monday, november 19, 2012 living in google’s...

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Supplemento al numero odierno de la Repubblica Sped. abb. postale art. 1 legge 46/04 del 27/02/2004 — Roma In collaboration with MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012 Copyright © 2012 The New York Times INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY Back in the playful, giddy days of spring and summer, before the winds picked up and the seas swelled, New York had a fling with impermanence. Temporary restaurants, clubs or stores set up in vacant storefronts or raw spaces popped up without warning and dis- appeared in days. Chefs, retailers and party promoters seized the oppor- tunity to test new ideas and to avoid the expense and time of running permanent establishments. But this being New York, it soon be- came a full-blown trend. And this be- ing New York, it soon began to annoy other New Yorkers. “There’s an epidemic in this town that seems to have reached crisis pro- portions in recent weeks,” Neil Gen- zlinger wrote in The Times in August, lamenting what he called the Summer of the Pop-Up. Mr. Genzlinger noted a pop-up food court called the Lot, and its spawn. “Beside the Lot is a pop-up roller-skat- ing rink sponsored by Uniqlo, a Japa- nese clothing concern,” he wrote. “And now, beside the pop-up skating rink, two cube-shaped stores have popped up. Last weekend they were selling T- shirts and cashmere sweaters. “That’s right, a pop-up has sprouted a pop-up, which has in turn sprouted two more pop-ups.” The approach was applied to problems like public health. The city brought temporary playgrounds to children in low-income neighborhoods, where lack of exercise and obesity were affecting children, The Times reported. Allison Arieff looked at the upside of the structures not built to last, but to adapt. There is “undeniable oppor- tunity in the temporary: it is an apt response to a civilization in flux,” she wrote in The Times. Impermanence took on a darker meaning when the winds and storm surges of Hurricane Sandy destroyed homes and beaches along the coast in the New York region at the end of October, killing more than 100 people. What had been built to last lifetimes was destroyed in a few hours. A new sort of pop-up emerged as government, businesses and volun- teers rushed to bring food, water and needed supplies to relief centers. Joe Nocera, a columnist at The Times, toured the Rockaways, the Queens oceanfront community that was hit hard. Ten days after the storm, he found dozens of homes destroyed, debris piled shoulder high and thou- sands living without power or heat as temperatures hovered just above freezing. Many were lined up outside pop-up emergency centers — mostly churches — for food, water, blankets, clothing. There was little presence by the city or federal government. Volunteers, Mr. Nocera wrote, “figured out how to help people in a di- saster. They found restaurants willing to donate hot meals, rented buses for more volunteers and brought in sup- plies to help residents battle the cold.” Though New York’s Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had said before the storm that the city would not need emergency help from the federal government, “you don’t have to spend much time in Queens,” Mr. Nocera wrote, “to realize that New York City needs all the help it can get.” Summer was long gone. The fling with impermanence had turned dead- ly serious. PETER CATAPANO Pop-Ups Start Giddy but End Grim VII ARTS & STYLES The Stones at 50: Elders of anarchy. By STEVE LOHR and CLAIRE CAIN MILLER R EGULATORS IN THE United States and Europe are conducting sweeping inquiries into Google, the dominant In- ternet search and advertising company. The relationship between Google and Web sites, publishers and advertisers often seems lopsided, if not unfair. “We’re living in Google’s world,” says Jeffrey G. Katz, chief executive of Wize Commerce, owner of the comparison-shopping Web site Nextag. In the United States, Google has 67 percent of the search market and collects 75 percent of search ad dollars. Being big is no crime, but if a powerful company uses market muscle to stifle competition, that is an antitrust violation. In February, Mr. Katz grew anxious as he watched Nextag’s decline of online traffic from Google’s search engine. Engineers and outside consultants scrambled to see if the problem was Nextag’s fault. Maybe some inadvertent change had prompted Google’s algorithm to demote Nextag when a person typed in shop- ping-related search terms. But no, the engineers determined. And Living In Google’s World LENS For comments, write to [email protected]. Continued on Page IV Continued on Page IV MOISES SAMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Tunisia and other Arab Spring countries are struggling to control the rise of religious extremism. The Grand Mosque in Kairouan. By NEIL MacFARQUHAR KAIROUAN, Tunisia — On the Friday after Tunisia’s president fell, Mohamed al-Khelif mounted the pulpit of this city’s historic Grand Mosque to deliver an attack on the country’s corrupt culture, to condemn its close ties with the West and to demand that a new constitu- tion implement Shariah, or Islamic law. “They’ve slaughtered Islam!” thundered Dr. Khelif, whom the ousted government had barred from preaching for 20 years. “Who- ever fights Islam and implements Western plans becomes in the eyes of Western politi- cians a blessed leader and a reformer, even if he was the most criminal leader with the dirti- est hands.” Mosques across Tunisia blazed with similar sermons that day in January 2011 and, indeed, every Friday since, in what has become the battle of the pulpit, a heated competition to de- fine Tunisia’s religious and political identity. The battle for Tunisia’s mosques is one front in a broader struggle, as pockets of ex- tremism take hold across the region. Freshly minted Islamic governments triumphed over their secular rivals in postrevolutionary elec- tions. But those new governments are locked in fierce, sometimes violent, competition with the more hard-line wing of the Islamic politi- cal movements over how much of the faith can mix with democracy, over the very building blocks of religious identity. That competition is especially significant in Tunisia, once the most secular of the Arab nations. Revolution freed the country’s estimated 5,000 official mosques from the controls of the government, which appointed every prayer leader and issued topics for their sermons. That system pushed a moderate, apoliti- cal model of Islam that avoided confronting a dictator. When the system collapsed, ultra- conservative Salafis seized control of up to 500 mosques. The government, a proponent of a more temperate political Islam, says it has since wrested back control of all but 70 of the mosques, but acknowledges it has not yet routed the extremists. “Before, the state suffocated religion — they controlled the imams, the sermons, the A Battle of the Pulpit Tests Arab Spring III WORLD TRENDS Romantic getaway in Brazil, for dogs. V MONEY & BUSINESS Fostering innovation to spark a recovery. Repubblica NewYork

