found

out he had terminal brain cancer in

2002. Increasing his running distances

each day, Mr. Brodsky, an architect and

philanthropist, set out to run the 2003

New York City Marathon.

“It felt so right to me to be pushing

myself,” said Mr. Brodsky of Atlan-

tic Beach, Long Island, in New York.

“Then a radiologist told me that fitness

had nothing to do with my life expec-

tancy, nothing at all. It was such a blow.

I guess on some level

I knew it, but when

I heard it I got very

upset.”

Still, one year and

one day after learn-

ing of his diagnosis,

he crossed the finish

line with his neurolo-

gist at his side.

For medical profes-

sionals, patients like

these present a chal-

lenge. Just because

it is exercise doesn’t

mean it’s good.

“A line can be

crossed,” said Chris-

tine Mermier, an ex-

ercise physiologist at the University of

New Mexico at Albuquerque. “Howev-

er, my experience is that patients of this

type tend to be very in touch with how

much they can get away with. Those

who develop a real passion for athletics

seem to find a way to walk that tight-

rope.”

By ABBY ELLIN

Randall and Katherine Hansen,

who live in DeLand, Florida, have

made a ritual of doing the “Fat Flush

Plan” at least once a year “to cleanse

our bodies and help break some bad

habits,” said Mr. Hansen, 48, presi-

dent of Quintessential Careers, a ca-

reer guidance Web site.

The regimen, publicized by the

nutritionist Ann Louise Gittleman

in a 2001 book, mostly targets the

liver, which Ms. Gittleman believes

is less able to metabolize fat because

of toxins absorbed orally or through

the skin. Her plan includes a low-

carbohydrate, high-protein menu of

about 1,200 calories a day, with no al-

cohol, caffeine, sugar, grains, bread,

starchy vegetables, dairy products,

fats or oils (save flaxseed oil). She

also recommends a “Long Life Cock-

tail” of diluted cranberry juice and

ground flaxseeds, or a teaspoon of

psyllium husks, in the morning and

evening; and a mixture of cranberry

juice and water throughout the day.

Ms. Gittleman sells a Fat Flush kit

for $112.50 with herbs and nutrients

like dandelion root, milk thistle and

Oregon grape root.

“It’s horrible when I’m on it — I

feel very deprived,” said Mr. Han-

sen, who credits the program with

helping him lose more than 30 ki-

lograms. “But I always feel better

after, and I end up dropping about

10 pounds [4.5 kilograms] in the two

weeks — an added bonus on top of

the detox.”

The Hansens are among the

thousands of people who regularly

“detox” in an effort to rid the gas-

trointestinal system of unsavory

substances that proponents believe

build up and can cause allergies, ex-

haustion and certain cancers.

But many Western doctors believe

detoxification does little to no good,

and is possibly harmful.

“It is the opinion of mainstream

and state-of-the-art medicine and

physiology that these claims are not

only ludicrous but tantamount to

fraud,” said Dr. Peter Pressman, an

internist with the Naval Hospital in

Jacksonville, Florida. “The contents

of what ends up being consumed dur-

ing a ‘detox’ are essentially stimu-

lants, laxatives and diuretics.”

Still, detoxification is enormously

popular, according to SPINS, a mar-

ket research and consulting firm

based in Schaumburg, Illinois, that

caters to the natural and organic

products industry. Sales of herbal

formulas for cleansing, detoxifica-

tion and organ support among nat-

ural food retailers were more than

$27 million from December 2, 2007,

to November 29, 2008.

“Western medicine is treating the

symptoms instead of addressing the

root cause,” said Edward F. Group

III, a Houston-based naturopath

with theholisticoption.com, an on-

line resource for the alternative

wellness community. “We basically

have a world that’s constipated. It’s

like if you change your oil in your car

but never change the oil filter. Ulti-

mately it gets so full of sludge the en-

gine’s going to break down.”

