My Blog has moved!.... Блог переехал!...

Мой блог переехал на новый адрес:





My blog has relocated to the new address:



http://www.heyvalera.com/


































June 30, 2006

Trip to Korea: Day 2











Day 2. An early morning trip to the DMZ, the no-man's land between the two Koreas. One can not take pictures at the zone, the recently discovered 3rd tunnel, but the degree of disneyfication of that place is stupefying. There are gift shops everywhere, even the binoculars to look at the North Korea have coin slots in them. I am sure that Kim Jong Il is very unhappy that the South Koreans are charging hard currency to show the tunnel that he dug.
























A phantom railroad station built on public money, the one that has full customs and cargo inspection facilities that no one uses (yet! as the claim goes) - It is not the last station from South Korea, it is the first station on the way to the North Korea!











Korean Ginseng - The Best Ginseng in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD, or so I kept hearing from our guide :)











The first great, simple great dinner in Korea: no spices, variety and the green drink soju 25 degrees proof, not to be confused with sake (or you will hurt Korean national pride, as we learned the hard way).

June 29, 2006

Trip to Korea: Day 1











Day 1. A quick 45 min ride from the Incheon airport that crossed a very, very long bridge over the Yellow Sea and I am in Seoul. Itaewon, the area where my hotel was located, is one of those seedy areas that exist primarily to contain all the night clubs, bars for the US soldiers, their spouses, friends and base personnel as well as a new (to me) species - Canadian teachers of English. Definitely, a breed apart, as I have never seen so many geeky, socially awkward people who have nothing to show, except their "whiteness" and native language. Judging by the quality of signs in English that skill is specious at best.
Leeum, the Samsung Museum of Art, sports two huge tarantulas and immaculate bonzai trees, bamboos and manicured lawns. A bus tour around the city, a visit to the electronic shopping center (no displayed prices, yet no haggling - prices are exorbitant).
A quick meal (disgustingly covered in red pepper, but served with plenty of great tasting water), and I am back to the hotel to make arrangements for the next day travel to the DMZ zone.

June 26, 2006

Fogg Museum at Harvard University











A trip to Harvard University











50 years ago in Le Monde **fr

IL Y A 50 ANS DANS « LE MONDE »

L’URSS empire musulman

JUSQU’À la dernière guerre l’Islam apparaissait dans nos atlas presque entièrement partagé entre les grandes puissances européennes. De l’Atlantique à la mer du Japon les immenses territoires et les quelque 400 millions d’êtres qui confessaient la loi du Prophète subissaient bon gré mal gré la tutelle des infidèles.
Une véritable révolution s’est produite depuis lors. Tour à tour l’Italie, les Pays-Bas, la Grande-Bretagne, ont abandonné leurs possessions musulmanes. La France est engagée pour conserver les siennes dans la triste lutte que l’on connaît. Un seul empire est demeuré intact : celui de l’Union soviétique, où la faucille et le marteau se sont substitués au Croissant. A l’heure actuelle, la Russie est donc le dernier empire musulman.
L’existence de cette population islamique pose un problème d’autant plus délicat pour l’URSS que, dans sa majeure partie, elle occupe les marches frontières de l’Asie centrale et du Caucase. Il s’agit de groupes homogènes reliés au monde extérieur par un passé, des traditions religieuses et historiques, des lieux saints communs. A ce titre, comme les catholiques et les juifs, les musulmans de Russie furent persécutés naguère par le régime tsariste, puis étroitement surveillés par les autorités révolutionnaires. D’autre part les territoires « musulmans » recèlent des ressources gigantesques, en particulier de pétrole.

Edouard Sablier
(26 juin 1956.)

June 25, 2006

Boston: From Russia with Money

BU Student Anna Pliatskovskaya. Click to see a larger imageIt’s a Friday afternoon at the Armani Café, and a young, dark-haired woman sitting at one of the circular booths appears to be having a problem.
“Find out how much money they make and call me back,” she says into her cell phone, sipping from a flute of Moscato d’Asti and picking at a caesar salad. “We’ll pay whatever it costs.”
At first glance, Elena (not her real name) looks like a hotshot PR exec, or possibly a fashion model. In fact, she’s a student, a 21-year-old double major at Boston University—studying art history and international relations. Right now, she’s less concerned with trade tariffs than with her efforts to rent an upscale lounge in the Fenway for a graduation party she’s planning. The promoter is saying no-go because the lounge will lose money. Elena argues the point in Russian-accented English.
“Fifteen grand? Tell them we’ll guarantee twenty, no problem,” she says. “I mean c’mon, there are four of us.”
THE IDEA OF serious wealth in Boston evokes visions of New England bluebloods, descendants of Mayflower money shuttling between Louisburg Square brownstones and Nantucket cottages, dining at the Oak Room clad in boat shoes and no socks. But there is an entirely different subset of wealth here, occupied by people of a less decorous nature, people for whom the word “blueblood” most likely calls to mind danger on the high seas. You’ll see these people bearing down on pedestrians in their BMWs, shaking their preternaturally trim behinds at the city’s chic nightclubs, secure in the knowledge that the tab is being picked up by a distant, unremittingly generous benefactor. Namely, Daddy.
We refer, of course, to the city’s contingent of international students.
While there are youths from just about every country on earth attending Boston’s schools, the society of international rich kids here has traditionally been dominated by two groups: kids from Western Europe and kids from the Middle East. Now, the Russians have gotten in on the action. The number of Russian students here hasn’t risen in recent years, but their disposable income certainly has. Their parents flush with the spoils of the post-Communist carve-up, wealthy Russian students enjoy an increasingly visible presence in Boston’s upscale nightclubs and high-end retailers. And though their academic credentials may not always be top-notch, these kids have proven themselves to be world-beaters when it comes to frittering cash.
Foreign students enrolled in Massachusetts schools contribute something like $890 million to the state’s economy, or about $30,000 a head, according to the Institute of International Education. For some students, though, 30 grand barely covers the year’s champagne expenditure. In this academic environment, success is measured less by grade point average than by monthly allowance. “European parents usually give their kids $3,000 a month and that’s a good life,” says Elena. “But for Arab and Russian parents, it’s $10,000.” She pauses to swallow a forkful of risotto. “It’s not about money.” She pauses again. “Well, maybe it’s about money.”
Much of the disposable income of Boston’s international students finds its way into the city’s exclusive, don’t-even-think-about-wearing-a-baseball-cap nightclubs: Caprice, Rumor, Gypsy, Venu. The elite of the elite, meanwhile, secure their own venues for their own private parties, as Elena has finally managed to do. “We’re going to Cristal the place,” she says, meaning that large amounts of expensive champagne will be consumed, and possibly sprayed about, during the celebration. She lights up and calls one of her friends. “Oh my God, it’s so on!” she says. “Poppin’ bottles!” She hangs up and adds, “Fifteen grand? On a Friday? I was expecting a lot more than that.”
Over at the Sunset Cantina, Alina Pliatskovskaia is in a less sanguine mood. Scanning the menu at the Brookline restaurant, she suddenly assumes an expression of distaste, the kind of face one might pull upon discovering that the chef’s special is calf-hoof quesadilla. The problem, it turns out, is nothing quite so dramatic.
“All people ever eat in Russia is soup,” Pliatskovskaia says, eyeing the soup of the day. “And I am not a fan of soup.”
Daughter of a well-known Russian songwriter and granddaughter of a famous Russian poet, the 21-year-old BU student doesn’t really need to tell you she’s not the type to tuck into a hearty bowl of soup. With carefully tousled hair, perfectly arched eyebrows, and high cheekbones, she has the sudden Slavic look suited to Bond films and vodka ads. Everything about this woman says class—and not in the academic sense.
Even the fact that Pliatskovskaia and her peers have chosen to go to college here seems to be a matter of taste. “Boston’s considered the top place in the world to send your kid to school,” says Elena. “It doesn’t matter what school; all the parents brag about their kid being in school in Boston.”
DESPITE THEIR conspicuous wealth, some students in the Boston scene still sneer at the Russians in their midst—at the women for having predatory sexual appetites and no fashion sense; at the men for attempting to hide their boorishness behind expensive cars and cheap cologne. Occasionally, the Russians will sneer at themselves. “Most of the Russian girls can’t dress,” says Elena. “I mean, they’ll wear Pucci with Cavalli with whatever, but it’ll be like from five or six seasons ago.” Russian guys, she says, aren’t as bad. “The guys have expensive and classy clothes, but they dress like old men, with high-waisted pants with big belts and tight shirts. They’ve got all the names and money, but they don’t know how to use it.”
According to Elena, the Russian student community in Boston falls into three distinct groups. The first of these are the Russian-American kids, those who grew up in Brookline and Brighton, in Russian communities with parents born in Russia. These students tend to be middle class, and largely conform to the traditional college lifestyle: drinking beer, skipping classes, and making out in shitty dorms around lower Allston.
The second group is more of a jet-setting crew, Russian kids who attended boarding school in Europe or New York City, who have at least one parent living in the West, usually a mother who likes to shop. These kids are part of the in crowd and have no problem strolling over to Newbury to pick up a pair of $1,200 handstitched jeans from EVISU or a custom-ordered $190 silver jewelry cap for their KY Jelly tube at Riccardi.
Still, the jet setters don’t touch the London Russians, the offspring of those who prospered in the post-Soviet era, the often shady oligarchs who escaped their legal woes and political foes by moving to London. These guys have serious, Forbes magazine money. “They are the biggest crew,” says Elena, “the most stylish, and they party the most.”
Judging from her outfit at Armani, Elena is London Russian material. Decked out in a plum cashmere sweater, jeans “from Barneys or something,” knee-high Stella McCartney boots, and a snakeskin bracelet from Bottega Veneta, she looks like a Russian Penélope Cruz: petite face, dark hair, sly smile. She’ll allow that her father works in “the oil business… and now the real estate business and a few other things,” and that she grew up in Moscow and went to high school in New York City. Elena speaks with the tumbling velocity of a typical college girl and the upward inflection of someone who spends a lot of time in Europe.
Elena is a harsh critic of the international scene, unforgiving of those who violate its standards of taste. And, like any critic worth her salt, she makes facile use of her chosen field’s jargon. She speaks, for instance, of “Christmas Trees”—a term that refers to girls who over-accessorize: “Everything hangs off them at the same time.” Then there are “Traffic Lights”—boys who lack color coordination: “They’ll wear a red jacket with a green shirt and yellow shoes. They literally look like traffic lights.”
A few years ago, when Russia was still coming to grips with capitalism, when the lucky few who came into money seemed stupefied by their own wealth, there was much to make fun of in their Boston-bound offspring. “The first wave of kids here tried to outdo the Arabs in having the most expensive things and being very flashy,” explains Elena, adding that the situation has since calmed down. “The Russian guys here now don’t care about those things as much,” she says. “They all live outside of the city in these townhouses, and they’re very demure and low-key and drink vodka alone and have barbecues and hang out.
“The boys go crazy when they’re back in Moscow, but girls have more fun partying and going crazy here.”
IT’S NEARLY 1 a.m. in the Theater District, and the international rich kids are out in force. Outside the nightclub Rumor, a black S500 Mercedes sits idling, parked in front of a Jaguar and a Porsche Cayenne. Nearby, bouncers keep the nobodies at bay. “Just give me a fucking name!” a girl in a black tube top shouts into her phone. “I don’t care, any fucking name I can use!” A few Russian guys make it inside, despite being dressed in pants with high waists, tight shirts, and big belts. Even the Traffic Lights get in, a true testament to the power of wealth. Elena, of course, breezes past the bouncers without pause.
“Who the fuck are they?” the tube top girl yells. “Why the fuck are they getting in?”
Inside, Rumor looks like a movie-set mansion—white pillars, sheer curtains, extravagant chandeliers. This is the beating heart of the scene, and it beats to the bass of house and hip-hop and Latin dance. There is skin on display, girls in strapless shirts and big beaded necklaces. Their purses, draped in sequins, glittering like the disco ball above. All the girls have big hair, and most of them can dance, really dance, and the club accommodates this by putting boxes up above the floor so the girls can dance and everyone can be seen.
The Russians are—it seems almost too obvious to point out—drinking vodka.
But this bacchanalia won’t last forever. For most of the kids here, graduation means moving on to responsibility and jobs, the roles of power they’ve been primed for for their entire lives. Back at Armani, as Elena finishes a cup of Earl Grey tea, the sun setting below the brownstones, she speculates about where she might go after Boston. “Everyone wants to end up in London or Paris or New York,” she says, fiddling with her snakeskin bracelet. “But I can’t think about that right now. I’ve got to plan this party and study for finals.
“Besides,” she adds, flashing her Penélope Cruz smile, “we’ve already got apartments in all those places.”
Originally published in Boston Magazine, June 2006.