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Page 1: MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012 Living In Google’s …download.repubblica.it/pdf/2012/esteri/nyt-19-nov.pdfOPINION & COMMENTARY II THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY MONDAY, NOVEMBER

Supplemento al numero

odierno de la RepubblicaSped. abb. postale art. 1

legge 46/04 del 27/02/2004 — Roma

In collaboration with

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012

Copyright © 2012 The New York Times

INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

Back in the playful, giddy days of spring and summer, before the winds picked up and the seas swelled, New York had a fling with impermanence.

Temporary restaurants, clubs orstores set up invacant storefrontsor raw spacespopped up withoutwarning and dis-appeared in days.Chefs, retailers and party promotersseized the oppor-tunity to test new

ideas and to avoid the expense and timeof running permanent establishments.

But this being New York, it soon be-came a full-blown trend. And this be-ing New York, it soon began to annoy other New Yorkers.

“There’s an epidemic in this townthat seems to have reached crisis pro-portions in recent weeks,” Neil Gen-zlinger wrote in The Times in August, lamenting what he called the Summer of the Pop-Up.

Mr. Genzlinger noted a pop-up foodcourt called the Lot, and its spawn.

“Beside the Lot is a pop-up roller-skat-ing rink sponsored by Uniqlo, a Japa-nese clothing concern,” he wrote. “And now, beside the pop-up skating rink, two cube-shaped stores have poppedup. Last weekend they were selling T-shirts and cashmere sweaters.

“That’s right, a pop-up has sprouteda pop-up, which has in turn sproutedtwo more pop-ups.”

The approach was applied toproblems like public health. The citybrought temporary playgrounds tochildren in low-income neighborhoods,where lack of exercise and obesity wereaffecting children, The Times reported.

Allison Arieff looked at the upside of the structures not built to last, but to adapt. There is “undeniable oppor-tunity in the temporary: it is an aptresponse to a civilization in flux,” shewrote in The Times.

Impermanence took on a darker meaning when the winds and storm surges of Hurricane Sandy destroyed homes and beaches along the coast in the New York region at the end of October, killing more than 100 people. What had been built to last lifetimes was destroyed in a few hours.

A new sort of pop-up emerged asgovernment, businesses and volun-

teers rushed to bring food, water and needed supplies to relief centers.

Joe Nocera, a columnist at The Times, toured the Rockaways, theQueens oceanfront community thatwas hit hard. Ten days after the storm,he found dozens of homes destroyed,debris piled shoulder high and thou-sands living without power or heat as temperatures hovered just above freezing. Many were lined up outside pop-up emergency centers — mostly churches — for food, water, blankets, clothing. There was little presence bythe city or federal government.

Volunteers, Mr. Nocera wrote,“figured out how to help people in a di-saster. They found restaurants willing to donate hot meals, rented buses for more volunteers and brought in sup-plies to help residents battle the cold.”

