MONDAY, MAY 3, 2010 Copyright © 2010 The New York Times

Supplemento al numero

odierno de la RepubblicaSped. abb. postale art. 1

legge 46/04 del 27/02/2004 — Roma

LENS“Let’s call the whole thing

off,” the George and Ira Gersh-win song once suggested. But ifpop music lyrics and romanticcomedies weren’t enough, new scientific evidence is confirmingwhat some bickering couples have known all along: there are significant, and at times frus-trating, contrasts in the waysthat male and female brains operate.

Scientists still argue about just what defines gender brain differ-ences, Natalie Angier and Kenneth Chang pointed out in The Times. But they have moved beyond the theory

of Gustav le Bon, who pos-ited a century ago that the smaller size of women’s brains explained their“fickleness, inconstancy,absence of thought and

logic, and incapacity to reason.”Today, brain imaging studies sug-

gest that men and women use differ-ent parts of their brains to solve prob-lems. While men turn to gray matter, women rely more heavily on white matter. And the corpus callosum, which connects the brain’s right and left hemispheres, is thought to be 25

percent larger in women. One writer, Shaunti Feldhahn, be-

lieves that such differences facilitate multitasking in women and compart-mentalization in men, leading to di-vergent strengths in the workplace.

As for hormones, in her book “The Male Brain,” Louann Brizendine cites the deep influence of testoster-one, androstenedione and vasopres-sin on the perceptions and behavior of men, especially in regard to risktaking and sex.

“The female brain wants the hopeof love and commitment before hav-

ing sex,” Ms. Brizendine writes, “butfor men, sex often comes first.”

To which Holly Brubach, writing about the book in The Times, re-sponded: “News bulletin: ScientistsDiscover What Any Woman in a Bar Could Have Told Them.”

In the wake of the global financial crisis, the cocktail of hormones cours-ing through the male brain has been under more scrutiny lately.

Studies show that higher levelsof testosterone promote excessive risk taking, and some critics cite the exclusive boys club of Wall Street as

Exhibit A in what can happen when an all-male culture revels in high-riskgambles. One of those critics, William D. Cohan, writing for The Times’s Opinionator blog, suggested that what Wall Street needed most was anestrogen injection.

But if it seems that science is giving frustrated couples more reason tocall the whole thing off, there may bea sliver of hope. As men age into the period of life known as andropause,testosterone and vasopressin decline,and estrogen has more influence on behavior.

As Ms. Brizendine wrote in The Times: “Hormonally, the mature male brain is becoming more like thefemale.” KEVIN DELANEY

By PETER S. GOODMAN

PORTLAND, Oregon

AFTER THE WORST DOWNTURN

since the Great Depression, signs of

recovery — albeit tinged with ambi-

guity — are mounting in the United States,

building hope for the rest of the world. De-

spite worries that consumers in the world’s

largest economy might hunker down for

years — spooked by debt, lost savings and

unemployment — thriftiness has given way

to the outlines of a new shopping spree:

households are replacing cars, upgrading

home furnishings and amassing gadgets.

The docks are humming again at this

sprawling Pacific port, with clouds of golden

dust billowing off the piles of grain spilling

into the bellies of giant tankers.

“Things are looking up,” said Dan Broad-

ie, a longshoreman. No longer passing time

at the union hall while waiting for work,

instead he is guiding a mechanized spout

pouring 40,000 metric tons of wheat into the

Arion SB, bound for the Philippines.

Shoppers are snapping up electronics and

furniture, as fears of joblessness yield to

exuberance over rising stock prices. Trac-

tor trailers and railroad cars haul swelling

quantities of goods through transportation

corridors, generating paychecks for truck-

ers and repair crews.

On the factory floor, production is expand-

ing, a point underscored by government

data released on April 23 showing a hefty

increase in March for orders of long-lasting

In the War of Minds, It’s Girls Against Boys

Con tin ued on Page IV

VII VIIISCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Cassini putting on a

Saturn spectacular.

ARTS & STYLES

In age of globalism,

pardon my French.

UnleashingPent-Up Demand

INTELLIGENCE: African migrants, mired in misery, Page II.

For comments, write tonytweekly@nytimes.com.

RICHARD PERRY/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Spending by American consumers and rising exports to healthier economies overseas are raising hopes for a rebound. Retail sales increased by 9.1 percent in March at established stores.

LEAH NASH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A Portland, Oregon, dock worker, Kevin

Weldon, unloading soda ash for export.

From the mall to the docks,

positive signs of an economic

turn are building.

VWORLD TRENDS

Social networks upset

order in Indonesia.

Repubblica NewYork

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

II MONDAY, MAY 3, 2010

Direttore responsabile: Ezio MauroVicedirettori: Gregorio Botta,

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Supplemento a cura di: Alix Van Buren,Francesco Malgaroli

Time to AddressIran’s Nuclear Ambitions OUJDA, Morocco

For the last three decades Europeangovernments have waged an increas-ingly pitiless campaign to prevent un-documented migrants from crossingor even reaching their frontiers. In re-cent years the northeastern Moroccancity of Oujda has become one of manyplaces where this obsession has pro-duced dire human consequences.

A bustling modern city of 500,000only 15 kilometers from the Algerianborder, Oujda’s significance in Eu-rope’s border wars derives partly fromits strategic location on the migratory trail that reaches across the Sahara to Mali, Niger, Nigeria and even deeper into Africa. Since 1994 the Oujda fron-tier has been closed for political rea-sons, but for many of the migrants whocross the Sahara each year, it remains a vital staging post that brings themcloser to the European promised land. Oujda is only about 150 kilometers tothe coastal city of Melilla, but to theMoroccan police and security forces, its proximity to the desert makes it a suitable place to deport migrants de-tained elsewhere in the country. Ineffect Oujda has become a microcosm of a wider phenomenon, in which mi-grant dreams are met with the impla-cable machinery of Fortress Europe.

In the autumn of 2005, thousands of sub-Saharan Africans were deportedhere and abandoned in the desertwithout food or water following a massattempt to scale the fortified fencesthat surround the Spanish Moroccanenclaves of Ceuta and Melilla to thenorth. Many died before the Moroc-can government relented and carried out a rescue operation.

The European Union’s response tothese shocking events was to reinforceits southern frontiers, leaving an esti-mated ten thousand migrants strand-ed in Morocco. Approximately sevenhundred of them live in and aroundOujda. Some are camped out in thespacious faculty grounds of Oujda’s

Mohammed I University in sheltersbuilt from plastic and blankets. Others live in forests outside the city or closer to the frontier.

Driving with staffers from Médicins sans Frontières along the abandoned road that connects Oujda to the Al-gerian border, we passed desertedchildren’s playgrounds, hotels andrestaurants amid meadows burstingwith spring flowers, where cross-bor-der smugglers flit back and forth onmopeds, half-buried under impossibleloads of plastic bottles filled with Al-gerian gasoline. This surreal frontier landscape is a zone of violence, miseryand exclusion, where migrant men,women and young children live in ab-ject poverty. Almost no one works and the people survive by begging or pet-ty trading. Their ramshackle campsare frequently raided by police, whodeport their inhabitants to the edgeof the desert, where they are likely to be raped and attacked by bandits orsent back by Algerian border guards in a remorseless game of human ping pong.

“We live like rabbits here,” says ayoung Nigerian named Anthony, “We hide by day and come out at night.”Some people have been living like thisfor years. They include beauticians,hairdressers, car mechanics, weld-ers, and would-be football stars, who fled poverty and violence in searchof an increasingly elusive Europeandream. Many have undergone horrif-ic and incredible journeys to achieve what most Europeans take for grant-

ed: safety and economic opportunity. Now their youth and skills are wastingaway in the forests.

In one camp I met a Congolese wom-an named Dolita who left Kinshasa,Democratic Republic of Congo, to seekasylum in Europe. Two months ago shewas deported with her three children, including a newborn baby, to the edgeof the desert. She was saved only by a tenacious local human rights activist Hicham Baraka.

Such interventions are rare. Apart from the efforts of Baraka’s grass-roots organization and Médicins sans Frontières, these men and womenare unwanted and invisible people,who Europe and Morocco would liketo disappear. Most of them are Chris-tians and their camps frequently echo with prayers, hallelujahs and beating drums.

In theory, the European govern-ments whose policies have createdthis human misery should make aneffort to ensure that these men andwomen are treated with humanity andrespect, but Europe remains silent.And like those in the razed migrantshantytowns of Calais, France, andPatmos, Greece, the stateless Afri-cans of Oujda are being administeredharsh medicine to cure them of theirEuropean dreams.

“We all believe in God,” one Nige-rian told me, “and we call on him tohelp us.”

For the moment God does not ap-pear to be listening. Nor does the restof the world.

Sometime this spring, but stillmonths later than President Obama predicted, Iran may finally face new United Nations sanctions for its illicitnuclear program.

Mr. Obama has done a lot to pre-pare the ground. He has bolsteredAmerican credibility with his —since rebuffed — offer to engage withIran. He signed a new arms reduc-tion treaty with Russia, improved re-lations with China and is personally lobbying other United Nations Se-curity Council members to support stronger sanctions.

We are skeptical that even that willbe enough to get Moscow and Beijing to sign on to anything with real bite.In the last four years, the SecurityCouncil has passed three far-too-modest sanctions resolutions. Teh-ran has shrugged them all off andkept churning out nuclear fuel.

The good news is that Mr. Obamais also hedging his bets, with an ef-fort — first begun under PresidentGeorge W. Bush — to persuade anever-widening circle of internationalcorporate interests to eschew busi-ness in economically strapped Iran.

Total, the French energy com-pany, and Eni of Italy claim they are planning to end new investments inIran. Major international banks likeDeutsche Bank and HSBC have saidthat they are withdrawing from Iran.Several oil companies have said theywould no longer supply gasoline toIran, including Royal Dutch Shell,Vitol, Russia’s Lukoil and India’s Re-liance. Recently, Malaysia’s state oil firm, Petronas, said it was cutting offshipments. Its prime minister then denied it.