The goal of detoxification is to

remove that sludge. Indeed, most

regimens — whose benefits have

been espoused by celebrities like

Beyoncé Knowles, who claimed to

have lost 9 kilograms before the

movie “Dreamgirls” on the Master

Cleanse, a concoction of lemon juice,

cayenne pepper, maple syrup and

water — typically involve fasting,

food restriction, nutritional supple-

ments or a combination thereof.

Most regimens eliminate caf-

feine, alcohol and nicotine; some

limit meat and solid foods and rely

on unusual juice blends (cayenne

pepper and lemon, for instance), all

in an effort to rid the gastrointesti-

nal system of pesticides, dioxins,

polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)

and food additives — in other words,

just about anything you have eaten,

drunk, smelled, inhaled or looked at

that isn’t organic.

Because many holistic doctors

believe that one’s bowels should be

irrigated as much as four times a

day, some detoxers rely on colonics,

enemas and herbal laxatives. Others

rely on liquid fasts, herbal supple-

ments, colonics and formulas.

As the number of products and

treatments grows, critics continue

to emphasize what they say is a lack

of scientific evidence that detoxifica-

tion actually works.

As Dr. Frank Lipman, a specialist

in integrative medicine in New York

puts it: “People are selling a product.

There’s a difference between selling

a product and practicing good medi-

cine.”

Ask mothers why babies constantly

pick things up from the floor or

ground and put them in their mouths,

and they often say that that’s how

babies explore the world. But why the

mouth, when sight,

hearing, touch and

even scent are far

better at identifying

things?

Since all instinctive

behaviors have an

evolutionary advantage, chances are

that this one too has helped us sur-

vive as a species. And, indeed, accu-

mulating evidence strongly suggests

that eating dirt is good for you.

In studies of what is called the

hygiene hypothesis, researchers

are concluding that organisms like

the millions of bacteria, viruses and

especially worms that enter the body

along with “dirt” spur the develop-

ment of a healthy immune system.

Several continuing studies suggest

that worms may help to redirect an

immune system that has gone awry

and resulted in autoimmune disor-

ders, allergies and asthma.

These studies seem to explain why

immune system disorders like multi-

ple sclerosis, Type 1 diabetes, inflam-

matory bowel disease, asthma and

allergies have risen significantly in

the United States and other devel-

oped countries.

“What a child is doing when he

puts things in his mouth is allowing

his immune response to explore his

environment,” Mary Ruebush, a mi-

crobiology and immunology instruc-

tor, wrote in her new book, “Why Dirt

Is Good.” “Not only does this allow

for ‘practice’ of immune responses,

which will be necessary for protec-

tion, but it also plays a critical role

in teaching the immature immune

response what is best ignored.”

One leading researcher, Dr. Joel

V. Weinstock, the director of gastro-

enterology and hepatology at Tufts

Medical Center in Boston, said in an

interview that the immune system at

birth “is like an unprogrammed com-

puter. It needs instruction.”

He said that public health mea-

sures like cleaning up contaminated

water and food have saved the lives

of countless children, but they “also

eliminated exposure to many organ-

isms that are probably good for us.”

In answer to the question, “Are

we too clean?” Dr. David Elliott, a

gastroenterologist and immunolo-

gist at the University of Iowa, said:

“Dirtiness comes with a price. But

cleanliness comes with a price, too.

We’re not proposing a return to the

germ-filled environment of the 1850s.

But if we properly understand how or-

ganisms in the environment protect

us, maybe we can give a vaccine or

mimic their effects with some innocu-

ous stimulus.”

Dr. Ruebush deplores the current

fetish for the hundreds of antibac-

terial products that may actually

foster the development of antibiotic-

resistant, disease-causing bacteria.

Plain soap and water are all that are

needed to become clean, she noted.

“I certainly recommend washing

your hands after using the bathroom,

before eating, after changing a dia-

per, before and after handling food”

and whenever they’re visibly soiled,

she wrote.