Though New York’s Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had said before the storm that the city would not needemergency help from the federal government, “you don’t have to spend much time in Queens,” Mr. Nocerawrote, “to realize that New York Cityneeds all the help it can get.”

Summer was long gone. The fling with impermanence had turned dead-ly serious. PETER CATAPANO

Pop-Ups Start Giddy but End Grim

VIIARTS & STYLES

The Stones at 50:

Elders of anarchy.

By STEVE LOHR and CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

REGULATORS IN THE United States

and Europe are conducting sweeping

inquiries into Google, the dominant In-

ternet search and advertising company.

The relationship between Google and Web

sites, publishers and advertisers often seems

lopsided, if not unfair.

“We’re living in Google’s world,” says Jeffrey

G. Katz, chief executive of Wize Commerce,

owner of the comparison-shopping Web site

Nextag.

In the United States, Google has 67 percent

of the search market and collects 75 percent of

search ad dollars. Being big is no crime, but if a

powerful company uses market muscle to stifle

competition, that is an antitrust violation.

In February, Mr. Katz grew anxious as he

watched Nextag’s decline of online traffic from

Google’s search engine. Engineers and outside

consultants scrambled to see if the problem

was Nextag’s fault. Maybe some inadvertent

change had prompted Google’s algorithm to

demote Nextag when a person typed in shop-

ping-related search terms .

But no, the engineers determined. And

Living In Google’s

World

LENS

For comments, write [email protected].

Con tin ued on Page IV Con tin ued on Page IV

MOISES SAMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Tunisia and other Arab Spring countries are struggling to control the rise of religious extremism. The Grand Mosque in Kairouan.

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

KAIROUAN, Tunisia — On the Friday after Tunisia’s president fell, Mohamed al-Khelifmounted the pulpit of this city’s historic GrandMosque to deliver an attack on the country’s corrupt culture, to condemn its close ties withthe West and to demand that a new constitu-tion implement Shariah, or Islamic law.

“They’ve slaughtered Islam!” thunderedDr. Khelif, whom the ousted government had barred from preaching for 20 years. “Who-ever fights Islam and implements Westernplans becomes in the eyes of Western politi-cians a blessed leader and a reformer, even ifhe was the most criminal leader with the dirti-est hands.”

Mosques across Tunisia blazed with similar

sermons that day in January 2011 and, indeed, every Friday since, in what has become thebattle of the pulpit, a heated competition to de-fine Tunisia’s religious and political identity.

The battle for Tunisia’s mosques is onefront in a broader struggle, as pockets of ex-tremism take hold across the region. Freshly minted Islamic governments triumphed over their secular rivals in postrevolutionary elec-tions. But those new governments are lockedin fierce, sometimes violent, competition withthe more hard-line wing of the Islamic politi-cal movements over how much of the faith can mix with democracy, over the very buildingblocks of religious identity. That competition is especially significant in Tunisia, once themost secular of the Arab nations.

Revolution freed the country’s estimated5,000 official mosques from the controls of thegovernment, which appointed every prayerleader and issued topics for their sermons.

That system pushed a moderate, apoliti-cal model of Islam that avoided confrontinga dictator. When the system collapsed, ultra-conservative Salafis seized control of up to500 mosques. The government, a proponentof a more temperate political Islam, says ithas since wrested back control of all but 70 of the mosques, but acknowledges it has not yet routed the extremists.

“Before, the state suffocated religion —they controlled the imams, the sermons, the

A Battle of the Pulpit Tests Arab Spring

IIIWORLD TRENDS

Romantic getaway

in Brazil, for dogs. VMONEY & BUSINESS

Fostering innovation

to spark a recovery.

Repubblica NewYork

Page 2: MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012 Living In Google’s …download.repubblica.it/pdf/2012/esteri/nyt-19-nov.pdfOPINION & COMMENTARY II THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY MONDAY, NOVEMBER

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

II MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

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INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

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Foreign Policy AgendaNational security didn’t play heavi-

ly in the November 6 presidential elec-tion in the United States. But PresidentObama’s legacy, and the country’sfuture, will be shaped as much by theforeign policy and defense decisionshe makes over the next four years asby those on the domestic side.

One of Mr. Obama’s singular contri-butions has been his vision of a world without nuclear weapons. It is a lofty goal that won’t be achieved in hissecond term, or maybe for years af-ter that. But it offers a framework for reducing America’s stockpile and for arguing credibly that other countries should follow suit.