Promises are clearly cheap. Theadministration will have to keeppressing these companies to live upto their commitments. And it is timefor Mr. Obama’s European partners to think about more formal ways to tighten their own sanctions on Iran.

None of this should let the SecurityCouncil avoid its responsibility. A

new resolution would provide impor-tant cover for these parallel tracks. Iran is especially vulnerable now,both economically and politically.Its leaders will be watching care-fully, especially to see what its long-time trading partners and enablers in Russia and China do.

There, the news is not good. While Russian and Chinese leaders told Mr.Obama that they will work seriouslyon new sanctions, diplomats say theirrepresentatives are already seeking ways to dilute any resolution. Braziland Turkey, which currently sit onthe Security Council and have a lot of international sway, also are resist-ing. Mr. Obama needs to keep press-ing Moscow and Beijing hard. He andhis European partners need to makeclear that Brazil (which seeks per-manent Security Council member-ship) and Turkey (a NATO member) must join the effort.

We don’t know if there is any mix-ture of pressure — or inducements —that will force Iran to abandon its nu-clear ambitions. That’s what makesa memo written earlier this year byDefense Secretary Robert Gates andreported by The Times on April 18 soimportant.Looking beyond the cur-rent maneuvering, Mr. Gates raises some disturbing and difficult ques-tions that need to be addressed. Howwill the world contain Iran if it pro-duces a weapon? What will Washing-ton and its allies do if Iran acquires all of the parts but decides to stop justshort of that? The United States and its allies need to quietly discuss and prepare for those possibilities .

As for the military options under review, we are sure that an attackwould be a disaster. We urge any-one who has doubts to listen closely to Admiral Mike Mullen, the chair-man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hetold reporters on April 18 that while military “options would cause de-lay’’ to Iran’s nuclear program, “that doesn’t mean the problem is going to go away.’’

E D I T O R I A L S O F T H E T I M E SINTELLIGENCE/MATTHEW CARR

The Invisible People of Oujda

MARIAL BAI, SudanSouthern Sudan is one of the most

impoverished places on earth, and thisremote town lacks electricity and run-ning water and is 240 kilometers from the nearest paved road. Yet, thanks to

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Boarding School Offers Hope in Sudan

SAMUEL ARANDA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE—GETTY IMAGES

Hundreds of Africans are stranded in the Moroccan desert.

Matthew Carr is the author of “Bloodand Faith: the Purging of MuslimSpain.” Send comments tointelligence@nytimes.com.

a remarkable young American whogrew up here — and to readers whobacked him — the town has become a magnet for young Sudanese dreamingof an education.

From hundreds of kilometersaround, boys and girls are streaming here in hopes of being admitted to anew boarding school. It is the brain-child of Valentino Achak Deng, whose flight from war and starvation is re-counted in the best-selling book byDave Eggers, “What is the What.”

Valentino was separated from hisfamily during the civil war in Sudanand spent his childhood dodging sol-diers, land mines, lions and other haz-ards. He learned to read and write byscratching letters in the dust at a refu-gee camp, and in 2001 he was admittedto the United States as a refugee. Heworked his way through college —and then was determined to give back. “Many people have placed confidencein me, trusted me, supported me, and so I felt a special responsibility,” Val-entino said. “I wanted to show thatthere was a reason that I survived.”

Dave and Valentino devoted theprofits from “What is the What” tostarting the high school, and it is now choosing students for its second year. More than 1,000 pupils, some of them

adults whose studies were delayed bythe war, are competing for 150 spots asincoming ninth graders.

I’ve known and admired Valentino for years and wrote about his school inDecember, prompting $400,000 in con-tributions from readers. So I decided to visit and see what the donations had achieved.

Valentino has hired first-rate teach-ers, constructed new buildings anderected two dormitories for girls (atleast half the students will be girls).The night I stayed in a thatch-roofcottage — teacher housing — a truck arrived with the dorms’ beds and mat-tresses, purchased in Uganda. Almost nothing is available locally.

The girls will sleep 25 to a room, but the dorms will greatly expand educa-tional opportunities for young women here. Last year, in all of southern Su-dan, only 11 girls sat for high school

graduation exams, according to gov-ernment statistics. One of southernSudan’s most wrenching statisticsis this: Based on official data, a girlthere is far more likely to end up dy-ing in childbirth than she is to gain aprimary education.

This one school, serving studentsfrom all over southern Sudan, will con-siderably expand the number of girls graduating from secondary school.American donors can sponsor thegirls, for $300 per year, through Valen-tinoAchakDeng.org.

This school is free, the only hope for brilliant students who have no money for tuition, but the pupils do the main-tenance themselves. Valentino’s con-nections help bring American volun-teer teachers in the summers; they putup with bucket showers, pit toilets and wilting heat, while gaining the fero-cious loyalty of the students.

The rest of the staff is unusual, too. The cook, Achol Mayol Juach, waskidnapped by slave traders in 1986,when she was 7, and was enslaved inthe north for nearly two decades be-fore escaping with the help of an aidworker .

Valentino aims to make the schoolmultiethnic, including Muslim Arabstudents associated with northern

tribes that ravaged the south duringthe civil war. He has students engaged in service projects, like building hutsfor displaced people, and he is focused on nurturing leaders who can build a more peaceful and prosperous coun-try.

Operating a school in such a remote area is a dizzying challenge. Comput-ers must be powered by a generatoror solar panels. Government officials pester Valentino to admit their chil-dren, and he must delicately explainthat admission depends entirely onentrance exam scores. (He does givepreference to one group: orphans.)

Donations have enabled the schoolto build a library, which has few books, but there is no postal service for Amer-ican friends to send books. Valentino looked into the possibility of havingbooks mailed to Kenya and thentrucked in, but found he would have to pay prohibitive import duties.

The school is not a solution to Su-dan’s troubles. But it is an exhilaratingglimmer in a land laden with troubles. It’s a sign of Americans and Sudanese working together and making a differ-ence. And it’s a reminder that some-times the world’s most desperate and desolate places are the ones brimmingwith magnanimity and hope.

A better chance ofdying in childbirth thangetting an education.

Repubblica NewYork

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India’s dominant cultural and artistic herit-

age is so rich and varied that it has effec-

tively obscured the contribution of the sub-

continent’s indigenous peoples. An ambitious,

colorful and exciting new show at the musée

du quai Branly in Paris, ‘‘Other Masters of In-

dia: Contemporary Creations of the Adivasis’’

(through July 18) remedies that situation by

spotlighting the artwork of the Adivasis, the

country’s indigenous ethnic and tribal groups.

‘‘Indian tribal art is usually shown as if it is

frozen in the past,’’ says Jyotindra Jain, curat-

or of the show, ‘‘as if it had no contact with civ-

ilization, but these are not primitive people liv-

ing in the past. This exhibition shows their

contemporary face — how they deal with mo-

dernity in their work.’’ A number of works have

been commissioned by the musée du quai

Branly especially for the exhibition.

To simplify and abbreviate a complex sto-

ry, most of the ‘‘tribals,’’ as they are called in

India, are descendents of hunters and gather-

ers with their own distinctive cultures, lan-

guages and religions. Always marginalized,

they remained so after the colonization of

most of the subcontinent by the British in the

mid-19th century. Deprived of their land, they

suffered from poverty and repression. The

search for a livelihood and the expansion of

Indian cities closer to their villages led to in-

creasing contact with urban centers. With in-

dependence in 1947, the country’s new gov-

ernment attempted to help them by giving

them paper so they could transform their ritu-

al artworks, which were often painted on the

walls of houses, into salable works.

Jain, an art historian and anthropologist,

and the former director of the National Crafts

Museum in New Delhi, sees this as a pivotal

moment. ‘‘The government didn’t know that

this would lead to a creative explosion,’’ he

says. Because art made on paper was freed

from its ritual context and was no longer being

made for the gods, the artists no longer felt

bound to adhere strictly to traditional sacred

iconography.

‘‘There was a great liberalization of expres-

sion,’’ says Jain. ‘‘Because they could now paint

anything, they moved from static to narrative

forms of expression.’’

To illustrate the story of the ‘‘other mas-

ters,’’ Jain begins the exhibition with photos

showing how the tribals were defined during

the colonial period by their ‘‘racial’’ identity or

shown as exotic beings in set-up photos that

distorted their culture or sexualized them.

To set the stage for the transformation

that Indian art will undergo, the next section of

the exhibition, which brings together 337

works and documents, offers examples of

powerful traditional 19th-century sculptures

and masks (many of which were actually

made for tribal people by Hindu craftspeople,

since many tribals didn’t have the technology

to make them themselves).

In another section, we see the modern

world beginning to penetrate into the late-

20th-century works painted in the traditional

manner, but with clear signs of tribal encoun-

ters with the fast-expanding urban centers of

India: trains, airplanes and motorbikes.

Jain also wanted to demonstrate the indi-

vidual excellence to be found in tribal art. ‘‘All

over the world, tribals are shown as a group,’’

says Jain. ‘‘We never see the individual, even

though the talent of individual artists was rec-

ognized by their own communities. I want to say

here that there are multiple facets of Indian tri-

bal art.’’ The show of artworks will be comple-

mented by a program of live music and dance

performances.

He has chosen to end the show with solo

shows of two artists who provide excellent ex-

amples of the felicitous melding of tradition

and modern in tribal art. Jivya Soma Mashe,

now 75 years old, was enlisted to help the un-

married women create the ritual wall paintings

only they were allowed to do. ‘‘He was the first

artist to take painting out of the ritual con-

text,’’ says Jain. Among his paintings are two

large narrative works teeming with events that

depict his memories of his village.