WSJ: How U.S. Citizens Mysteriously March For Kremlin Causes

Russian Émigrés Pay Them To Flail Chechen Rebels As TV Moscow Films It All

By ALAN CULLISON and JAMES BANDLER
June 24, 2006; Page A1

NEW YORK -- Hoisting signs and American flags, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in a park here for a noisy protest. An organizer explained the sponsors' eclectic mission: "We are fighting against terrorism, hunger and inequality," he said. Demonstrators had a simpler goal: getting paid. "Where's the moneyman?" shouted one of them, Pat Bradley. Mr. Bradley said he and his wife, Kellie, recovering heroin addicts, had run into a rally organizer that morning outside their methadone clinic and were promised $15 each if they would ride a bus to a park in the Queens borough of New York City and chant slogans for 15 minutes. Mr. Bradley says he alternated shouts of "Stop the terrorism!" with a more mercantile cry: "Show me the money!"
The rally last December was one of nearly a dozen paid-for protests organized by Russian émigrés in the U.S. in the past two years. They spent $150,000 to $200,000 in some months, accounting records indicate, to rally thousands of demonstrators near spots such as United Nations headquarters and the World Trade Center site. State-controlled Russian television, whose content is closely guided by Kremlin handlers, covered some of the events, often as the only news organ present, showing video of them on the evening news back home. Organizers said the effort was funded by private individuals they declined to name. Some former insiders of the campaign told a different story: that both its instructions and its funding came from Moscow. Specifically, they said it came from the Russian founder of a youth group that staunchly supports the Kremlin and has gotten lavish support from the Kremlin in return. This account was supported by emails and other documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
A member of the Russian youth group disputed the account, and it remains impossible to say who was behind the campaign. It coincided with efforts by Russian officials to mold opinion both at home and abroad on issues such as Chechnya, where a breakaway movement has been put down violently by the Putin government. The Kremlin argues that Chechen separatists, responsible for a bloody siege at an elementary school in southern Russia in 2004, are no different from al Qaeda terrorists. Some of the rallies demanded that Washington extradite alleged Chechen terrorists living in America. The U.S. organizers were led by a Russian-born man in the Boston area, formerly a taxi driver, who recruited fellow émigrés. There are indications the organizers paid a New Yorker to present a local face for the movement. But the script for the campaign began to unravel after one of the Russian émigrés contacted U.S. authorities, as well as the Journal.
That man is Yuri Levintoff, a 31-year-old Massachusetts resident. He said he grew concerned about the ethics and legality of paying people to protest. "As I learned more and more, I realized this was not only something I didn't want to be involved with but something that should be made public," said Mr. Levintoff, who provided access to what he said were financial records, emails and other documents detailing the demonstration campaign's activities.
Mr. Levintoff said he was recruited in 2004 by the Boston-area taxi driver, Boris Barshevsky. Approached outside his home there, Mr. Barshevsky at first denied involvement but then said that he was, in fact, the top organizer of the demonstrations. He said he financed them himself and received no funding from Russia. Told of emails and documents suggesting otherwise, Mr. Barshevsky asserted these had been forged by Mr. Levintoff. He provided no substantiation. Mr. Levintoff denied forging anything. Russian state television, called First Channel, has portrayed the U.S. demonstrators as part of an international movement in support of extraditing militant Chechens to Russia. A person familiar with the state television channel's operations said that influential people within Russia had ordered it to cover the U.S. demonstration movement, even though "at First Channel, everyone knows it is a fake." This person said officials of the channel were told the first U.S. rally was organized by a Russian youth group called Walking Together.
Walking Together's founder is Vasily Yakemenko, an ardent foe of Chechen militants. Visitors to the office of a second youth group he manages, Nashi ("Our Guys" in Russian), must step on a doormat with a picture of a Chechen rebel. Mr. Yakemenko has told a Russian newspaper he visits the Kremlin every two weeks and the presidential office more often. Last month, President Vladimir Putin played host to him and 34 "commissars" of one of his youth groups at the president's Black Sea retreat. State-controlled TV covered the event heavily. Mr. Yakemenko didn't respond to questions or requests for an interview. The Kremlin declined to comment. Sergei Belokonev, a leader of one of Mr. Yakemenko's groups, which has bused thousands of people to Moscow for flag-waving rallies, called the idea of Russian-financed demonstrations in the U.S. "complete nonsense."
Flurry of Emails
Mr. Levintoff, the Russian émigré who quit the campaign of U.S. demonstrations, asserts that Mr. Yakemenko kicked it off in the summer of 2004 with a flurry of emails to Mr. Barshevsky, the Boston-area taxi driver. Mr. Levintoff says Mr. Barshevsky shared these emails with him and other recruits. The first email, dated July 2004, said its writer had been "active in organizing demonstrations and protest meetings and the like. Now it's been proposed that I do the same in your part of the world." Another email said there was plenty of cash and the budget could be big -- $25,000, $200,000 or $20 million -- as long as the campaign showed results. Paul Nissan, a Los Angeles activist and co-founder of an antiterrorism group, said Mr. Barshevsky phoned him in 2004 offering "unlimited" funding for demonstrations that would spotlight Chechen terrorism. Mr. Nissan said he organized one rally on Sept. 11, 2004, in Los Angeles, but later fell out with the Russian émigrés. "They were interested in a rent-a-mob kind of thing, and we kind of explained that we don't do that sort of thing here," Mr. Nissan said.
Organizers created scripts to keep everyone on-message. If asked whether protesters are being paid, said one sheet, state that "you have been disinformed." Explain that protesters are "plain and simple folks" who are united by "desires to dispose the world of terror" -- and who have no phone number or office. According to Mr. Levintoff, organizers tried to conceal Russian involvement by using as a front man Curtis Bryant, a New York resident who calls himself a "guerrilla marketer." Mr. Levintoff showed an email to rally organizers requesting that someone explain to Mr. Bryant "once more [that] he is leader of the movement and its founder.... Explain that we simply joined him."
Mr. Bryant said he organized demonstrations on his own, motivated because he nearly lost a friend on Sept. 11, 2001. Nobody was paid to protest, Mr. Bryant stated in an interview at the December rally in Queens. However, after the rally an organizer was seen paying demonstrators, and numerous protesters told the Journal that the only reason they attended was to be paid. At that December demonstration, organizers tried out a new theme: the flawed U.S. government response to hurricane Katrina. On a blustery day, school buses stopped in front of Rufus King Park in Queens and dropped off demonstrators. Mr. Barshevsky and other Russian émigrés huddled nearby, smoking and talking on cellphones. A camera crew videotaped the rally and several short speeches by organizers, who said they were from a group called Unite the World Against Terrorism. Their message: The U.S. failed New Orleans and it will abandon us, too. After some desultory cheers, the crowd was dismissed and sent back to the buses. On one bus, filled with men from a homeless shelter on Wards Island in the East River, some grew impatient. "Get my money, mother-f-!" shouted one man as an organizer passed. As tensions rose, an organizer stepped aboard and peeled off $20 bills from a thick wad.