Dr. Weinstock goes even further.

“Children should be allowed to go

barefoot in the dirt, play in the dirt

and not have to wash their hands

when they come in to eat,” he said.

While Believers ‘Detox,’Skeptics Are Scoffing

CHRISTIAN HANSEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Richard Brodsky ran a marathon after learning he had cancer. “It felt so right to be pushing myself,” he said.

GWENDA KACZOR

STEVE DYKES

David Shack, who has Type 1 diabetes, finished a triathlon.

ESSAY

JANE E.BRODY

Ask Any Baby: A Little Dirt Can Help an Immune System

Disease Invades, and Motivation Kicks In

GREG NEILL

Repubblica NewYork

A R T S & S T Y L E S

VIII MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2009

Director Tries to Honor the Dark Heart of ‘Watchmen’

DAVE GIBBONS/DC COMICS

Previous efforts to make a film of“Watchmen” have failed.

By DAVE ITZKOFF

BURBANK, California — When Zack

Snyder became the director of the film

adaptation of “Watchmen,” the graphic

novel about troubled superheroes in a

declining age, he knew he was taking

on not only a seminal piece of popular

culture but more than 20 years of un-

fulfilled expectations and competing

agendas.

From his encounters with the origi-

nal comics, written by Alan Moore and

illustrated by Dave Gibbons, he was

well versed in the creators’ weighty,

grown-up ideas about the futility of

heroism. He was also aware that many

directors before him had been unsuc-

cessful at the same endeavor.

But Mr. Snyder said he believed that

his greatest challenge would be satis-

fying the desires of the book’s devoted

fans, who, like him, regard it as an ex-

emplary work of postmodern storytell-

ing and who would eviscerate him if he

strayed too far from the original com-

ics. And he believed that the only path

to satisfying these viewers began by

breaking from the source material.

“Watchmen,” which opens world-

wide in March, begins with a scene de-

picted only in fragments in the comics:

a fight between an unknown assailant

and an avenger called the Comedian.

This is followed by an opening credit

sequence, largely of Mr. Snyder’s in-

vention, that juxtaposes Bob Dylan’s

“The Times They Are A-Changin’ ”

with a montage of masked do-gooders

with names like Dollar Bill and Hooded

Justice as they participate in key mo-

ments of history, like V-J Day and the

assassination of John F. Kennedy.

The scenes that follow will be famil-

iar to readers with a panel-by-panel

familiarity with the comic: the surreal

dream of a costumed vigilante who is

plagued by sexual shortcomings and

fears of nuclear war; a man-god cre-

ated in a scientific accident, strolling

the red sands of Mars; New York City

partly annihilated by a villain’s master

plan — all connected by a story about

heroes corrupted by the darkness they

cannot expunge from the world.

The two introductory scenes, Mr.

Snyder said, are concessions to audi-

ences who know nothing of “Watch-

men,” “so that they will swallow the

bitter pill of the next 20 minutes of the

movie and listen to a bunch of superhe-

roes rap it out for a while.”

For more than two and a half years

this has been the problem that Mr.

Snyder has been asked to solve: how

to preserve enough of the multilayered

graphic novel to satisfy its devotees,

while providing enough entry points for

a mass audience willing to sit through a

$120 million, 160-minute, R-rated mov-

ie about contemplative crime fighters

who rarely get into fights.

Almost from the moment that the

first issue of “Watchmen” was pub-

lished in America as a limited series by

DC Comics in 1986, Hollywood has tried

and failed to film it. The director Terry

Gilliam pursued the project in the late

1980s, only to conclude that it could not

be condensed into a movie.

When Mr. Snyder, 42, was ap-

proached in 2006 to direct the film, his

résumé made many “Watchmen” fans

nervous. A director of TV commercials,

he was known for flashy, hyperkinetic

work. In 2004 he had scored a hit with

his remake of the George A. Romero

zombie movie “Dawn of the Dead” and

was at work on an unheralded action

movie called “300,” a violent adaptation

of Frank Miller’s graphic novel about

the ancient battle of Thermopylae,

which went on to make $456 million.