Jangarh Singh Shyam was discovered as a

teenager by scouts for a folk and tribal art

center in Bhopal. Traditional Pardhan Gond tri-

bal painting was done on wall reliefs in earth

colors, but Shyam blossomed when given

bright colors to paint with. ‘‘The first time I

dipped my brush in bright poster colors,

tremors went through my body,’’ he says. "

EXHIBITION | ‘‘Other Masters of India’’

On the Left Bank of Paris, an exploration of the contemporary face of Indian tribal art

Upcoming exhibitions 2010-11

• THE IMAGE FACTORY (through July

17, 2011), a major anthropological

exhibition, compares and contrasts

different iconographic models —

animism, naturalism, totemism and

analogism — through 150 works,

from Inuit sculptures and 17th-

century Dutch paintings to Australian

aboriginal ritual objects and Chinese

landscapes.

• CONGO RIVER: ARTS OF CENTRAL

AFRICA (June 22-Oct. 3) brings

together traditional arts from the

region to point up underlying

similarities in the masks and

sculptures of its various peoples.

• BABA BLING: INTERIOR SIGNS OF

WEALTH IN SINGAPORE (Oct. 5-Feb.

6, 2011) shows how Chinese

immigrants have created a unique

culture in Singapore since the 14th

century by absorbing Malaysian

customs and beliefs.

• DOGON (April 5-July 24, 2011)

presents Mali’s Dogon culture

through 350 objects from the 10th

century to the present day.

• E TU AKE – MAORI TREASURE (Oct.

4, 2011-Jan. 22, 2012) presents

Maori culture through a show of 250

works from the Te Papa Tongarewa

museum of New Zealand.

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Practical information

1. ‘‘Tarpa, Dancers Arounda Musician,’’ by JivyaSoma Mashe. ADITYA ARYA

2. Anand Shyam’s ‘‘T igerand Chicks,’’ acrylic onpaper. ADITYA ARYA

3. Zoomorphic figurine of acow in the shape of acylinder. MICHEL URTADO,

THIERRY OLLIVIER

4. Mythical animal in wood,19th century. MUSEUM OF

ETHNOLOGY, VIENNA

5. Terra-cotta votive figurefrom Tamil Nadu.ADITYA ARYA

6. Jangarh Singh Shyam’s‘‘Imaginary Bird.’’GIREESH G V

7. A relief sculpture inprogress, Chhattisgarh.ADITYA ARYA

8. Engraving of devadasis,or temple dancers(1882).RIGHTS RESERVED

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For Stéphane Martin, president of

the musée du quai Branly, which will

celebrate its fourth birthday on June

23, the museum’s mission goes far be-

yond just presenting non-Western art to

the public. He is interested in promoting a

‘‘dialogue of cultures’’ rather than a static

vision of ‘‘exotic’’ cultures. Here, he talks

about the exhibition ‘‘Other Masters of In-

dia: Contemporary Creations of the Adi-

vasis’’ and its place in the museum.

How does this show fit into your vi-

sion of the museum’s mission?

What interests us is proposing new

points of view on a topic. This exhibition

offers an original look at some of the

least-known people of India, a country

with an infinitely varied culture. It shows

the complexity of the Indian cultural land-

scape without showing any Hindu, Muslim

or Christian art. In one exhibition, it

presents both very old and contemporary

art, and traditional practices as well as art

made for the market and sold in

galleries. The goal, as always, is

to stimulate the visitor. That is, in

fact, the museum’s mission. We

want to break down preconcep-

tions by avoiding a simplistic

view of a subject. India is not just

about monumental architecture

or Bollywood films. It is much

more complex and diverse.

What are the show’s strong

points?

The way it creates a whole

universe, an ambiance, with its very differ-

ent sections. It’s like a cultural emporium.

Visitors move from an ethnographic pre-

sentation in the first part through smaller

sections with close-ups on certain works,

and emerge from a sort of tunnel into a

museum of modern art like the Whitney

Museum or the Centre Pompidou.

This exhibition is not being shown in

isolation. It is part of a deliberately

planned program that creates

the museum’s identity, in

much the same way that an

opera house’s programming

does. Many of the people who

see it will have come to our

most recent shows in the

same exhibition space, which

completely changes each

time. Each exhibition is experi-

enced in a completely differ-

ent way. ‘‘Other Masters’’ re-

creates a world and focuses a

visitor’s concentration on different as-

pects of it. Historic Naga sculptures and

textiles, for example, are presented with

the work of well-known contemporary

artists. That is an original, stimulating jux-

taposition. In the West, we tend to think

that tribal art and contemporary art are

two different things. In fact, they cohabit

more than we imagine. This exhibition

makes us understand to what extent tri-

bal art and contemporary art are linked,

contrary to preconceived ideas.

What’s in store for the future?

We will continue to vary our point of

view with different types of exhibitions, in

hopes of getting our visitors to question

their assumptions — even positive ones.

That policy seems to be working: after

four years, almost half of our visitors are

returnees, which is far above the norm.

The number of visitors rose by 8 percent

in 2009. We will have had more than 6

million visitors by the time we celebrate

our fourth birthday on June 23. "

VIEWPOINT | Stéphane Martin, president, musée du quai Branly

‘We want to break down preconceptions’

President Stéphane

Martin of the musée

du quai Branly.

‘‘Other Masters of India:

Contemporary Creations of the

Adivasis,’’ through July 18, 2010.

• Musée du quai Branly: 206 or

218 rue de l’Université, or 37 quai

Branly, 75007 Paris. Wheelchair

access: 222 rue de l’Université.

Tel.: 01 56 61 70 00.

• Métro: Alma-Marceau.

RER: Pont de l’Alma.

• Open Tues., Weds. and Sun., 11 a.m.-

7 p.m; Thurs., Fri. and Sat., 11 a.m.- 9

p.m. Open on Mondays during school

holidays.

• Admission: ¤7 ($9.40). Catalog

(Musée du quai Branly/Somogy),

160 pages, ¤29.

• www.quaibranly.fr

86 74 5

3

Contemporary Creations of the Adivasis

2

1

Commissions and events

Works specially commissioned for

the ‘‘Other Masters of India’’

exhibition include four monumental

terra-cotta sculptures, votive

figures first made to protect Tamil

Nadu villages from evil spirits. Also

commissioned for the show were

painted clay relief sculptures by

the artist in residence Sundari Bai,

from Chhattisgarh, as well as a

major work by the Rathava artist

Paresh Rathwa.

Artists in residence invited by

the museum include Jivya Soma

Mashe, who has a solo exhibition

within the show, and his grandson,

Kishore Mashe, as well as

Mohanlal, an artist from Molela,

Rajasthan.

A program of live performances

showcases Pandit Hariprasad

Chaurasia, a master of classical

Indian music, and the brothers

Rajan and Sajan Mishra, singers of

the khyal style. Two troupes will

perform different forms of Natya,

an Indian sacred dance.

In addition, the museum will

present a program of films and

lectures. For details, see

www.quaibranly.fr

Repubblica NewYork

W O R L D T R E N D S

IV MONDAY, MAY 3, 2010

Sources: Thomson Reuters; Commerce Department; Intel THE NEW YORK TIMES

Positive Numbers

Strong performances in a cross-section of economic sectors reported in the last few weeks indicate the recovery could be more robust than expected.

+9.1%March

+26.9%March

+44%First quarter

+2.8%March

+14.8%Jan. - Feb.

Retail sales New home sales Intel’s sales Durable goods Exports

Change from last year in the Thomson Reuters composite index of retailers’ sales for stores open at least a year

Annual pace of new private homes sold during the month, seasonally adjusted

Revenue growth, compared with 2009, at one of the world’s largest computer chip makers

Manufacturers’ total new orders, seasonally adjusted, excluding aircraft and other transportation goods

Change in total exports of goods and services compared with the first two months of 2009

By ADAM NOSSITER

NIAMEY, Niger — For China, the transition seems smooth.

Just a few months ago, China was widely derided here as the financial backbone propping up an autocraticpresident, Mamadou Tandja, giving him the confidence to ignore interna-tional condemnation as he choppedaway at Niger’s democratic institu-tions.

But now that Mr. Tandja has been overthrown, China appears to be set-tling into a new role: business partnerto the military officers who ousted Mr.Tandja under the banner of restoring democracy and good government.

“Our diplomatic relations withChina were not affected by the coupd’état,” said Mahaman Laouali Dan Dah, a spokesman for the militaryjunta .

That was plain to see recently on thefront page of the government news-paper. China’s ambassador to Niger,Xia Huang, was prominently shown inspecting a bridge that his country is building here in the capital.

About 10 days before, Mr. Xia had proclaimed on state television thatChina’s extensive oil and uraniuminterests in Niger had not been “dis-rupted by the events” — the coup — inFebruary, news agencies reported.

There may still be some small per-turbations. The junta has said broadlythat it may adjust any deals made byMr. Tandja to ensure that they suffi-ciently benefit Niger, a nation rich inuranium and, potentially, oil.

But the junta does not seem eager toupset the Chinese, and for now China appears to be proceeding confident-ly, sealing its reputation here as the continent’s behind-the-scenes force,ready to do business regardless ofwho is in power or whatever outrage exists about it.

“They couldn’t care less” who leadsthe country, Mohamed Bazoum, aformer opposition leader recentlyappointed by the junta to a civiliancouncil, said. “The Chinese, they wereabout to destroy democracy. Theywere playing a very negative role.”

But even Mr. Bazoum did not sug-

gest breaking with China now. In asign of how desperately Niger needs investment Mr. Bazoum said he hopedthe old deals would be respected.

“When the international commu-nity turns its back on you, you’vegot to find money somewhere,” said Sanoussi Tambari Jackou, the senior member of Niger’s Parliament. Afterall, he said, “it’s the West that threw Tandja into the arms of the Chinese.”

France, the former colonial power here, has also been criticized by op-position leaders for not speaking out forcefully enough against Mr. Tandja,and the largely state-owned French nuclear engineering giant, Areva,

has two uranium mines here, withplans for a third.

But last year, as Mr. Tandja dis-solved Parliament and the nation’shighest court, France adhered to the European Union’s suspension of aid to Niger. The suspension has hurt the junta, too, because it remains in effectuntil new elections are scheduled.