Fuming Over Pay
The payment left some on the bus fuming, saying they thought the promised $20 an hour would cover travel time, too. George Pantera, who said he sometimes stays in homeless shelters, complained of a wasted morning. He easily could have made the same $20 "in the 'hood," he said. He called the rally "a scam." Pat and Kellie Bradley, the self-described recovering heroin addicts, weren't complaining. They said they had been down to their last $8 before the rally. The cash would help pay a debt for cigarettes. All the same, Mr. Bradley found the rally puzzling. "Strikes me as funny that this guy buys his protests," Mr. Bradley said. "I mean, what good is that?" Early on, the campaign got a boost when Mr. Barshevsky, the Boston-area taxi driver, befriended two Russian-émigré merchants in New York who sell jewelry online. The two merchants had started a nonprofit organization after Sept. 11, 2001, which they called the International Fund for Protection of Victims of Crimes and Terrorist Activity. Mr. Barshevsky became this fund's finance chief, and the merchants' two-room office in the diamond district of midtown Manhattan became a center of the campaign, Mr. Levintoff said.
Nicholas Fiore, an accountant who has done work for the fund, said that "tens of thousands" of dollars flowed into its bank accounts in 2004 and 2005, money that he said he was told came from Mr. Barshevsky. One of the merchants, Denis Stepansky, said he helped Mr. Barshevsky organize rallies. He declined to discuss their financial dealings.
An exchange of emails shown to the Journal by Mr. Levintoff stated that as much as $400,000 was needed to kick off the campaign. One note, which Mr. Levintoff said had been sent to Moscow, asked that a first installment of $80,000 be wired to the International Fund. Mr. Levintoff said organizers took pains to hide the involvement of backers in Moscow. He said he was forwarded one email that originated with Sergei Belokonev, a top official in Mr. Yakemenko's Nashi youth group in Russia. The email asked that someone outside Russia register some Web sites that could help promote the U.S. demonstrations. "The hand of Moscow, if it comes to light, will only weaken our position," said this email. Mr. Belokonev didn't respond to questions about the email.
The first rally organized with the help of the jewelry merchants' International Fund was on Sept. 11, 2004, near the World Trade Center site in New York, with several hundred demonstrators. At later rallies, hundreds of residents of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan, most of them African-American, marched alongside Russian-born pensioners bused in from Brighton Beach, an ethnic-Russian enclave in Brooklyn.
Some rallies included elderly Russian émigrés from Brooklyn Jewish centers. Costs discussed in one email about the campaign referred to $40,000 to hire 200 activists for three hours, as well as $30,000 for "Jews and other extras." Mr. Levintoff said that one 2005 rally in Harlem drew police attention when the crowd of demonstrators gathered for a "photo op" and were spotted giving gang hand signals.
A reporter for a Russian-language newspaper said he was tipped last spring that someone was "putting T-shirts on pensioners and paying them to go protest" near the World Trade Center site. The reporter, Vladimir Chernomorsky, said he went to the site and saw hundreds of people carrying pictures of Chechen extremists and posing for a photo. He said the only news organization there besides himself was Russian state television.
He wrote a piece for his newspaper, the New Russian Word, questioning who had paid the demonstrators and saying that payment varied from person to person. Russian pensioners from Brooklyn got $35, he wrote, but African-Americans and Hispanics only $20. Mr. Chernomorsky later wrote in his newspaper that when he attended a rally near the U.N. last June, one of the organizers smashed his tape recorder. Soon, the organizers had a bigger problem: Mr. Levintoff. He said he grew concerned that the paid-protest campaign might violate U.S. tax or money-laundering laws. His worries grew, he said, after Russian state TV interviewed him at a rally near the World Trade Center site in June 2005 and identified him as a protest leader. Mr. Levintoff said that last August he told Mr. Barshevsky, the former Boston-area taxi driver, that he was bowing out.
Mr. Stepansky, the jewelry merchant, alleged that Mr. Levintoff stole from the International Fund, forged financial documents and sent "fabrications" to the media and law enforcement. He declined repeated requests to substantiate his allegations, which Mr. Levintoff denied. Mr. Levintoff said he sent a final note to the International Fund and its lawyers. "I am no longer willing to be associated or involved in any way, with a so-called International Fund for Protection of Victims of Crimes and Terrorist Activity, or a fake 'social movement' called Unite the World Against Terror," Mr. Levintoff wrote. He then contacted U.S. law-enforcement officials. Authorities have taken no action.

June 23, 2006

Belgians in the Congo

Click me to see a larger image

Here is a horrific image made in 1925 in Congo, where Belgians ruled until 1960, where concentration camps, forced labor, chopped off limbs and malnutrition were all part of the daily life. Stalin surely did not have to invent GULAGs, the civilized Europeans did it for him in their colonies. The image below shows how the "white" people lived.

Click me to see a larger image



Just read: Othello

Another Shakespeare's opus, and another major disappointment. I was so eager to re-live the famous story of jealousy, love and obsession, the mediocre tragedy with unbelievably stupefying plot that hinges on the inability to communicate between 6 cartoonish characters. To wit, Othello never confronts Cassio, instead relying on a hearsay. Iago's wife never talks to the woman she serves (Desdemona) until it is too late. Iago is too busy stealing money from one guy (Roderigo), hating another (Othello) and sleeping with a third one(Cassio). Don't believe me? Here's his story:

...I lay with Cassio lately
And, being troubled with a raging tooth,
I could not sleep.
There are a kind of men so loose of soul,
That in their sleeps will mutter their affairs;
One of this kind is Cassio.
In sleep I heard him say, "Sweet Desdemona,
Let us be wary, let us hide our loves";
And then, sir, would he gripe and wring my hand,
Cry, "O sweet creature!" and then kiss me hard,
As if he pluck'd up kisses by the roots,
That grew upon my lips; then laid his leg
Over my thigh, and sigh'd and kiss'd; and then
Cried, "Cursed fate that gave thee to the Moor!"


surprisingly in Russian, Iago just spent the night at Cassio's.

... Я как-то ночевал
У Кассио. Яростно болящий зуб
Мешал мне спать.
Есть род людей с расхлябанной душой,
Что и во сне бормочут про свое.
Таков Микеле Кассио. Я услышал,
Как он сказал сквозь сон: "Будь осторожна,
Не выдай нашей тайны, Дездемона".
Он сжал мне руку, вскрикнул: "Дорогая?"
И стал меня так крепко целовать,
Как будто поцелуи с губ моих
Рвал с корнем; а потом закинул ногу
Мне на бедро", вздыхал, ласкал и вскрикнул:
"Проклятый рок, тебя отдавший Мавру!"


It is not Iago, but Desdemona's father Brabantio who sows a seed of jealousy and foretells the plot development early on in Act I, but then strangely disappears off the stage completely, and is only mentioned in passing as a dead guy.

Brabantio. Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:
She has deceived her father, and may thee.