“He’s got a very pop sensibility, which

requires an incredible visual style,”

said Jeff Robinov, the president of the

Warner Brothers Pictures Group.

But Mr. Snyder, who first read

“Watchmen” in college, knew it was an

arcane, intricate comic in which phi-

losophy is exchanged more often than

punches. “There’s no moment where

it’s not self-aware,” he said.

Even as “Watchmen” adheres to

superhero formulas, it is dismantling

many traditions of the medium. Mr.

Snyder said, “It’s always shining a light

on the idea of putting a costume on and

going to try to right wrongs and saying,

‘Really, you think that’s cool?’”

Mr. Snyder said he hopes the film

might shift the balance of power be-

tween movie studios and comic-book

creators. To this day, he said, Warner

Brothers still wants Mr. Miller and him

to create a sequel to “300.”

“The attitude toward comic books,

they show their hand a little bit,” Mr.

Snyder said. “They would never say

that about a real novelist, but they

would about a comic book. ‘They just

crank those out, right? It’s like no big

deal.’” In the end, he said, “all I would

hope is that this movie gives geek cul-

ture a little bit of cred.”

He was known as Buzz and used to

boast that he had never had a dance

lesson in his life. He wasn’t the type to

go on about his choreographic ideas,

the best of which, he said, came to him

in the bath.

But the director and

choreographer Busby

Berkeley’s vision

was solidified by two

seemingly disparate

concepts: his appre-

ciation for beautiful

women and his time in the Army,

where he created large-scale parade

drills for American troops in Europe

during World War I. Whether or not

there was any tangible connection be-

tween those ravishing dances and the

rejuvenating power of time spent in a

tub, his wild imagination and famous

overhead shots remain astonishing,

especially in the way he turned danc-

ing bodies into human kaleidoscopes.

As part of this year’s Dance on Cam-

era festival in New York, Berkeley’s

work was highlighted with screenings

of “Blithe Spirits: Rudavsky Meets

Busby Berkeley,” which features four

shorts by the Slovakian artist Ondrej

Rudavsky. There was also a screen-

ing of Berkeley’s 1934 film “Dames”

in honor of its 75th anniversary, and

of “The Gang’s All Here,” Berkeley’s

first color film, made in 1943.

Berkeley’s scope is still astounding.

His agile camera changed the way

dance and musicals were filmed. In

his work the power is not rooted in the

individual dancer, but in the majestic

force of the group.

In “The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti

Hat,” from “The Gang’s All Here,”

Carmen Miranda is joined by a long

line of barefoot chorus girls who carry

giant bananas aloft, lowering them to

the ground in what now brings to mind

a stadium-style wave. As an over-

head camera passes by, 12 dancers,

linked at the feet and holding jumbo

strawberries, form a star while others

surround them, raising and lowering

their bananas like petals on a flower.

As Miranda sings her final verse,

the camera pulls back to reveal two

rows of strawberries and her stupen-

dous headwear: a towering sprout of

ripe bananas.

But strangely enough, for the ex-

tra thrill that Technicolor provides,

Berkeley’s productions are most

ideally represented in the subtle

shadings of black and white, where

they shimmer incandescently under

silvery light.

The black-and-white “Dames” has

it all, beginning with “The Girl at the

Ironing Board” and its witty homage

to “Swan Lake,” in which a laundry

room comes alive with swans as danc-

ers slip their arms into white fabric,

curving their palms like delicate

heads. Moments later the clothes

come to life in a dance without danc-

ers. The scene is still modern.