China, by contrast, has stayed the course. Cash flowed from a substan-tial fund established by the Chinese,allowing Mr. Tandja to continuepaying salaries as Western supportebbed. Now that he is gone, work hascontinued on a giant Chinese-built oil refinery in the nation’s east.

Chinese cash, Chinese investments,big Chinese projects in oil, uraniumand hydroelectric power — poten-tially worth billions of dollars — hadbeen multiplying in Mr. Tandja’s finalyears in power.

Mr. Tandja is now being held with-out charge by the military. In hisplace, a previously unknown armymajor, Salou Djibo, is running thecountry, the world’s sixth-largest ura-nium exporter. He promises a transi-tion to civilian rule and elections.

The Chinese Embassy did not re-spond to a request for comment, and the local office of the China NationalPetroleum Corporation did not an-swer queries. But the ambassador,Mr. Xia, has vigorously defended hiscountry’s activities here, pointing outChina’s investments in health, educa-tion and agriculture.

Xinhua, the Chinese state-run newsagency, quoted him as saying that thepeople of Niger “are eyewitnesses tothe benefits of the friendship between the two countries.”

By MARTIN FACKLER

MEMURO, Japan — Satomi Sato,a 51-year-old widow, knew she had ittough, raising a teenage daughter on the less than $17,000 a year she earnedfrom two jobs. Still, she was surprised last autumn when the government an-nounced for the first time an officialpoverty line — and she was below it.

“I don’t want to use the word pov-erty, but I’m definitely poor,” said Ms. Sato, who works mornings makingboxed lunches and afternoons deliv-ering newspapers. “Poverty is still avery unfamiliar word in Japan.”

After years of economic stagnation and widening income disparities, thisonce proudly egalitarian nation is be-latedly waking up to the fact that it hasa large and growing number of poorpeople. The Labor Ministry’s disclo-sure in October that almost one in six Japanese, or 20 million people, lived inpoverty in 2007 stunned the nation andignited a debate over possible rem-edies that has raged ever since.

Many Japanese, who cling to the

popular myth that their nation isuniformly middle class, were further shocked to see that Japan’s povertyrate, at 15.7 percent, was close to theOrganization for Economic Coopera-tion and Development’s figure of 17.1percent in the United States, whoseglaring social inequalities have longbeen viewed with scorn and pity byJapanese.

But perhaps just as surprising was the government’s admission thatit had been keeping poverty statis-tics secretly since 1998 while deny-ing there was a problem. That endedwhen a left-leaning government ledby Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyamareplaced the long-governing LiberalDemocratic Party last summer witha pledge to force Japan’s bureaucrats to be more open, government officialsand poverty experts said.

The ministry’s announcementhelped expose a problem that socialworkers say is easily overlooked inrelatively homogenous Japan, whichdoes not have the high crime rates, ur-

ban decay and stark racial divisions of the United States.

While just over half of Japan’s sin-gle mothers, like Ms. Sato, are poor— roughly in line with the ratio in the United States — she and her daughter, Mayu, 17, take pains to hide their need-iness. They outwardly smile, she said, but “cry on the inside” when friends or relatives talk about vacations, a luxu-ry they cannot afford.

“Saying we’re poor would draw at-

tention, so I’d rather hide it,” said Ms. Sato, who lives in a blocklike publichousing project in this small city sur-rounded by flat, treeless farmlandreminiscent of the American Mid-west.

She said she had little money evenbefore her husband, a constructionmachine operator, died of lung cancer three years ago. She said her family’sdifficulties began in the late 1990s,when the economic slide worsened

here on the northern island of Hokkai-do, as it did in much of rural Japan.

Even with two jobs, she says she can-not afford to see a doctor or buy medi-cine to treat a growing host of healthcomplaints, including sore joints anddizziness. When her daughter needed$700 to buy school uniforms on enter-ing high school last year, a commonrequirement here, she saved for it bycutting back to two meals a day.

Poverty experts call Ms. Sato’s casetypical. They say more than 80 percentof those living in poverty in Japan holdlow-wage, temporary jobs with no se-curity and few benefits. They usually have enough money to eat, but not totake part in normal activities, like eat-ing out with friends or seeing a movie.

“Poverty in a prosperous societyusually does not mean living in ragson a dirt floor,” said Masami Iwata,a social welfare professor at JapanWomen’s University in Tokyo.

“These are people with cellphones and cars, but they are cut off from the rest of society.”

manufactured items. In apartmenttowers and on cul-de-sacs, sales ofnew homes surged in March, climbing by 27 percent.

Many economists estimate that con-sumer spending — which makes upsome 70 percent of American economicactivity — swelled by 4 percent during the first three months of the year, morethan the double the pace once antici-pated. Some have nudged upward theirestimates for economic growth to morethan 3 percent this year.

“Consumers are showing extraor-dinary resilience,” said Bernard Bau-mohl, chief global economist at theEconomic Outlook Group. “There’s alot of pent-up demand out there that isnow being unleashed.

While few dispute signs of recoveryacross much of the economy, signifi-cant debate remains on how robustand sustained it will be. The linger-ing effects of the financial crisis havesome economists envisioning a longstretch of sluggish growth.

But in recent months a stream ofnews indicates a vigorous recovery.Technology companies have increasedsales. After a decade of painful decline,manufacturing is tentatively adding jobs. Retail sales increased by 9.1 per-cent in March at established storescompared with a year earlier, accord-ing to Thomson Reuters, marking theseventh consecutive month of growth.Exports swelled in the first two monthsof the year by nearly 15 percent com-pared with a year earlier, according tothe Commerce Department.

Still, much of the improvement ap-pears the result of the nearly $800 bil-lion government stimulus program.As that package is largely exhausted

late this year, further expansion may hinge on whether consumers keepspending. That probably depends onthe job market, which remains weak.

“The recovery is under way, andit’s better than expected, but it hasn’tbecome self-sustaining because thejob market hasn’t developed yet,”said Mark Zandi, chief economist atMoody’sEconomy.com.

At a mall in Paramus, New Jersey,Marie Bauer, who sells clothing for a living, was feeling emboldened. “I’mworking more now,” she said. “I boughtmyself a watch.”

Spending power has been enhancedby a monumental reduction in house-hold debt, which has shrunk by about $600 billion since the fall of 2008, ac-cording to Equifax credit data ana-lyzed by Economy.com. That amounts to about $6,300 a household.

The key question is whether thisburst of consumption will promptbusinesses to hire, adding paychecks needed to amplify economic growth.Optimists suggest this is already un-folding, pointing to the addition of162,000 net jobs in March.

Robert Barbera, chief economistat the research and trading firm ITG,said: “You fired pell-mell, because youwere afraid you were going to lose ac-cess to credit.” Now, he argues, com-panies are guided by a new anxietythat demands hiring: fear of missing out on the profits of fresh growth.

Still to come, he added, is a wave ofspending from American businesses.

“They are awash in cash,” Mr. Bar-bera said. “They’re in a position to stepup spending across the board.”

Shaken Japanese Face Harsh Reality: The Poor Live Among Them

From the Mall to the Docks,Signs of an Economic Turn

From Page I

Stephanie Rosenbloom contributedreporting from Paramus, New Jersey,Ashlee Vance from San Francisco, and Michael Parrish from Los Angeles.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JANE HAHN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A Chinese manager in Niger. A lawmaker, Sanoussi

Tambari Jackou, far left, defends Niger’s ties with China,

which survived the ouster of Mamadou Tandja, near left.

KO SASAKI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Satomi Sato

makes less than

$17,000 a year to

support herself

and her teenage

daughter, which

falls under Japan’s

newly released

poverty line.

Leaders Change, but China’s Gold Endures

Regardless of who isin charge in Niger, the renminbi still flows.

‘People get tired of holding on totheir money.’

Moussa Kaka contributed reportingfrom Niamey, and Sharon LaFraniere and Li Bibo from Beijing.

Repubblica NewYork

W O R L D T R E N D S

MONDAY, MAY 3, 2010 V

THE NEW YORK TIMESSource: Facebook

United States

Britain

Indonesia

Turkey

France

Italy

Canada

Philippines

Mexico

Spain

118.7

24.1

22.7

20.7

17.6

16.2

14.2

12.4

10.3

9.8

NUMBER OF REGISTERED USERS, in millions

Checking Facebook

Countries with the largest number of registered Facebook users.

By NORIMITSU ONISHI

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Displeasedthat a statue of a 10-year-old BarackObama was installed in a park here,Indonesians took their protest not tothis capital’s most famous traffic circlebut to Facebook. More than 56,000 on-line protesters later, city officials gavein to arguments that the park shouldbe reserved to honor an Indonesian.

This example of high-tech grass-roots organizing was the direct resultof the explosion of social networking inIndonesia. But the boom is prompting a fierce debate over the limits of freeexpression in a newly democratic In-donesia, with the government tryingto regulate content on the Internet anda recently emboldened news mediapushing back.

Proponents of greater freedom viewsocial networking as a vital tool to fur-ther democratize this country’s often corrupt political system. Skeptics,especially among politicians and re-ligious leaders, worry about mob ruleand the loss of traditional values.

In its latest move, the governmentrecently proposed a bill that wouldrequire Internet service providers to filter online content but was forced to abandon it after vociferous protest on-line and in the mainstream media.

Thanks to relatively cheap cell-phones that offer Internet access, Fa-cebook, Twitter and local social net-working media have rapidly spreadfrom cities to villages throughoutSoutheast Asia, especially in Indo-nesia and the Philippines. In a littleover a year, the number of IndonesianFacebook users has skyrocketed tomore than 21 million from fewer thana million. According to data fromFacebook, Indonesia trails only theUnited States, with 116 million users,

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

LAHORE, Pakistan — The professor was work-ing in his office here on the campus of Pakistan’slargest university this month when members of an Islamic student group battered open the door, beat him with metal rods and bashed him over the head with a giant flower pot.