It is a 47 year old Iago who contributes the best lines in the play regarding human nature, the feebleness of loves, women and men. To quote just one:

Iago. To be direct and honest is not safe.
Act III, iii, 375


On the other hand, some passages can be read on so many levels, as can be seen from the following lines:

Othello. Here is my journey's end. Here is my butt.
Act V,ii, 264


Lodovico. O Bloody period!
Act V, ii 353


June 20, 2006

A new museum in Paris

Click me to see a larger image

A museum devoted to "primitive" arts of Asia, Africa and Oceania has just opened in Paris. Click on the image to see a bigger picture. Visit the museum's home page

NYT: Library Phone Answerers



For years, a small band of researchers at the New York Public Library has been tackling questions from young and old, the clueless and the haughty, the vexed and the unvexed, reducing life's infinite jumble to an answer, more or less. Today, despite the Internet, the eight women and two men of what is known as the telephone reference service are still at it. Every day, except Sundays and holidays, between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., anyone, of any age, from anywhere can telephone (212) 340-0849 and ask most any question.
What country had the first license plates? What is the life cycle of an eyebrow hair? What is arachibutyrophobia? How does a person get out of quicksand? The staff has less than five minutes to reply. (Answers at the end of this article.)
Most queries are humdrum, like when is the library open. The clueless ask who the famous are, like who is the vice president. Secretaries puzzle over their own shorthand when the boss uses an unfamiliar word. Some queries get garbled: one librarian thought a caller from South Africa was asking how many statues of Lenin there are in the world. (He meant John Lennon, and was referred to other sources.) While the number of telephone calls has declined over the years to fewer than 150 a day from more than 1,000, they still made up two-thirds, or 41,715, of all inquiries to the staff last year (the rest were by computer).
Still, the persistence of this service raises its own questions. Like why, in the age of search engines, would anyone bedevil a human being with such questions? And what human being would choose to be so bedeviled? Harriet Shalat, 62, of Forest Hills, Queens, for one. She is the chief of the service, known as telref. "We are detectives," she said. "We know more than people think we know. We're not little old ladies stamping books and telling you to be quiet." Paul Duguid, an adjunct professor at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley, said there would always be a place for such human search engines. There are "dark areas" on the Internet, Mr. Duguid said, vast databases that are not scanned by search engines like Google. Mr. Duguid (pronounced do-good) is a co-author of "The Social Life of Information" (Harvard Business School Press, 2002), about data that computers cannot process.
"If you have a good search question, Google is great for answering it," Mr. Duguid said. "If you don't have a good question, you will get 17 million responses and you will wish you hadn't asked." Some caller questions are verboten. The telref staff won't answer crossword or contest questions, do children's homework, or answer philosophical speculations or guilty-spouse questions (what is my wife's birthday?). "And if a question is very funny," Ms. Shalat said, "you have to put the person on hold, before you start laughing." An example? A schoolboy once asked if there were "cultural institutions" close to Coney Island. The researcher asked why. Because, said the frustrated youth, "I want to go to Coney Island today, but my father says I have to do something cultural first."
Maura Cavanagh, 68, a writer and theatrical producer in West Cornwall, Conn., called the staff last week. She had been stuck for days on how to find the address for the Society of the Cincinnati, a group once headed by George Washington for the descendants of Revolutionary War officers. To Ms. Cavanagh's delight, Valerie Stegmayer, 55, a telref staffer, found the address in moments on a database. It is also easily Googled. "I don't enjoy using a computer," Ms. Cavanagh said, "because you're given a very poor and misleading version of what is available." Public libraries in other cities, like Los Angeles and Austin, Tex., have similar telephone-reference services, but few, if any, are as large or as storied as that of the New York Public Library.
The reference service has been around, in a limited way, for as long as telephones have been available in homes. But it was only in 1968 that the service was organized as a separate library unit. Today, it can be found in a quiet room at the Mid-Manhattan branch at 455 Fifth Avenue, catercorner to the main branch with the two stone lions, Patience and Fortitude. Phones don't ring there; they light. The 10 researchers range in age from their 20's to 60's and have degrees in elementary education, chemistry, mechanical engineering and criminal justice, as well as one Ph.D. in English literature.
One part-timer is the former head of the telref staff, Barbara Berliner. She is the author of "Book of Answers: The New York Public Library Telephone Reference Service's Most Unusual and Entertaining Questions" (Simon & Schuster, 1990). When a challenging question comes in, the staff quivers, like human parallel processors, checking reference books and pooling information. They can also consult with as many as 50 other researchers in the library system. Under library rules, each inquiry must be answered in under five minutes, meaning the caller gets an answer or somewhere to go for an answer — like a specialty library, trade group or Web site. Researchers cannot call back questioners.
The deadline is meant, in part, to focus the staffer's attention. "Otherwise," Ms. Shalat said, "once we get going, we would never stop." Almost all telephone calls are in English, although researchers can get by in Chinese, Spanish, German and some Yiddish. Specialty libraries, like the Slavic and Baltic division, can lend a hand with, say, Albanian. While Internet inquiries make up only a third of the questions, they can take up to 35 minutes each and 85 percent of total staff time. Internet inquiries come by e-mail (13,398 last year) and a one-on-one chat that resembles instant messaging (7,220 last year).
E-mail questions can be tough, like, "What is the average shoe size of a man in the United States?" (10½). And chats can be puzzling. Last week, a questioner from Germany typed, "How do you assess the present security situation in the Lower East Side, in particular 14 Street between avenues A and B?" The questioner was a student in Germany considering renting an apartment there. The researcher suggested several Web sites, including one listing recent crime statistics. The voice, however, has advantages. The researcher can guess how old the caller is. Youngsters tend to be in a hurry; oldsters want to reminisce. Voices can also hint at urgency. The haughty and the impatient tend to be men, Ms. Shalat said. Physicians are the worst. "It's not a man thing, it's a conceit thing," Ms. Shalat said. "This is Doctor So-and-So calling and I need blah blah blah. Run and get it, honey."
A person might ask, "Tell me about Africa," Ms. Shalat said. A few quick questions will elicit her real interest in animals, then in elephants, and finally the reproductive cycles of elephants. "Now that's a question we can answer," Ms. Shalat said. Getting to an answer can resemble jazz, with plenty of improvisation. "Oh, people ask all the time how to pronounce words," said Ms. Shalat, giving chase. "I log on to YourDictionary.com that has an audio stream and I stick the phone next to the computer speaker." And what if they hum a tune and want to know its name? "Well, there are music sites with snippets of songs," she continued. "And I'd play the snippets. Or maybe I'd hum it to someone else on the staff and they would know. If all else fails, there's the music division of the Library of Performing Arts."

ANSWERS: France; 150 days; fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth; don't thrash, ease to the surface, float.

June 19, 2006

WSJ: LA Story

...That the Los Angeles Unified School District, the country's second-largest after New York, faces a crisis is hard to dispute. Some 81% of the district's middle school kids attend failing schools, which might be one reason that one in three eventually drops out. L.A. schools superintendent (and former Democratic Colorado Governor) Roy Romer dutifully notes that elementary math and reading scores have risen in recent years. But the fact remains that only 13% of students are reading at grade level, and 11% are at grade level in math. The only word for such results is horrifying.

Among minority students in the district, who comprise the vast majority, the situation is even worse. Last year, nine out of 10 black and Latino fourth-graders scored below proficiency in reading and math. Eighth-graders fared worse. Just 8% of black eighth-graders are proficient readers, and 7% are proficient at math. For eighth-grade Latinos, the numbers are 9% and 6%, respectively....