GIA

KOURLAS

ESSAY

The Dance Master With Kaleidoscope Eyes

PHOTOGRAPHS FROM FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER

In Busby Berkeley’s first color film, “The Gang’s All Here,” Carmen Miranda had the lead role, and anoutrageous headdress. Mr. Berkeley, below in 1932, first created large-scale parade drills for American troops.

A superhero movie withmore philosophy debatesthan fight scenes.

By JIMMY WANG

BEIJING — Rougher and more

rebellious than the bland pop that

floods the airwaves here, hip-hop is

not sanctioned by broadcast media

producers or state censors but has

managed to attract a grass-roots fan

base. And many students and work-

ing-class Chinese have begun writ-

ing rap as a form of self-expression.

“Hip-hop is free, like rock ’n’ roll

— we can talk about our lives, what

we’re thinking about, what we feel,”

said Wang Liang, 25, a popular hip-

hop D.J. in China who is known as

Wordy. “The Chinese education sys-

tem doesn’t encourage you to express

your own character.”

While American

rappers like Eminem

and Q-Tip have been

popular in China since

the 1990s, home-grown

rap didn’t start gain-

ing momentum until a

decade later. The group

Yin Ts’ang (its name

means “hidden”), one of

the pioneers of Chinese

rap, is made up of global

nomads: a Beijinger, a

Chinese-Canadian and

two Americans.

“The big change

was when rappers

started writing verse

in Chinese,” said Zhong

Cheng, 27, a member of the group who

was raised in Canada but born in Bei-

jing, where he returned in 1997. “Be-

fore that, kids listened to hip-hop in

English but maybe less than 1 percent

could actually begin to understand.”

Yin Ts’ang’s first hit was “In Bei-

jing,” from its 2003 debut album,

“Serve the People”; the title is a twist

on an old political slogan. It sets a

melody played on a thousand-year-

old Chinese fiddle called the erhu

against a hip-hop beat that brings

Run D.M.C. to mind. The song, an

insider’s look at the capital, took the

underground music scene by storm.

“There’s a lot of cats that can rap

back home,” said Jeremy Johnston, a

member of the group and the son of a

United States Air Force captain. “But

there’s not a lot of cats that can rap

in Chinese.” Mr. Johnston, 33, moved

to Beijing in the late ’90s because, he

said, it was “the thing nobody else

was doing.”

Since “In Beijing,” the Chinese hip-

hop scene has quickly grown. Hiphop.

cn, a Web site listing events and links

to songs, started with just a few hun-

dred members in 2007; in 2008 it re-

ceived millions of views, according to

one of the site’s directors.

Dozens of hip-hop clubs have

opened across the country, and thou-

sands of raps and music videos by

Chinese M.C.’s are spreading over

the Internet. But making Chinese

hip-hop is still a relatively profitless

— and often subversive — activity.

Some Chinese rappers address what

they see as the country’s most glar-

ing injustices.

Wong Li, a 24-year-old rapper from

Dongbei, uses Chinese proverbs in

his lyrics to create social commen-

tary. “All people care about is mon-

ey,” he said. “If you don’t have money,

you’re treated like garbage.”

In the recent hit “Hello Teacher,”

Yin Tsar, one of the hip-hop scene’s

biggest acts (its name means “The

Three Shadows”) rails against the

authority of unfair teachers: “You’re

supposed to be a role model, but I’ve

seen you spit in public.”

Shuo chang, the Chinese word for

hip-hop, translates to “speak sing”

and is a loaded term. It also describes

a contentious subject for musicians,

producers and fans in China. Pop

stars who have their own spin on hip-

hop dominate the mainstream here.

Many tack high-speed raps onto the

end of their songs, even ballads, and

consider themselves rappers.

They rap about love “and call it hip-

hop when it isn’t,” said Wang Liang,

the D.J.

With Rhymes in Chinese,

Rappers Confront the Power

YINENT

The group Yin Ts’ang comprises a Beijinger,a Chinese-Canadian and two Americans.

Wang Yao contributed research.

Repubblica NewYork