Iftikhar Baloch, an environmental science pro-fessor, had expelled members of the group for vi-olent behavior. The retribution left him bloodied and nearly unconscious, and it united his fellowprofessors, who protested with a nearly three-week strike that ended April 19.

The attack and the anger it provoked havedrawn attention to the student group, Islami Ja-miat Talaba, whose morals police have for years terrorized this graceful, century-old institution by brandishing a chauvinistic form of Islam,teachers here say.

But the group has help from a surprising source— national political leaders who have given it free

rein, because they sometimes make political al-liances with its parent organization, Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan’s oldest and most powerful re-ligious party, they say.

The university’s plight encapsulates Pakistan’spredicament: an intolerant, aggressive minorityterrorizes a more open-minded, peaceful major-ity, while an opportunistic political class dithers,benefiting from alliances with the aggressors.

The dynamic helps explain how the Talibanand other militant groups here, though small andoften unpopular minorities, retain their hold overlarge portions of Pakistani society.

But this is the University of the Punjab, Paki-stan’s premier institution of higher learning, withabout 30,000 students, and a principal avenue of advancement for the swelling ranks of Pakistan’slower and middle classes.

The battle here concerns the future direction of the country, and whether those pushing an in-tolerant vision of Islam will prevail against thisnation’s beleaguered, outward-looking, educatedclass.

That is why the problem of Islami Jamiat Ta-laba is so urgent, teachers say.

“They are hooligans with a Taliban mentality and they should be banned, full stop,’’ Maliha A.Aga, a teacher in the art department, said of the student group as she stood in a throng of protest-ers in professorial robes last month. “That’s the only way this university will survive.’’

The rhetoric of the group, like that of its parentpolitical party, is anti-West, chauvinistic and in-tolerant of Pakistan’s religious minorities. It wasa vocal supporter of the Taliban, until doing sobecame unpopular last year.

Its members block music classes, ban Western soft drinks and beat male students for sitting neargirls on the university lawn.

“It’s fascist,’’ said Shaista Sirajuddin, an Eng-lish literature professor, of the Islamic studentmovement. “Every single government has avert-ed its eyes.’’

The group is something of a puzzle. It may beaggressive, but it is relatively small, and haswaned in popularity among students in recentyears. One young teacher said association withit now brought stigma.

But it still manages to dominate by deftly wield-ing Islam as a weapon to bludgeon its enemies,denouncing anyone who disagrees with it as un-Islamic.

The tactic is effective in Pakistan, a youngcountry whose early confusion about the role of Islam in society has hardened into a rigid certain-ty, making it highly taboo to question.

“It’s unthinkable to talk even about humanrights without reference to the Holy Book,’’ saidMs. Sirajuddin, referring to the Koran. “Such isthe dread to be talked about as un-Islamic.’’

Students and teachers say the group’s aim ispower, and that it uses violence to get it. A teach-er, who would give her name only as Ms. Tayyib, fearing retribution, said group members twiceattacked sports events she had organized, oncewielding chairs.

The intimidation has poisoned the academicatmosphere, said another young teacher, Nazia,who was also too fearful to allow her full name to be printed. “Jamiat is a threat for teachers,’’ Nazia said. “That weakens the quality of educa-tion.’’

In Indonesia, Social Networks Upset the Balance of Power

ED WRAY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Waqar Gillani contributed reporting to thisarticle.

An intolerant minorityterrorizes a universityin Lahore.

Split in Pakistan Spills Over to Campus

Try the IHT free for 4 weeks.

Visit subs.iht.com/global.

Be a global thinker. Every day.

and Britain, with 24 million. What ismore, Indonesia has the largest num-ber of Facebook and Twitter users inAsia, according to companies like the Toronto-based Sysomos, that analyze social networking traffic.

With tens of millions of people now instantly connected, social network-ing has quickly become a potent,though sometimes unpredictable, po-litical force.

Protests on Facebook and other sitesbacked leaders of this country’s mainanticorruption agency who, in a long-running feud against the national po-lice and the attorney general’s office, had apparently been set up and arrest-ed on false charges. The online anger prompted President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to intercede; the policeand the attorney general’s office, con-sidered among the country’s most cor-rupt institutions, dropped the case andreleased the officials in November.

In another cause célèbre, online sup-port helped free a 32-year-old mother who was jailed after complainingabout the poor service at a suburbanJakarta hospital. Prosecutors chargedher under a new law governing elec-tronic information and transactionsbecause she had sent an e-mail mes-sage to friends detailing her com-plaints. A court eventually found hernot guilty in December.

Tifatul Sembiring, the minister ofcommunication and information tech-nology, said the government wouldreintroduce the bill to regulate online content after a “cooling down” period.

“We want to limit the distributionof negative content like pornography,gambling, violence, blasphemy,” Mr.Tifatul said, adding that online contentshould be regulated in such a way as to preserve “our values, also our culture and also our norms.”

Ramadhan Pohan, a member of

Parliament and a former newspaper reporter, said those online move-ments had deeply unsettled politi-cians, bureaucrats and even hospitaladministrators unused to such direct— and successful — challenges to theirauthority.

“The problem is that many officialsin government are paranoid aboutthis new online content,” Mr. Pohansaid. “They are old-style politiciansand bureaucrats who, if you ask them, don’t have a Facebook or Twitter ac-count. They don’t realize that in terms of democracy and freedom of expres-sion, we’ve reached a kind of point of no return.”

In Parliament, Mr. Pohan said that he and other advocates of unregulatedonline media “are still in the minority.”

A prominent blogger, Enda Nasu-tion, said the laws could smother In-donesia’s flourishing blogosphere.When Mr. Nasution, 34, began blog-

ging early in the past decade, he saidhe could count the country’s bloggers on two hands. Today, according to Vir-tual Consulting, there are more thanone million Indonesian bloggers.

In Singapore, Malaysia and othercountries in the region with controllednews media, blogs tend to be sites for information that cannot be reportedin the mainstream media, Mr. Nasu-tion said. In Indonesia, because thenews media are free, “bloggers alsoact as watchdogs or commentators,”he added.

The online movements, he said,are a watershed in the evolving roleof social media here. “We don’t knowwhere this is going to lead us,” he said,adding that supporters of regulations “are standing in the way of an online tsunami.

“You can’t stop it,” he said. “It’s not only about technology. It’s about Indo-nesia redefining its values.”

Social networking has exploded in Indonesia, but some

want to restrict content. Left, an internet cafe in Jakarta.

Repubblica NewYork

Landfills that collect gas

590 kWh of electricity65 kWh of electricity

Waste is burned to heat a boiler that generates steam for a turbine. The turbine runs a generator to create electricity. Excess heat can sometimes be used for heating.

Part of the waste decomposes, creating landfill gas. The gases are collected through underground wells, usually in areas that are not in active use anymore.

.-& 1.- .' 3$01& %$- %/&$1& ###

3.35metric tons, carbon dioxide equivalent

0.56metric tons, carbon dioxide equivalent

220 grams of sulfur oxides600 grams of sulfur oxides

1,450 grams of nitrogen oxides2,300 grams of nitrogen oxides

&,*00*.-0 './ .-& ,&($3$11").2/ .' &+&%1/*%*14

One metric ton is one million grams, or 1.1 short tons.

Sources: P. O. Kaplan, J. DeCarolis, S. Thorneloe, “Is It Better to Burn or Bury Waste for Clean

Electricity Generation?” Environmental Science & Technology 2009, E.P.A.; Energy Information

Administration, D.O.E.

Plants that burn wasteto create energy

THE NEW YORK TIMES

+5<79:;; A?# *<6:<8>5@:=<By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

HORSHOLM, Denmark — Thelawyers and engineers who dwell inan elegant enclave here are at peace with the hulking neighbor just overthe back fence: a vast energy plantthat burns thousands of metric tons of household garbage and industrialwaste, round the clock.

Far cleaner than conventionalincinerators, this new type of plantconverts local trash into heat andelectricity. Dozens of filters catchpollutants, from mercury to dioxin,that would have emerged from itssmokestack only a decade ago.

In that time, such plants have be-come both the mainstay of garbagedisposal and a crucial fuel sourceacross Denmark, from wealthy ex-urbs like Horsholm to Copenhagen’sdowntown area. Their use has not on-ly reduced the country’s energy costsand reliance on oil and gas, but alsobenefited the environment, dimin-ishing the use of landfills and cutting carbon dioxide emissions. The plantsrun so cleanly that many times more dioxin is now released from homefireplaces and backyard barbecuesthan from incineration.

Denmark now has 29 such plants, serving 98 municipalities in a coun-try of 5.5 million people, and 10 more are planned or under construction.Across Europe, there are about 400plants, with Denmark, Germany andthe Netherlands leading the pack inexpanding them and building newones.

In Denmark, plants are placed inthe communities they serve, no mat-ter how affluent, so that the heat ofburning garbage can be efficientlypiped into homes.

Planners take pains to separateresidential traffic from trucks de-livering garbage, and some of thenewest plants are encased in elabo-rate outer shells that resemble sculp-tures.

“New buyers are usually O.K. withthe plant,” said Hans Rast, president of the homeowners’ association inHorsholm.

“What they like is that they lookout and see the forest,” he said. (The living rooms in this enclave of townhouses face fields and trees, whilethe plant is some 365 meters over aback fence that borders the homes’carports). The lower heating costsdon’t hurt, either. Eighty percent ofHorsholm’s heat and 20 percent of its electricity come from burning trash.

Many countries that are expand-ing waste-to-energy capacity, likeDenmark and Germany, typicallyalso have the highest recycling rates;

only the material that cannot be re-cycled is burned.

In Europe, environmental lawshave hastened the development ofwaste-to-energy programs. The Eu-ropean Union severely restricts thecreation of new landfill sites, and its nations already have binding com-mitments to reduce their carbon di-

oxide emissions by 2012 under the in-ternational pact known as the Kyoto Protocol.