June 18, 2006

NYT: The Weaker Sex

By MARIANNE J. LEGATO

Published: June 17, 2006

WHEN I say I study gender-specific medicine, most people assume I mean women's health. Patients ask me, "Do you take care of men too?" I may be partly to blame for the confusion: in the years since the revolutionary 1985 report on women's health from the United States Public Health Service, I — along with many of my colleagues — have tried to atone for the fact that for so long the majority of diseases that afflicted both genders were studied exclusively in men.
Over the past two decades, we've radically revised how we conduct medical research and take care of our female patients. And we've made valuable discoveries about how gender helps determine vulnerability to illness and, ultimately, the timing and causes of death. But I now believe that we doctors and researchers may have focused too much on women. What emerges when one studies male biology in a truly evenhanded way is the realization that from the moment of conception on, men are less likely to survive than women. It's not just that men take on greater risks and pursue more hazardous vocations than women. There are poorly understood — and underappreciated — vulnerabilities inherent in men's genetic and hormonal makeup. This Father's Day, we need to rededicate ourselves to deepening our knowledge of male physiology.
Men's troubles begin during the earliest days in the womb. Even though there are more male than female embryos, there are more miscarriages of male fetuses. Industrial countries are also witnessing a decline in male to female birth ratios, and we don't know why.
Some scientists have argued that the probability of a male child declines as parents (especially fathers) age. Still others have cited the prevalence of pesticides, which produce more birth defects in male children. Even when a boy manages to be born, he's still behind the survival eight ball: he is three to four times more likely than girls to have developmental disorders like autism and dyslexia; girls learn language earlier, develop richer vocabularies and even hear better than boys. Girls demonstrate insight and judgment earlier in adolescence than boys, who are more impulsive and take more risks than their sisters. Teenage boys are more likely to commit suicide than girls and are more likely to die violent deaths before adulthood.
As adults, too, men die earlier than women. Twice as many men as women die of coronary artery disease, which manifests itself a decade earlier in men than women; when it comes to cancer, the news for men is almost as bad. Women also have more vigorous immune systems than men: of the 10 most common infections, men are more likely to have serious encounters with seven of them. While depression is said to be twice as frequent in women as in men, I'm convinced that the diagnosis is just made more frequently in women, who show a greater willingness to discuss their symptoms and to ask for help when in distress. Once, at a dinner party, I asked a group of men whether they believed men were depressed as often as women, but were simply conditioned to be silent in the face of discomfort, sadness or fear. "Of course!" replied one man. "Why do you think we die sooner?"
Considering the relative fragility of men, it's clearly counterintuitive for us to urge them, from boyhood on, to cope bravely with adversity, to ignore discomfort, to persevere in spite of pain and to accept without question the most dangerous jobs and tasks we have to offer. Perhaps the reason many societies offer boys nutritional, educational and vocational advantages over girls is not because of chauvinism — it's because we're trying to ensure their survival.
It's possible, too, that we've simply been sexist. We've complained bitterly that until recently women's health was restricted to keeping breasts and reproductive organs optimally functional, reflecting the view that what made women valuable was their ability to conceive and bear children. But aren't we doing the same thing with men? Read the questions posed on the cover of men's magazines: how robust is your sexuality? How well-developed are your abs? The only malignancy I hear discussed with men is prostate cancer.
It's time to focus on the unique problems of men just the way we have learned to do with women. In 2004, the National Institutes of Health spent twice as much on studies done only on women as only on men. We are not devoting nearly enough money to men's health; worse yet, we may be spending those insufficient funds to answer exactly the wrong questions. The National Institutes of Health should therefore convene a consensus conference to identify the most important threats to men's well-being and longevity and issue a request for research proposals to address them. Would an estrogen-like molecule postpone the onset of coronary artery disease in susceptible males? Are there ways to strengthen the male immune system?
Thinking about how we might correct the comparative vulnerability of men instead of concentrating on how we have historically neglected women's biology will doubtless uncover new ways to improve men's health — and ultimately, every human's ability to survive.
Marianne J. Legato, the director of the Partnership for Women's Health at Columbia, is the author of "Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget."

Alma Mater











These are the pictures of various buildings of Princeton University. The Alexander Hall, a beautiful rotunda music hall, where many recordings of the chamber music were made, including one of the best ever renditions of the Beethoven quartets by the Tokyo String Quartet on RCA Victor. Nassau Hall, once a tallest building in America, etc. Memories...

A Visit to Princeton











This is a Graduate College, a dormitory for the graduate students, located next to Princeton Theological Seminary and on the outskirts of Princeton University proper. Each room in the old portion of that college has a fireplace, but no bathroom or shower - these are shared by everybody on the floor (no more than 4 people).

June 17, 2006

Men with shovels...

Double-click to see a larger image

Presidents Karimov (Uzbkistan), Putin (Russia), Nazarbaev (Kazakhstan), Hu Jintao (China), Bakiev (Kirghizstan) and Rakhmonov(Tadjikistan).

Double-click to see a larger image
You don't have to wear a tie to impress corporate America...

June 12, 2006

Forum Hall in Harrisburg












ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES
Built in the Classical architectural style, with an Art Deco flavor, The Forum seats 1,763 patrons in a semi-circular arrangement. The ceiling, on which the various constellations and the entire zodiacal band are brilliantly and clearly drawn, depicts more than 1,000 stars in their proper position.

The Forum Ceiling
Of these, 365 are illuminated according to their actual levels of brilliance. Cleverly concealing the central ventilation shaft is the seven-ton "Sunburst" fixture, a concrete and steel sculptural representation of the three major theories of our solar system.

The "Sunburst" Fixture
Around the promenade wall in back are seven painted maps, each 21 by 35 feet, illustrating the march of civilization from prehistoric times to World War I. Alternating between the maps are chronological tables containing more than 30,000 facts. Eight different varieties of marble, coming from Germany, Italy, Belgium, Africa, Vermont, and Tennessee, are used throughout the building. Railings, door fixtures, and even several doors are made of polished brass. The massive bronze doors leading outside depict "Man's Creative and Recreative Occupations."
The Forum stage measures 70 by 30 feet and is paneled in Circassian walnut. In 1968, a 3,600 pipe Moller organ was installed; more recently, in 1994, the facility was modified to better accommodate patrons who are handicapped. In 1998 the facility was restored to its 1931 appearance during an extensive technical renovation, which included the installation of an acoustically engineered sound system.

Images of Harrisburg, PA











Beautiful Capitol Area of Harrisburg, PA...

June 10, 2006

Outsourcing CEOs: Why Not?

Click me to see a larger imageGreat op-ed piece in the New York Times! I guess it is implausible, since there should be a great extradiction law between India and the US to placate the shareholders who would need to sue the CEO if the stock goes down for a day or so. It is also improbably, since the guy who needs to decide on this will be outsourced.

The Corner Office in Bangalore
By LAWRENCE ORLOWSKI and FLORIAN LENGYEL

COSTS are rising everywhere for American corporations, from energy to employee health insurance premiums. Yet in their drive to cut expenses, most notably by moving factories and call centers to other countries, they are overlooking the escalating cost of the executive suite. It's time to apply market logic to this disturbing trend and begin outsourcing chief executives. This measure would unlock tremendous value for shareholders. So far, outsourcing manufacturing and services has led to higher chief executive compensation, at the expense of shareholder profit. For example, I.B.M.'s chief executive, Samuel J. Palmisano, who has been moving jobs to India, last year saw his total compensation rise 19 percent to $18.9 million — even as the total return for his company's stock fell 16 percent.
That's proof that globalization hasn't gone far enough. China, India and other emerging markets offer shareholders a virtually unlimited talent pool from which to draw chief executives. With an increased supply of candidates, a truly independent corporate compensation committee would be easily able to hire superior leaders at salaries and benefits that are a small fraction of what their American counterparts in those fancy corner offices demand.
Several orders of magnitude separate the compensation of American and overseas chief executives; the Federal Reserve notes that while a typical American chief executive in 2004 got a compensation package 170 times greater than that of the average American workers, in Britain it was 22 times and in Japan 11. But there are several benefits beyond the immediate savings. Major American corporations have been shifting their factories and labor force to China and India for some time now. It would make sense for the chief executive of an American corporation to come from, and be based in, those areas of the world where the potential for market growth is the greatest. It would be reassuring to have a chief executive who understood the local business practices, the country's cultural underpinnings and the language.
Also, given the importance placed on performing well in science and math in countries like China and India, it would be more likely that an offshored chief executive would have had a rigorous technical education instead of degrees in the "softer" management disciplines that are common at American business schools. Critics may question whether it is wise for an American company to have its chief executive in Bangalore or Beijing. But this is the thinking of a bygone era. More and more corporate chiefs say that they do not want their companies to be seen as American anymore. Cisco's chief executive, John Chambers, has declared, "What we're trying to do is outline an entire strategy of becoming a Chinese company."
Indeed, considering how the United States is perceived by the world these days, this is just smart marketing. And installing a foreigner from a developing country as chief executive would be a savvy move. Other critics might point out that while a chief executive's compensation package may be eye-popping to the average person, in terms of his company's total market capitalization, it is really quite modest. This is an excuse, not a justification. Current chief executive compensation creates what economists term a perverse incentive. An American chief executive, who is paid an average of $11.3 million annually, gets rewarded enough in one year to exceed the lifetime standard of living of 99.99 percent of the world's population. Even if he's booted from his job because of poor performance, he's set for life.
It is far better for shareholders to have chief executives whose compensation packages are based on the long-term performance of the company. Or in plain language, it is better to have a "hungry" executive instead of one who stays fat and happy even when the corporate ship capsizes into the troubled waters of bankruptcy.
In addition to perverse incentives, the current level of chief executive compensation creates opportunity costs. The money saved by hiring a cheaper executive can be invested in even more offshoring initiatives. A virtuous circle of shareholder profitability can be established. Moreover, this would be a boon for management consultancies that can help companies scour the world for chief executives. McKinsey and Booz Allen, take note, and take outsourcing to its logical conclusion.

Lawrence Orlowski is an equity analyst. Florian Lengyel is the assistant director of research computing at the City University of New York Graduate Center.


June 9, 2006

Un-Diplomatic assault :)

Former Russian diplomat wanted in alleged drugging, sexual assault

CanWest News Service
Published: Friday, June 09, 2006 Article tools

OTTAWA — An arrest warrant has been issued for a former Russian diplomat after two men reported they were drugged and sexually assaulted. Valery Fomin, who holds full diplomatic immunity, has left Canada and returned to Russia. On Friday, Ottawa police said Fomin is wanted on charges of sexual assault and causing a person to take a stupefying or overpowering drug. Supt. Charles Bordeleau said officers haven’t made any attempt to contact Fomin since the night the complaint was filed.
Police said there was no grounds for an arrest at that time. Toxicology tests were later critical in laying the charges, Bordeleau added. They’ve now referred Fomin’s file to the Crown Attorney’s office and Foreign Affairs. Ottawa Crown attorney Hilary McCormack said she’s been told Russia will not waive immunity for Fomin, making it impossible for local authorities to proceed with the charges.
Alexey Lisenkov, press attache for the Russian Embassy, would not comment Friday on why Fomin left Canada, whether he was aware of the charges, or if he would return to Ottawa to face prosecution. “Out of respect of the court and the ongoing legal procedures I am not in a position to comment on the issue,” he said. Foreign Affairs spokesperson Kim Girtel said government officials have formally contacted Fomin’s embassy to advise them of the charges and ask for immunity to be waived. They’re awaiting an official response from the embassy before deciding what the next step may be, she said. Canada and Russia don’t have an extradition treaty even if diplomatic immunity was waived.