In Horsholm only 4 percent ofwaste now goes to landfills, and 1percent (chemicals, paints and some electronic equipment) is consignedto “special disposal” in places likesecure storage vaults in an aban-doned salt mine in Germany. Sixty-

one percent of the town’s waste is re-cycled and 34 percent is incinerated at waste-to-energy plants.

Emissions from the plants in allcategories have been reduced to just10 to 20 percent of levels allowed un-der the European Union’s strict en-vironmental standards for air andwater discharges.

At the end of the incineration pro-cess, the extracted acids, heavy met-als and gypsum are sold for use inmanufacturing or construction.

“The hazardous elements are con-centrated and handled with carerather than dispersed as they wouldbe in a landfill,” said Ivar Green-Paulsen, general manager of theVestforbraending plant in Copenha-gen, the country’s largest.

The Horsholm plant, owned byfive adjacent communities, has even proved popular in a conservativeregion with Denmark’s highest per-capita income. Morten Slotved, 40,Horsholm’s mayor, is trying to ex-pand it.

“Constituents like it because itdecreases heating costs and raiseshome values,” he said with a smile.“I’d like another furnace.”

By MICHAEL TORTORELLO

Seen on a visit in winter, Rob Tor-cellini’s 3.5-by-3.6-meter greenhouseis undistinguished on the outside: he built it from a $700 kit, alongside hisfamily’s Victorian-style farmhouse inEastford, Connecticut. What is goingon inside, however, is either a glimpseat the future of food growing or astrange hobby — possibly both.

There are fish here, for one thing,shivering through the winter, and acustom-built system of tanks, heat-ers, pumps, pipes and gravel beds.The greenhouse vents run on a $20pair of recycled windshield wiper mo-tors, and a thermostat system sendsMr. Torcellini e-mail alerts when the temperature drops below 2 degrees.Some 2,000 liters of water fill a pair offood-grade polyethylene drums thathe scavenged from a light-industrypark.

Mr. Torcel l ini’s greenhousewouldn’t look out of place on a way-ward space station. But then, in a liter-

al sense, Mr. Torcellini, a 41-year-old information technology director foran industrial manufacturer, has leftearth — that is, dirt — behind.

What feeds his winter crop of lettuce is recirculating water from the 570-li-ter fish tank and the waste generated by his 20 jumbo goldfish. Wastewater is what fertilizes the 27 strawberryplants from last summer, too. Theyoccupy little cubbies in a two-meter-tall PVC pipe. When the temperature begins to climb in the spring, he plantsthe rest of the gravel containers withbeans, peppers, tomatoes and cucum-bers — all the things many other gar-deners grow outside.

In here, the yields are otherworld-ly. “We actually kept a tally of howmany cherry tomatoes we grew,”Mr. Torcellini said of last summer’scrop. “And from one plant, it was 347.” A trio of plants produced 175 cucum-bers.

It’s all part of a home experiment heis conducting in a form of year-round,

sustainable agriculture called aqua-ponics — a neologism that combineshydroponics (or water-based plant-ing) and aquaculture (fish cultiva-tion) — which has recently attracteda zealous following of kitchen garden-ers, futurists, tinkerers and practicalenvironmentalists.

And Australians — a lot of Austra-lians.

In Australia, where gardeners havegrappled with droughts for a decade,

aquaponics is particularly appealingbecause it requires 80 to 90 percentless water than traditional growingmethods.

Jack Rowland can imagine a daywhen aquaponics set-ups could bebuilt into new apartment complexesand be fed by municipal waste andgeothermal power. In the meantime,he has started his own 4,500-litertilapia hatchery in his family’s unfin-ished basement in Wappingers Falls,

New York, about 125 kilometers north of Manhattan. He houses the fishin black cattle troughs, which haveproved to be sturdy and nontoxic. Astock tank heater keeps the water ata comfortable 24 degrees.

Tilapia will tolerate crowdingand will feast on your table scraps.(“They’re the ultimate garbage dis-posal unit,” Mr. Rowland said.) But,being tropical by nature, they die inthe cold.

This summer, he hopes to transferhis operation from a spot next to thewasher and dryer to a 15-meter-longhoop greenhouse.

Though Mr. Rowland spends per-haps an hour a night in the basement, looking for dead fish and new spawn,he knows that no system is fail-safe.Pumps break, heaters fail. The art of aquaponics is one of trial and error.

“My mentor in the tilapia world toldme I really wouldn’t be a master oftilapia until I killed at least a millionfish,” he said. “I’m not there yet.”

By CAMILLE SWEENEY

The new eco-beauty enthusiasts de-mand that everything from their hairgel to their nail polish be earth friendly,not just on the inside but outside, too. Tothem, the question of life cycle doesn’tapply only to the elasticity of their skinbut also to what happens to the eyeshadow compact once it’s empty. And where does a shampoo bottle go after you drop it in the trash?

Last year, one in five women 25 to 34years old who participated in a Mintelmarket research study reported that abody lotion’s “eco-friendly packaging”mattered as much to them as the prod-uct’s anti-aging properties. In a 2008Mintel study, 40 percent of women sur-veyed indicated that such packaging was part of their decision when buyingmakeup.

The beauty industry is respondingwith new products, packaging and ma-terials like the compacts made of bam-boo and paper used by Physicians For-mula, the jar made of recycled materi-als that holds Aveda’s Green Science Firming Face Cream, and Pangea Or-ganics’ bar soap wrappers embedded with seeds like amaranth.

The industry calls such packaging “sustainable”; the goal is to use naturalresources more responsibly.

Sustainability can cover a number of practices, like the form of energy thecompany uses to make a packagingmaterial or even whether the companyis using energy-efficient light bulbs.

“We all realize there’s way too muchpackaging in beauty products,” saidStarre Vartan, author of “The EcoChick Guide to Life,” who blogs about earth-friendly fashion and cosmetics.“There’s the container and the card in-side the box that’s wrapped in plastic.And if it’s shipped, there are 16 layers of paper to get to it. When you open it,you can just see the emissions flying out. But it doesn’t mean we’re willing to go without.”

According to the Environmental Pro-tection Agency, every year packagingmakes up one quarter of landfill waste.

The Estée Lauder corporation, whichpresides over 28 brands, including Ori-gins and Aveda, has set design guide-lines to make sustainable packaging apriority in the company.

“We can make small redesigns in thepackaging that have a huge impact theconsumer may not even notice,” saidJohn Delfausse, Estée Lauder’s chief environmental officer for corporate

packaging, a position created in 2007.Slimming the shape and weight of a

bottle, tube or jar while maintainingthe same volume of product, has beencommon practice with Estée Lauder products, Mr. Delfausse said. It is being adopted throughout the industry, too.

Aveda created makeup pencils that are certified by the Forest StewardshipCouncil, a nonprofit organization that encourages the responsible manage-ment of the world’s forests. The compa-ny’s Flax Sticks makeup brush is madewith bristles composed of 30 percentnatural flax fiber combined with recy-cled resin from office paper, cardboard,aluminum cans, plastics and metals.The brush is packaged in a biodegrad-able plant-based cellulose bag.

Companies are keeping a close watchon what may be the next wave in pack-aging: bioplastics and bioresins, ma-terial made from corn and sugar sub-stances that are renewable resources.

Some companies, like MAC Cosmet-ics and Aveda, are promoting recyclingprograms .

But a major obstacle, companies say,is trying to find containers and partsthat make the whole package “green.”

“We searched for a long time to try to find a sustainable pump to go on our glass bottle of pomegranate facialcleanser,” Tata Harper said of her natu-ral skin-care line. “We wanted to avoidpumps because they are typicallymade up of two materials, plastic and a metal spring, and therefore cannot be recycled unless they are separated,which most recycling plants won’t do.”

But because her products contain nopreservatives, “We can’t have peoplesticking their fingers into the cleanserto get it out and risking contamina-tion,” she said. And so she’s had to set-tle for what she considers to be subparpumps. “Supposedly there’s a better green pump being developed now, butwe’ll see,” she said.

Converting Trash Into Clean Energy

ROB TORCELLINI

Rob Torcellini’s aquaponics system in Connecticut was made from a

kit and it includes “strawberry towers,” at right.

A bounty from a barrelfor tinkerers and futurists.

Europe finds clean fuel in what usedto be a nuisance.

CosmeticsPackagingThat’s Green

A Dirt-Free Greenhouse(With Jumbo Goldfish)

CHESTER HIGGINS JR./THE NEW YORK TIMES

Some cosmetics brands like

Origins recycle containers.

B U S I N E S S O F G R E E N

VI MONDAY, MAY 3, 2010

Repubblica NewYork

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

MONDAY, MAY 3, 2010 VII

FIRST TWO MISSIONS

Cassini’s original four-year mission used a large amount of fuel to visit high-priority targets in 75 orbits. The craft is nearing the end of its second mission, a two-year tour with 64 similarly sized orbits in different orientations.

JONATHAN CORUM/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Sources: John C. Smith, Brent Buffington and David Seal, Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Scott Turner, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

PRIMARY MISSION, 2004–8

EQUINOX MISSION, 2008–10

Titan’s orbit

Titan’s orbit

Saturn

By GUY GUGLIOTTA

When it comes to voyages of dis-covery, NASA’s venerable Cassinimission is about as good as it gets.

In six years of cruising around the planet Saturn and its neighborhood, the Cassini spacecraft has discoveredtwo new Saturn rings, a bunch of new moons and a whole new class of moon-lets. It encountered liquid lakes on themoon Titan, water ice and a particleplume on the moon Enceladus, ridges and ripples on the rings, and cyclones at Saturn’s poles. Cassini released a European space probe that landedon Titan. And Cassini has sent backenough data to produce more than1,400 scientific papers.

But besides the science, Cassiniis state of the art in the arcane dis-cipline of orbital mechanics — howto get from one place to another inspace without running out of fuel.The plans are for Cassini to keepworking for seven more years, but itcurrently has only 22 percent of themaneuvering propellant it had when it started.

Figuring out how to more than dou-ble the duration of the mission withless than a quarter of the fuel pres-ents an astonishingly complex ex-ercise in physics and geometry. The enormous array of science objectives and targets — moons, rings, Saturnitself — makes it one of the most com-plex missions ever flown.

Brent Buffington, a Cassini mis-sion designer at NASA’s Jet Propul-sion Laboratory, compared the taskto plotting a seven-year road triparound the United States for morethan 200 scientists, all with differ-ent interests and all wanting to seedifferent things. “Now add the factthat you have a finite amount of timeto design this road trip and need toadhere to the laws of physics, speedlimits, the limited capabilities of the bus” and the bus driver, he said. “Oh,and the targets they want to see are moving.”

Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004for a four-year mission, but it was sosuccessful that NASA gave it a two-year extension, to September 2010.Then, in February, NASA extended ita second time for what it calls the Sol-stice mission, lasting until Saturn’snorthern hemisphere summer in 2017.If all goes as planned, on September15, 2017, Cassini will dive inside therings for 22 spectacular orbits on the fringes of Saturn’s atmosphere beforeplunging into the planet.

Cassini made it to its first, two-year extension in part because thescience was simply too good to pass up. But another reason was that itperformed so well and remained sohealthy that it was left with enoughunused propellant to enable it to ma-neuver through 64 additional orbits, after having already completed 75 in

its first four years.Figuring out how to organize the

Solstice mission took two years. Sci-entists presented wish lists of places they wanted to visit and things theywanted to see. The tour designers

showed them a plan and told themwhat was possible and what was not.Then both sides did it again.

“The competition was fierce, butcollegial,” said Jonathan I. Lunine,a Cassini scientist and a professor of planetary science and physics at the University of Rome Tor Vergata.

“We try to satisfy as many peopleas possible,” said Cassini’s missionplanning engineer, John C.Smith,who, with Mr. Buffington, is respon-sible for designing the tour.

One of the tools for adjusting thetrajectory of a large manufacturedobject in space — the essence of orbit-al mechanics — is the gravity assist. As a spacecraft approaches a planet or moon, gravity grips it and flings it

in a different direction.In Cassini’s case, the key is Titan,

Saturn’s largest moon. It is the onlything in the Saturn system, besidesSaturn, with enough gravity to makeradical changes in the spacecraft’strajectory every time it flies by.

“Without Titan,” said David Seal,Cassini’s mission planning super-visor, “we would go into one orbitaround Saturn and be stuck there.”

Cassini’s tour designers mustkeep a close watch on the amount of fuel that it has for navigation. This ismeasured as a change in spacecraftvelocity in meters per second andis known in aerospace parlance asdelta-V.

When Cassini began, the space-craft had 742 meters per seconddelta-V available, and for the initialfour-year prime mission and extend-ed two-year Equinox mission, “thecost of doing business was about 100 meters per second per year, maybe a little more,” Mr. Seal said.

That has left 158 meters per sec-ond delta-V for the next seven years.What makes the Solstice mission do-able is that designers can trade time for fuel — it may cost less delta-V toreach a target if the spacecraft takes longer to get there. They also use in-genuity to achieve mission objectives at lower fuel cost. And each flyby ofTitan adds as much as 840 meters persecond of delta-V.

By GINA KOLATA

Dr. Linda Griffith was at a confer-ence in Singapore in early Januarywhen she felt a lump in her breast. Sheassumed it was nothing — a cyst.

But she had a mammogram, ultra-sound and biopsy within hours of get-ting off the plane on her return. The news was not good: she had cancer.

Then the complications began. Dr. Griffith, director of the Center forGynepathology Research at Massa-chusetts Institute of Technology, had a test to see whether her tumor hadextra copies of a protein, HER2. If itdid, it would respond to a drug, Her-ceptin, which blocks the protein and stymies the tumor’s growth.

The test on Dr. Griffith’s tumorwas negative. Or was it? One smallarea of her tumor stained brown, in-dicating lots of HER2. The rest wasa cream color, indicating no extraHER2 protein.

Yet her treatment hinged on this re-sult. A HER2 positive tumor has a badprognosis. Herceptin can make that prognosis good, reducing the chancesthat the cancer will come back by 50

percent and reduce a woman’s risk of dying by 40 percent.

But Herceptin, costing $42,000 ayear wholesale, causes flulike symp-toms and also has a rare, serious side effect, severe heart damage that can even be fatal.

And if a tumor does not have muchHER2, Herceptin would be, as Dr.Antonio Wolff, a breast cancer spe-cialist at Johns Hopkins Universityin Maryland put it, “a toxic and ex-pensive placebo.”

Dr. Griffith had encountered anemerging problem with today’s new cancer tests and therapies.

HER2 tests, for instance, can givefalse-positives up to 20 percent of the time, wrongly telling women theyneed the drug when they do not. Fivepercent to 10 percent of the time thetests can falsely tell a woman that she should not take the drug, when sheshould.

Other tests for breast cancer alsohave problems. Those tests, for es-trogen receptors on breast cancercells, determine whether cancer willbe thwarted by drugs that deprive tu-

mors of estrogen. They can be wrongat least 10 percent of the time. Some estrogen-depleting drugs increase the risk of osteoporosis and can also causejoint pain and increase risks of strokeand cancer of the uterine lining.

Dr. Griffith’s physician, Dr. EricWiner at the Dana Farber Cancer In-stitute, had her tumor retested with

a different method, hoping the resultwould help him and Dr. Griffith figureout whether she could benefit fromHerceptin. “It’s really hard to knowwhat to do,” Dr. Griffith said.

Dr. Griffith’s two tests for HER2turned out to agree, but with thatsame mixed result. Her tumor waspart negative, part weakly positive.

In the end, the studies, along withDr. Winer’s clinical perspective, did not convince her that the drug would help. The risk of serious heart dam-age and other side effects was scary.And, she said, she cannot ignore the drug’s price, even though her insurerwould pay.

Dr. Griffith decided not to take Her-ceptin, but she is having standardchemotherapy.

“I am very comfortable with my de-cision,” she said.

An Extended Performance for a Space Spectacular

ROBERT BENSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Brent Buffington, David Seal and John C. Smith are scientists working on the Cassini mission.

ERIK JACOBS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

F I N D I N G S

Alzheimer’s and DietOlder adults appear to be at lower

risk for Alzheimer’s disease if theyeat a diet rich in fish, poultry, fruit,nuts, dark leafy greens, vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower, and oil-and-vinegar dressing, a new study has found.

Among older people whose diet included the most of these foods, the risk for Alzheimer’s was more thanone-third lower over the course of four years than among those who ate the least such foods and more high-fat dairy products, butter, red meat and organ meat.

The food combination associatedwith lower risk is low in saturated fat and rich in nutrients like folate, vitamin E and omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.

The paper, which was publishedonline April 12 by the journal Ar-chives of Neurology, reported onfindings in 2,148 older adults (aver-age age 77) living in northern Man-hattan, none of whom had dementiaat the beginning of the study period.Four years later, 253 had developedAlzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Nikolaos Scarmeas, the paper’s senior author and an assistant profes-sor of neurology at the Taub Institute at Columbia University in New York,acknowledged that the study does not prove a cause-and-effect relation-ship .

But he added, “We know these foods have been associated withbeneficial outcomes for other medical diseases.” RONI CARYN RABIN

Alcohol and AllergiesSniffling, sneezing and struggling

through allergy season this year?You may want to lay off alcohol for a while.

Studies have found that alcohol can cause or worsen the common symptoms of asthma and hay fever, like sneezing, itching, headaches and coughing. But the cause of the prob-lem is not always the alcohol itself. Beer, wine and liquor contain hista-mine, produced by yeast and bacteriaduring the fermentation process. His-tamine, of course, is the chemical that sets off allergy symptoms.

Wine and beer also contain sulfites, another group of compounds known to provoke asthma and other allergy-like symptoms. In one study inSweden in 2005, scientists looked atthousands of people and found that compared with the general popula-tion, those with diagnoses of asthma,bronchitis and hay fever were far more likely to experience sneezing, a runny nose and “lower-airway symptoms” after having a drink. Red wine and white wine were the most frequent triggers, and women, for un-known reasons, were about twice aslikely to be affected as men.

Another study of thousands of women published in the journal Clinical and Experimental Allergyin 2008 found that having more thantwo glasses of wine a day almost doubles the risk of allergy symptoms, even among women who were free of seasonal and perennial allergies at the start of the study. It helps to be on the lookout for other foods that either contain or release histamine, likeaged cheeses, pickled or fermentedproducts and yeast-containing foods,like bread, cider and grapes.

ANAHAD O’CONNOR

A moon helps a mission to Saturndouble its duration.

Doctor With Cancer Faces Hard Choice in Her Therapy

CHRISTOPH NIEMANN

Dr. Linda Griffith got

mixed results in tests to

determine whether to use a

possibly dangerous drug to

treat her cancer.

Repubblica NewYork

N E W YO R K A R T S

VIII MONDAY, MAY 3, 2010

By CLAUDIA LA ROCCO

NEW YORK — A young contempo-rary dancer named Will Rawls wasworking at his current production, the Marina Abramovic performance artretrospective at the Museum of Mod-ern Art. Specifically, he was standing naked in a gallery entrance, facinga naked woman, as museumgoerspassed through the narrow space be-tween them. It was a re-enactment of “Imponderabilia,” a well-known piece originally performed by Ms. Abram-ovic and a partner in the 1970s.

Out of the corner of his eye, Mr.Rawls noticed an older man preparing to walk through.

“He proceeded to slide his hand ontomy ribs and back and then touched mybutt,” Mr. Rawls said. “As he was pass-ing me he looked me in the eyes andsaid, ‘You feel good, man.’ ”

“I just turned and looked at the se-curity guard and said, ‘This man istouching me.’ Then I looked back at mypartner and left it at that.”