Российского дипломата обвиняют в изнасиловании. Канадская полиция добилась выдачи ордера на арест Валерия Фомина. Его обвиняют в изнасиловании двух граждан Канады. Правда 53-летний Фомин сейчас находится в России, а договора о взаимной выдаче подозреваемых между двумя странами нет. Следователи утверждают, что дипломат подсыпал своим гостям снотворное. Агентство Франс-пресс передает, что они 16 часов пробыли в бессознательном состоянии. Воспользовавшись этим, Фомин надругался над канадцами. В российском посольстве в Оттаве агентству отказались комментировать эту информацию.

CIA Helpers in Prisonners' Transfers

Click me to see a larger image

Double-click the image to see a bigger picture...

Friday night at the Met











A brief visit to the Metropolitan Museum by Bret, Caren, Marina and me (and the ubiquitous ghost of Deirdre) to look at the "Dead birds" installation on the roof, "Anglomania: Tradition and Transgression" and paintings by Girodet (more on him later).

June 8, 2006

Russia Puts Motorola on Hold

By GUY CHAZAN
June 8, 2006; Page B1

MOSCOW -- Faced with a Kremlin crackdown on smuggling and customs fraud, Motorola Inc. didn't take any chances when it brought a batch of 167,500 mobile phones into Russia in March. They were flown in on a specially chartered cargo jet with the Motorola logo on it.
So company officials were shocked when Russian police impounded the whole consignment as smuggled goods. They then looked on helplessly as 50,000 of the phones were declared "harmful" and destroyed. The fate of the rest remains unclear.
Motorola's recent Russia troubles highlight the risks for Western companies chasing profits in emerging markets where legal protections aren't nearly as robust as in more mature economies.
With its oil-fueled consumer boom and rapidly expanding middle class, Russia is now the biggest mobile phone market in Europe, with sales more than doubling since 2003 to top 33 million handsets last year.
That has made it a huge draw for companies like Motorola, which along with Nokia Corp. and Samsung Electronics dominates mobile sales in Russia. One of Motorola's models, the hip, ultra-thin RAZR, was a must-have item for Russia's super-rich. Motorola even produced a special edition pink RAZR, autographed by Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova, exclusively for the Russian market.
But the U.S. company's problems have only grown since its phones were seized. Motorola has also been accused by a small Russian high-tech company of violating its patent, and risks getting sucked into a costly legal battle to clear its name. Pavel Panov, managing director of RussGPS, said seven Motorola models contained designs he patented with the Russian authorities in 2003. He demanded a licensing agreement that would guarantee RussGPS a slice of the proceeds from Russian sales of the offending models. Motorola dismisses the claim as "totally without merit," saying Mr. Panov's patent is a so-called utility model that contains no novel feature. "I'm told we could obtain a utility model patent for a bicycle," says Scott Offer, the company's senior legal counsel.
Motorola's market position in Russia has already been affected by the controversies. "Retail sales are falling, as are orders from wholesalers," says Eldar Murtazin, an industry analyst and head of Mobile Research Group. Motorola was forecast to be the second-biggest seller after Samsung in the second quarter of this year, but was nudged into third place by Nokia, he says. One of Motorola's biggest Russian retailers has suspended imports of its phones, pending a resolution of the legal issues. Motorola declined to comment on any sales impact.
Market analysts say Motorola could in fact be an innocent casualty of another, unrelated fight. These analysts say the authorities' main target was Euroset, currently Russia's biggest cellphone retailer, which had imported the phones that were later seized. Analysts say Euroset had angered competitors and state officials with its aggressive behavior on the market and rapid growth.
For Motorola, though, the more immediate concern is to stop the Russian police from selling off its confiscated phones. "We made a request that [they] be returned for evidence and not destroyed, nor sold to any third party," said Greg Estell, a company vice president. The company says the remaining phones, valued at around $15 million, are now sitting in a government warehouse near Moscow. Senior Motorola executives have been holding back-to-back meetings with Russian officials to try to return them.
In most parts of the world, goods seized as suspected contraband are impounded until a court ruling. But under a quirk in Russian law, authorities here can dispose of such assets at any stage of an investigation, even before anyone has been convicted.
That was the case with thousands of phones confiscated by police last August during a crackdown on illegal imports. Business groups say they were then sold off through little-known trading firms who many suspect of links to the security services. A police spokesman declined to comment.
The government acknowledges the current system is open to abuse. "We have to ... remove the material interest of law-enforcement agencies [from this process]," Economics Minister German Gref said last month.
Motorola's troubles began in late March when police confiscated a shipment of phones as it was leaving customs clearance at Moscow's Sheremetyevo international airport. At first the police claimed the phones were counterfeit. Later, they said they were real but had been imported illegally. A customs official and a customs broker were charged with smuggling.
Within days, police tested the phones and found that electromagnetic radiation from one model, the C115, "endangered users' health."On April 25, before a crowd of invited journalists, police destroyed 50,000 units of the offending model at a military firing range outside Moscow. Motorola argued that the phone met all World Health Organization and Russian standards. It also criticized the circumstances of the test: Company officials claim it was carried out by an unaccredited lab that tested for phone power rather than radiation. Motorola says it wasn't allowed to take part or even see the results.
A spokesman for the Russian Interior Ministry's high-tech crimes department, which is handling the investigation, declined a request to comment. Motorola is also contesting RussGPS's claims of patent infringement. RussGPS's Mr. Panov, whose company makes satellite navigation systems for the Russian military, rejects Motorola's defense. "These patents weren't cooked up by a couple of halfwits," he said in an interview.
But instead of going to a commercial court to protect his rights -- the usual procedure in patent disputes -- Mr. Panov turned to the police, who included his complaint in its criminal investigation into smuggling. Motorola officials were stunned: They say they know of no other case where a patent dispute has been handled by police and prosecutors rather than the civil courts. "[This] is an abusive attempt to use the criminal law to extort license fees from Motorola and its customers," says Mr. Offer. On Tuesday, the company sued both RussGPS and Mr. Panov for defamation in Moscow City's Court of Arbitration, demanding $18 million to cover "financial and reputational damage" caused by what it called a "knowingly false accusation of patent infringement." Mr. Panov says he is unperturbed. "We have adequate protection," he says.



June 6, 2006

Love Darts

Shot Through the Head, for a Reason
By HENRY FOUNTAIN

Some garden snails have an unusual notion of the niceties of courtship. When one of these snails is wooing another, before mating it shoots a small, sharp dart into the other's head.

These "love darts," which are made of calcium carbonate and are less than half an inch long, were once thought to be a gift of calcium from one snail to another. But in recent years, researchers have determined that dart-shooting has a different purpose: to increase the amount of sperm that survives after mating.

"Really what the dart does is, it enables more of the sperm to be stored," said Ronald Chase, a professor at McGill University, who in years of snail research has helped unlock the secrets of this odd behavior. Snails can have many partners and can store the donors' sperm, mixed together, up to four years before fertilizing eggs. By increasing the amount of its sperm that survives, a snail can outcompete other donors and improve its chances at paternity.
Now Dr. Chase has gone a step further, showing that it's not the dart itself, but mucus coating it, that causes the changes in the receiving snail. By shooting the dart, the snail is injecting its partner with a compound that ensures that more sperm survives, Dr. Chase and Katrina C. Blanchard report in The Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Dr. Chase studies brown garden snails, Cantareus aspersus, one of a number of land snails that are dart shooters. (Like other snails, these are hermaphroditic, so at the same time they are shooting darts and depositing sperm, they are getting shot and receiving sperm. Talk about a complicated lifestyle.)
The researchers surgically removed darts from some snails, and using a hypodermic needle instead, injected some with mucus and others with saline solution. After the snails mated, they found that those with the mucus had many more sperm.
Dr. Chase said a snail's female reproductive tract has openings to a gland that produces digestive enzymes that, under normal conditions, destroy most of the sperm. He suspects that a compound in the mucus, probably a peptide, results in contractions in the reproductive tract that close off the openings. He is currently conducting more research to determine which of the many peptides in the mucus is the active one. "That will be the magic stuff," he said. "The love potion."


Related articles
The Snail's Love-Dart Delivers Mucus to Increase Paternity (Royal Society B)
Thermally Induced Torpor in Fullterm Lizard Embryos Synchronizes Hatching with Ambient Conditions (Biology Letters)
Response of Sugar Maple to Calcium Addition to Northern Hardwood Forest (Ecology)

June 5, 2006

Как американцы потопили Курск **ru

Год выпуска: 2005
Страна: Канада
Жанр: Документальный
Продолжительность: 44:26
Перевод: Профессиональный (одноголосый)
Описание: Взято из файлы с описанием:

Сейчас по History Channel в Канаде идет сериал про подлодки. Две серии из этого сериала посвящено Курску. Одна из них уже прошла, сегодня-вторая.
Вот описание первой серии передранное из одного топика Поначалу показывали то, что мы уже видели и знали. Как и когда это случилось, и как наши военные начальники на это реагировали. Обычные кадры. Женщины в истерике и все такое. Обвинения Путину, что оставался на отдыхе на Черном море. Показали Илью Клебанова, если помните, он был тогда вице-премьер министром. Показали как Клебанов стоял молча перед впавшими в истерику женщинами не зная что ответить. Мы уже немного расслабились, ну, мол, будет сейчас … пройдутся от души по нашим.
И тут внезапный поворот. Вы, наверное, помните, что была такая версия в некоторых газетах, что, мол, была рядом иностранная подводная лодка, и было вроде как столкновение, а потом детонировали торпеды на Курске. У нас это все и осталось нелепым вымыслом, и в итоге, после двухлетнего следствия, в 2002 году была озвучена официальная версия, согласно которой самопроизвольно взорвалась торпеда в носовом отсеке, затем по цепной реакции взорвался весь боезапас, что и повлекло гибель подлодки и экипажа.
Теперь о том, что нам тут показали в этом фильме. Показали, что было две американские подводные лодки в районе маневров. Они были на спецзадании, следя за маневрами. Одна подлодка Мемфис шла под прикрытием другой лодки Толедо в тени. Вроде, как только одна на экранах всех радаров и сонаров. Потом Мемфис вынырнула из под своей ведущей лодки, чтобы получше исследовать запуск баллистической ракеты с
Курска не рассчитав курс и расстояние. Американцы оказались на встречном курсе и столкнулись в лобовом направлении с нашими. Они прошли всем телом по наиболее уязвимому второму отсеку Курска. Но самое ужасное случилось потом. На второй американской лодке Толедо, наблюдая всю картину, капитан решил, что русские каким то образом атаковали Мемфис и не долго думая, выпустил торпеду по Курску. Торпеда попала прямо в ослабленную часть на стыке второго и третьего отсеков и разорвалась внутри. В фильме показали компьютерную вариацию с участием всех трех лодок о том как все произошло. Нашими самолетами, по свежим следам, были зафиксированы масляные пятна на воде по курсу уходящей с места происшествия чужой подлодки.
канадских и независимых американских журналистов
В некоторых газетах писали, что была иностранная подлодка, вроде как английская, и мы все про это читали Теперь о том, что мы точно не знали. Оказывается, наши вели эти две американские подлодки до всех событий и точно знали, что это были американцы на наблюдении. После столкновения и атаки на Курск министр обороны Сергеев поднял две противолодочные эскадрильи в воздух. Немедленно доложили на юг Путину. И в тот же момент на связь с Путиным вышли американцы. После связи с американцами Путин отозвал самолеты и, в конце концов, Путин (или его команда) принял решение оставаться на юге, чтобы не провоцировать нагнетание напряженности. Все, оказывается, было на крае пропасти.
Срочно прибыл в Москву директор ЦРУ для консультаций. Все это время Путин постоянно был на связи с Биллом Клинтоном. В итоге к лодке никого не подпускали, хотя весь мир предлагал квалифицированную помощь. Все мы ведь думали, что можно спасти кого-нибудь. Через несколько дней наши согласились пустить датчан, но со строжайшим приказом не подплывать к носу лодки. Датчане сумели открыть люк в восьмом отсеке, нашли несколько посмертных записей, и подтвердили, что внутри лодки никто не выжил. После этого шла работа уже наших водолазов. Они уже не заботились о самой лодке, ее реакторе и погибших моряках. Оказывается со дна около Курска, в срочном порядке убирались куски и обломки американского Мемфиса.
Те российские газеты, которые все же умудрились опубликовать спутниковые снимки подозрительной иностранной подлодки на ремонте в норвежском порту были тут же прижаты к ногтю ФСБ. Эта подлодка действительно была американской Мемфис и добиралась она до Норвегии 7 дней вместо 2 обычных. Другая американская лодка Толедо зигзагами, нестандартным курсом, ушла в США. Двое представителей российского военного и политического руководства Игорь Сергеев и Илья Клебанов, которые не шли
на поводу и отстаивали американский след как публичную версию были в итоге отправлены в отставку.
Некоторое время спустя (около двух недель после происшествия) весь предыдущий российский долг США был аннулирован, и Америка предоставила России новый кредит на 10 миллиардов долларов. Каждая семья, погибших на Курске моряков, получила немыслимую компенсацию в 25 000 долларов.
Путину, тем ни менее, нужно было понять лодку для поднятия политического имиджа.
На подъем Курска год спустя, был подписан контракт с голландской компанией, единственной, которая согласилась поднять только среднюю и хвостовую часть. Все остальные компании за много меньшие деньги соглашались поднять весь корпус целиком. Голландцы отпилили два носовых отсека и вывезли на сушу все остальное. Вот тут нам и показали кадры лодки крупным планом так сказать по прибытии. Прямо у места отпила зияла огромная круглая дыра и края у этой дыры были вмяты внутрь. У нас этого
точно не показывали, потому что немедленно эта часть фюзеляжа была объявлена засекреченной и впоследствии была ликвидирована, как впрочем все кинопленки. В фильме были приведены показания экспертов, которые подтвердили, что только американская торпеда нового образца ( не помню ее точное название), может оставлять такие следы, прожигая наружный слой и врываясь внутри.
Удивительный фильм. Особенно здесь в Канаде. Одно, несомненно, идея американского следа даже не подвергалась сомнению. Фильм был сделан при участии английских,

June 3, 2006

Image of the Day


Murals on a Tehran street.

WSJ: A book review

The construction of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome took 120 years and entailed what was surely the largest assemblage of artistic genius on any single project in history. Its titanic cost, and the practice of selling indulgences to pay for it, scandalized Martin Luther and thus helped inspire the Protestant Reformation. Five centuries after Pope Julius II laid the first stone, Catholicism's greatest shrine continues to awe visitors of every persuasion.

In "Basilica," R.A. Scotti offers a sweeping account of the construction, from the razing of the original fourth-century church (built by the Emperor Constantine) to the raising of a bronze cross atop the 450-foot dome in 1593. She extends her narrative to include the modifications by the Baroque master Gianlorenzo Bernini, including his flamboyant canopy over the high altar and the elliptical colonnades around St. Peter's Square.

Ms. Scotti lucidly sketches out the major architectural challenges of the whole project -- above all, the building of a dome of unprecedented height -- but at the heart of her story are the extraordinary men who brought St. Peter's into being. Focusing on the relationships between the architects and their papal clients, the author renders miniature portraits of Raphael (the chief architect for six unproductive years) and his epicurean soul mate, Leo X; of Giacomo della Porta, the "unsung hero of St. Peter's," and the hard-driving Sixtus V, who made della Porta put up the dome in a mere 22 months; and of the "ebullient and worldly" Bernini, who served as the basilica's chief architect for 51 years, more than half of them under the rule of two admiring pontiffs, Urban VIII and Alexander VII.

By far the most dramatic relationship recounted here is that between Julius II, a warrior pope with imperial ambitions for the Holy See, and the indomitable Michelangelo, who painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling in an atmosphere heavy with suspicion of his rival, Donato Bramante, the first of the basilica's several designers. (Michelangelo's turbulent dealings with Julius would eventually inspire the speculations of Sigmund Freud and of Irving Stone's novel "The Agony and the Ecstasy.") Only after a much later pope offered him full authority over the building did Michelangelo himself become chief architect, a position he held for the last 18 of his 89 years.

The author of four novels, Ms. Scotti breaks up her sweeping narrative with memorably drawn scenes, such as one in which the banker Agostino Chigi entertains his jaded dinner guests, among them Pope Leo X, by showing them an unusual way of dealing with dirty dishes: hurling the solid-gold plates into the Tiber River. Her detailed account of the transfer of a 320-ton Egyptian obelisk from the south side of the basilica, where it had been placed by the Emperor Caligula, to its current position in the center of St. Peter's Square is remarkably suspenseful, considering that we know how it turned out.

What astonishes most in this saga of vast egos and talents, struggling and collaborating over the course of nearly two centuries, is the sublime coherence of the final result. Despite the different hands and styles evident in the basilica and its decoration, Ms. Scotti writes, "the visitor experiences unity as solid as dogma."


Mr. Rocca is an American writer in Rome.