When his shift was over, Mr. Rawls said, he learned from a security offi-cial that MoMA had revoked the man’s30-year membership and barred him from returning to the museum. (Themuseum would not comment on spe-cific incidents, but issued a statement saying that “any visitor who improp-erly touches or disturbs” a performer will be removed.) It’s a lesson that has been learned the hard way by somevisitors to the retrospective, “The Art-

ist Is Present.”Ms. Abramovic’s work has invited

close encounters of all kinds at theMoMA exhibition. And the show hasmade fascinated spectators out of the performers themselves, who have gen-erally enjoyed being part of it, despite undeniable challenges.

Mr. Rawls, for example, said thatstanding with his arms at his side he had felt more erections “across theback of my hand than I can count,”and Kennis Hawkins, also an “Im-ponderabilia” performer, described a visitor surreptitiously taking waist-high pictures of her and her partner inthe piece on a recent weekend. (Pho-tography is forbidden.) Another day,she added, an excitable visitor in highheels got so engaged in watching an-other performer that she backed onto Ms. Hawkins’s toes, causing her tofaint soon after.

Then there are the stalkerish types,who have tracked down performerson Facebook. Not to mention the com-menters, praising or criticizing theperformers’ bodies or yelling at them to wake up when their eyes are closed.

Rebecca Davis, a performer whohas been out for several weeks witha back injury unrelated to the show,said she, too, had been surprised bythe number of unsuitable gestures.She recalled her shock at hearingthat “someone was grabbed in theirprivate parts” the first weekend ofthe show, and recounted how a wom-

an, perhaps intoxicated, clutched thefingers of the two people in “Pointof Contact,” in which two immobileperformers stare and point at eachother.

“She was probably thinking she wasplayful, but the act itself seemed ag-gressive,” Ms. Davis said.

Ms. Davis also said that the museum

had been extremely vigilant in its ef-forts to protect them. (Some perform-ers called the guards overzealous,even as they expressed gratitude.)

In a brief statement, the museum’scommunications department stressedthat untoward incidents have beenfew and far between during the runof what it described as a heavily traf-

ficked show. MoMA, the statementadded, is “well aware of the challenges posed by having nude performers inthe galleries,” and “discussions tookplace between MoMA’s security staff and Marina Abramovic and the per-formers to ensure that the performers would be comfortable in the galleries at all times.”

And despite the physical and emo-tional discomfort of these encounters— and the draining nature of the work— all the performers interviewedsaid they were often exhilarated bytheir daily shifts (some of which arenow as short as an hour 15 minutes,because of several fainting episodes).There are plenty of magical momentswith strangers, including those whoinnocently touch bare skin, whisper“thank you” or do improvisational lit-tle dances that have the usually stoicperformers laughing.

Many of these artists have their owncareers as dancers and choreogra-phers, and they described the MoMAexperience as making them feel simul-taneously more vulnerable and more empowered. Asked how the museumsetting differed from a stage show,Gary Lai said it was far more fulfilling.

“You get immediate feedback,” hesaid. “You’re causing a definite reac-tion in the audience, different from the typical reaction you want in a regular stage performance. This is more about human nature.”

By GUY TREBAY

NEW YORK — The coolest per-son in New York may well be a large 58-year-old woman who wears cher-ry-colored glasses and a linen smock,and is planning a hip replacement.

If Kim Hastreiter is most familiaras one of the two editors of Paper(the other is David Hershkovitz),the downtown magazine in its 26thyear, she is less publicly visible asone of the genuine connectors in acity where power is often measuredin terms of social circuitry.

What separates Kim Hastreiterfrom ordinary power people is thatno imaginary velvet rope cordonsoff her cohort of acquaintances andfriends.

“Kim isn’t just about big guys or bigguys versus little guys,” Sally Sing-er, the fashion features director ofVogue, said. “You could be Madonna or Beth Ditto or the next big thing inart or design,” Ms. Singer said. “Butyou could just as easily be some ador-able, highly androgynous club crea-ture that’s going to be a fun person to have at a party for a year before you go home to Duluth.”

Ms. Hastreiter is excited by anyof the above. She is excited, period.“She’ll call and say, ‘I found thisthing, this person, this girl whodoes letters,’ ” Ms. Singer said, spe-cifically referring to the artist Tauba Auerbach, now an art world fixturebut a San Francisco unknown when Ms. Hastreiter first was drawn to her stylized experiments in typography.

“She’ll call you,” Ms. Singer said,“and say, ‘You have to see this artist,her work is sick!’ ”

In Ms. Hastreiter’s vocabulary,“sick” packs in everything good. It is“sick” when she spots an artist whosework excites her, and “sick” when the cabaret wonder Joey Arias shows upin a slick pompadour and “sick” whenMadonna descends on a dinner partyMs. Hastreiter is holding at Casa Le-

ver for Pedro Almodóvar, a friendof many years and, oh, by the way,Penélope Cruz.

Even better than sick, linguisti-cally, is death. It practically killedMs. Hastreiter when she learned ofher selection in May by the Council of Fashion Designers of America as the recipient of its prestigious EugeniaSheppard Award.

“I died,” she said. “I’m like an art-ist, like an outsider person,” and notone of the fashion cognoscenti, sheexplained recently, sitting in hermodest office at Paper.

“Put me in a room with 30 billion-aires and one artist and I’ll find theartist,” Ms. Hastreiter explained.“I have zero ability to smell money.But I’m a heat-seeking missile” fortalent.

It is true that at Ms. Hastreiter’stable at trendy restaurant Indochine one may bump into the occasional Itgirl. But it is far more likely that one will encounter her latest intern or ar-tistic discovery, or Shaun White, thesnowboard god or the artist RubenToledo attempting to chat with JohnWaters across the platinum-blondpalisade of Lady Bunny’s wig.

Ms. Hastreiter draws few linesbetween cultural disciplines. Artand design and fashion occur every-where, in her view, not just in aca-demia and fashion show tents.

“Kim comes from the countercul-ture, and the counterculture is an im-portant part of the fashion culture, a fact we don’t recognize enough,” saidStan Herman, the designer and for-mer president of the Council of Fash-ion Designers.

But hold on. A 2007 profile of Ms.Hastreiter in The New Yorker maga-zine asserted that the continued suc-cess of Paper, which has a circulation of about 100,000, is built on a fantasy it projects of a scrappy New York bo-hemia and an idea of downtown that gentrification has all but routed.

Yet if you ask Ms. Hastreiterwhether all that is great and thrill-ing about New York City actuallycame to an end, as some fogies insist,around 1985, she snorts. “I hate whenpeople say everything was so much better back then,” she said. “I livefor the combustion that occurs when you bring together unlikely combina-tions of people and that’s the same asit ever was.”

NEW YORK — In the 18th cen-tury Casanova referred to them as“English frock coats” and made prodigious use of the “little preven-tive bag invented by the English to

save the fair sex from anxiety.” In 1709 the English journal The Tatler alluded to their supposed invention byan eponymous doctor of “eminent Quality”;

the success of his “Engine” eventu-ally “made it an Immodesty to name his Name.”

But there was never a Dr. Condom as far as we can tell, and no one really knows who first created condoms (or named them), since bladders, animalmembranes, sheaths and salve-coat-ed cloths have been used for similar purposes since the beginning of re-corded history.

Spend some time at the fascinatingnew exhibition at the Museum of Sex,“Rubbers: The Life, History & Strug-gle of the Condom,” and their origins hardly matter: their history is what isextraordinary.

The museum’s curator, Sarah Forbes, has gathered condom boxes and vending machines, horrific pho-tos of disease and collections of birth-control devices, American militaryvideos and a dress made out of dyedcondoms, television commercials and artworks, creating a modest exhibi-tion that elevates the status of the condom.

In Germany, we learn, condoms arecolloquially referred to as Fromms be-cause that was the name of the Jewishmanufacturer who, before the Nazis came to power, sold 50 million con-doms a year. But Julius Fromm had toflee to London and lost the factory.

A collection of boxes and containers here range from antique exoticism (picturing desert camels) to whimsi-cal contemporaneity (portraits of candidates from the last presidentialelection).

Condoms have a dark side. There are early photographs here of victims of syphilis, including a chilling image

of a pox-covered baby nursing at a pox-covered breast.

Like the diseases they prevent,condoms have proliferated with the march of armies. As the show pointsout, 18,000 American soldiers a daywere on sick leave with venerealdiseases during World War I, inspir-ing the United States governmentto begin the distribution of military“pro-kits” to allow cleansing and protection.

The second half of the exhibition ispreoccupied with controversy: thecondom becomes a political instru-ment in long-running cultural and religious debates. A 1915 edition of Margaret Sanger’s once-controver-sial book, “What Every Girl ShouldKnow,” is here. (Her birth-control ad-vocacy led to the creation of Planned Parenthood.) So is a 1989 poster of

deliberate crudity attacking the popeand the Roman Catholic Church for opposing the use of condoms.

If the condom appears to be a signof promiscuous satisfaction, though, it is also, in its essence, a compro-mise: at the moment of greatest potential pleasure, it interferes. Itrequires that the rush of desire beinterrupted, its course modified, its sensation diminished. At the momentof being consumed by the present, a concern with the future intrudes. The condom is a declaration of sacrifice inthe midst of indulgence. It is evidenceof civilization and its discontents.

Look, but Don’t TouchExhibit’s Nude Models

CASEY KELBAUGH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Kim Hastreiter, a co-editor of Paper, the downtown magazine in its

26th year, mixes and mingles at a party in Manhattan.

JULIE GLASSBERG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Included in a new museum

exhibit devoted to the history of

the condom is this tin from 1929.

SUZANNE DeCHILLO/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Condoms, UnrolledAnd Unabashed

She Knows Everybody.Isn’t It ‘Sick’?

EDWARD

ROTHSTEIN

REVIEW

In a Marina Abramovic

retrospective at the Museum of

Modern Art, visitors can pass

between two nude performers,

making for some close and

embarrassing encounters.

Repubblica NewYork