June 2, 2006

WSJ: A Book to read

When The Astors Owned New York by Justin Kaplan Viking 240pp $24.95

Click me to see a larger imageGreat American fortunes have a sad little habit of falling into disrepair after one or two generations. Among the villains are the usual suspects: divorce lawyers, alcohol and the Internal Revenue Service. Then there is the American philosophy of money, which is: Spend it. As a result, we all assume that today's Powerball winners will die broke.
But one American family has proved itself to be an exception: the Astors. Since the late 18th century, the possibility of finding an impoverished Astor has fallen into the "when pigs fly" category. It is this extraordinary clan that Justin Kaplan has taken on in "When the Astors Owned New York."
Actually, his title is something of an understatement. At the height of their powers in the post-World War II era, the Astors owned property all over the world. But it is true that the basis of the family fortune was Manhattan real estate. Building on his success in the fur trade in the late 18th century, the first John Jacob Astor, an immigrant son of a German butcher, began buying land. He lived by two maxims: "Buy by the acre, and lease by the lot" and "Lease -- never sell." These words of wisdom served his heirs and assigns so well that when New York was building its subway system a century later, the city found that it had nowhere to turn without tunneling through Astor acreage.

Click me to see a larger imageLavish Gifts
Even the most frivolous of the patriarch's descendants seem to have heeded his business prescriptions. When his great-great-great granddaughter, Alice Astor Playdell-Bouverie, died in 1956, she had gone through four needy husbands and a furious spate of mansion-building, with lavish gifts to lovers and psychics she had met along the way. Yet she left an estate of exactly $5 million -- the sum she had inherited from her father, John Jacob Astor IV (who himself was considered a wastrel and a rake, dubbed by the press Jack Ass).
Perhaps because the family's founding father had married the daughter of his rooming-house landlady, later Astors have shown a fondness for taking in paying guests but taking them in on a grand scale. Among the New York hotels built with Astor money have been the Knickerbocker, the New Netherland, the original Waldorf-Astoria (razed in 1929 to make way for the Empire State Building) and, of course, the Astor. All these hotels were conceived not as simple hostelries but as fashionable gathering places for the famous and moneyed. To that end, Astor hotels introduced a startling development in American hotel design: bedrooms with bathrooms that were not "down the hall." Mr. Kaplan suggests that today's luxury hotels and resorts owe a certain debt to the inn-keeping Astors.
"When the Astors Owned New York" represents something of a departure for Mr. Kaplan, who is best known for prize-winning biographies of folksy American writers ("Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain," "Walt Whitman"). Yet he seems right at home in this plush, high-living milieu and explores it with his customary grace and gusto. And he is not above indulging in bits of delicious gossip. When the divorced Jack Astor married his second wife, Madeleine Force, in 1911, the ceremony at his mother's "cottage" in Newport, R.I., was so hastily arranged (he was 47, the bride 18) that his chauffeur, "not expecting his services to be needed," had taken the day off. The newlyweds, needing to get to their yacht, ended up riding to the dock in a taxi hired by a reporter. (The following year, Jack would die aboard the Titanic, but the pregnant Madeleine survived.)
Family feuds are most fun when the combatants are rich, and the Astors have provided ample entertainment over the years. The major Astor battle was between two third-generation brothers: "imperious and somber" John Jacob Astor III and William Backhouse Astor Jr., who was regarded by his brother "as shiftless, a drifter and wastrel," Mr. Kaplan writes. Their fight was, inevitably, about money. And the feud eventually prompted William's son to decamp to England, where he purchased himself a lordship and established the family's "English branch."

Notable Ancestors
Then there was the rancor between Mrs. William Backhouse Astor and her nephew's wife. The former believed that the simple address "Mrs. Astor, New York" ought to be sufficient enough for the Postal Service to deliver mail to her; unfortunately, the latter Mrs. Astor felt the same way. Neither woman would budge. Like many rich families, the Astors thought it would be nice to have notable ancestors, so in the 1880s William Waldorf Astor hired a genealogist to prepare a family tree. After considerable research (and expense), the genealogist traced the family back to one Count Pedro d'Astorga of Castille, a Crusader killed in the siege of Jerusalem In 1100. Along with this information came a noble coat of arms, which William promptly adopted as his own. The family sports it to this day.
But Mr. Kaplan's own researches tell him that this family history is hardly convincing: He calls the tale of Count Pedro "at best an exercise in the optative mood," at worst a fabrication. In fact, he says, the family can be tenuously traced back to a certain Issac Astorg, a Jewish doctor in Carcassonne, France, who died in 1305. And yet, through all the spats, scandals and shenanigans, the Astors have managed to hang onto their money and even make it grow. A hundred years from now, will Bill Gates's descendants be able to say the same?

Mr. Birmingham is the author of "Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York" and "Life at the Dakota: New York's Most Unusual Address."


Images of the Day











Peasants in Kenya; Iraq; Maoist in Nepal

WSJ: Equal Before God

By NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY
June 2, 2006; Page W13

Charleston, S.C.

Perched on the side of a lush green hill, 100 yards from the banks of the Ashley River, is a small white chapel. Built in 1850 as the second floor of a "spring house" (which used cool streams to keep food chilled), the one-room sanctuary was the center of religious life at the Middleton Place plantation, for both masters and slaves.
The religious life of slaves? The concept seems peculiar, to say the least. Why would plantation owners deem people whom they treated as subhuman from Monday through Saturday sufficiently worthy of co-worship on Sundays? And why would slaves embrace the faith of a people who were so cruel to them? In 1978, scholar Albert Raboteau published "Slave Religion," a groundbreaking book that set out to explain "the invisible institution in the Antebellum South." "From the very beginning of the Atlantic slave trade," Mr. Raboteau writes, "conversion of the slaves to Christianity was viewed by the emerging nations of Western Christendom as a justification for the enslavement of Africans." But there was also a recognition of the danger that could accompany such transformations. "Masters understood," Mr. Raboteau told me in a recent interview, "that there was something subversive about the whole notion of fellowship, brotherhood and sisterhood [in Christianity] that would lead slaves to think more highly of themselves."
In some instances, the slaves who attended the same churches as their owners would complain to the religious authorities about the treatment to which they were subjected during the week. In one instance, in the Forks of Elkhorn Baptist Church in Kentucky, a Brother Palmer accused the Stephens family of improperly treating their slave Nancy, by putting her in irons and forbidding her to see her child. "Apparently she had reason to hope," Mr. Raboteau writes, "that the church would intervene on her behalf or at least serve as a forum for her complaint."
Slaves also gained power through religion in more spiritual ways. One slave, Andrew Bryan, actually preached in the streets of Savannah to both whites and blacks. In the early 1780s, he was punished because it was thought that his words had provoked the escape of some local slaves. Bryan reportedly "told his prosecutors that he rejoiced not only to be whipped, but would freely suffer death for the cause of Jesus Christ." As historian Eugene Genovese explains in his work on slave life, "Roll, Jordan, Roll" (1972): "The black preachers...had to speak a language defiant enough to hold the high-spirited among their flock but neither so inflammatory as to rouse them to battles they could not win nor so ominous as to rouse the ire of the ruling powers."
It is easy to see why the plantation owners would not want sentiments like Bryan's to spread. Not only does punishment become less effective when martyrdom is a possibility but the notion that Christianity would "relativize the master's will in terms of God's will," as Mr. Raboteau puts it, was a dangerous one. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, missionaries tried to convince masters that they should allow their slaves to practice Christianity, often arguing that Christian slaves would be better slaves. There were some churches, like the Quakers', that refused to condone slavery or to preach to slaves (such preaching, they felt, would confer a legitimacy on the institution). But many preachers chose, as Mr. Genovese writes, "to place the souls of the slaves above all material considerations."
For their sermons to slaves, preachers chose their Bible passages carefully. Ephesians 6:5 was a favorite, according to the tour guide at the Middleton Place plantation: "Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ." But, as Mr. Raboteau observes, there was "no way of controlling the way that slaves would interpret biblical stories....The masters might interpret the story of Exodus as being freed from sin, but the slaves would interpret it as being freed from physical bondage."
In 1822, Denmark Vesey, a slave who had purchased his own freedom, plotted the rebellion of a few thousand slaves here. According to the contemporary accounts, Vesey invoked the Bible to justify his belief that slavery should be eradicated. And most of the slaves executed for participating in the plot were members of the African Methodist Church. After such incidents, masters would often prevent their slaves from practicing Christianity, at least for a while. But slave religion eventually returned, partly to assuage the masters' guilt. "Not only was Christianization of slaves a rationale for slavery," Mr. Raboteau writes, "but it was...a balm for the occasional eruptions of Christian conscience disturbed by the notion that maybe slavery was wrong."
White slaveholders even worried, from time to time, whether they were preventing their slaves from carrying out their Christian duties. At the urging of their churches, masters sometimes kept married slaves on the same plantation instead of allowing them to be separated. In cases where a spouse was sold to another plantation far away, the church would declare the marriage void so that each slave could find another partner without committing adultery.
Whatever the logic of the masters who encouraged slave religion, it is clear that many slaves were sincere Christians. It could be argued that the legacy of such belief is one reason that blacks are among the most fervently religious groups in America today. But Mr. Raboteau sees the narrative of slave religion as a more universal story. Like the martyrs in the early church or the Christians who were persecuted under communism, slaves "are the primary example in American history of Christians who suffered for their faith.