In 2010, Mr. Obama won Senate rat-ification of a treaty with Russia thatmakes modest cuts in deployed long-range nuclear weapons. It is time to

pursue further reductions in thosedeployed systems and to seek cutsin warheads held in reserve and inshort-range nuclear weapons, whereMoscow has a big advantage. Nuclear arms are one area in which the abilityof Washington and Moscow to worktogether is essential. If Mr. Obamacan draw the other nuclear powers,including China, Pakistan, India andIsrael, into the discussions and per-suade the Senate to ratify the Com-prehensive Test Ban Treaty, so muchthe better.

Iran and the International AtomicEnergy Agency are to resume talks inDecember, but any diplomatic solutionwill at some point require direct nego-tiations between Washington and Teh-ran. Meanwhile, international sanc-tions, which have seriously damaged

Iran’s economy, need to be rigorouslyenforced and strengthened.

American military commanders areexpected to recommend a timetablesoon for withdrawing forces from Af-ghanistan. After a decade of Americanblood spilled there, President Obama should declare that the schedule willbe dictated only by the security of thetroops, and the withdrawal shouldtake no more than a year.

Mr. Obama’s policies have severelyweakened Al Qaeda, but extrem-ism is growing in many regions, likeNorth Africa and Pakistan. Dealingwith that challenge is likely to be-come harder, as will the choices Mr.Obama must make. For one thing,he will have to examine whether theexpanding use of drones is the rightapproach.

As for the Arab Spring countries,Mr. Obama has been wise to recognizethat Washington cannot dictate their democratic evolutions. But he shouldbe more engaged, offering assistanceto Islamic leaders who need to buildtheir economies quickly while remind-ing them that American support willbe based on their commitment to hu-man rights and the rule of law.

He should continue to resist callsfor American military intervention inSyria, but he should seek ways to keep fortifying the opposition in that civilwar, especially since the factions now seem to be unifying.

Many are pessimistic that anythingcan be done about an Israeli-Pales-tinian peace deal as long as PrimeMinister Benjamin Netanyahu is inoffice and Palestinians are divided

between Fatah and Hamas. It wouldbe a mistake for Mr. Obama to crossthis off his list. He needs to keep seek-ing openings to promote the two-state solution.

Mr. Obama is expected to try todeepen engagement with Asia to pro-tect American military interests and ensure American access to economic opportunities in that region. Thiscould be a challenge given the coming change of leadership in Beijing.

It is an inexhaustible list. Mr. Obamadelayed major new or controversialinitiatives this year while the cam-paign was under way. Now he has two years before another election season impedes his ability to get things done. He needs to decide on his priorities andact while he has the political space and capital to do so.

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

SOMEWHERE OVER SOUTH AMERICA

“Maybe I’ll get a decorating show,”said Hillary Clinton.

It was a few weeks before the No-vember 6 election. She was flyingback from a trip to Peru, talking— without any great enthusiasm —about the topic that would begin toobsess the American political worldas soon as the presidential ballotshad been counted: Will Hillary runin 2016?

It’s more than two months until thisinauguration. But the speculation is al-ready roaring. On November 9, Politi-co reported that Public Policy Pollinghad a survey showing that if the Iowa caucuses were held today — there’sa terrifying thought — Clinton would get 58 percent of the vote. Joe Bidenlimped in with 17 percent.

Every day, people approach Hillary Clinton and tell her she has an obliga-tion to run and give America its firstwoman president. “Yes, they do!” she laughs, with her trademark chortle.Being asked to run for president is akind of side career.

Clinton gives many variations onthe theme of don’t-think-so. (“Oh, I’veruled it out, but you know me. Every-body keeps asking me. So I keep rul-ing it out and being asked.”) Also athousand different forms of beats-me. (“I have no idea what I’m going to do next.”) What she does not do is offerthe kind of Shermanesque if-nominat-ed-I-will-not-run language that wouldend the conversation.

Instead, she veers into a discus-sion of all the things she’ll do whenshe’s no longer secretary of state,and there’s time. That led to a men-tion of her favorite TV shows, which

are about house buying and homeimprovement. Her top pick is “Love Itor List It,” in which a couple who areunhappy with their residence get tolook at new houses while a decoratorrehabs their old place. The plot arc isalways the same, and, in a way, it’ssort of Clintonesque. The redecora-tors find termites or a leaky furnace;the house search goes awry. Every-body’s upset! But after a lot of workand the final commercial, there’s ahappy ending. “I find it very calm-ing,” she said.

Clinton sounded relaxed and cheer-ful despite a severe lack of sleep. She was sitting in the room that serves asher private space on the secretary of state’s plane. It’s a modest accommo-dation for the nation’s Traveler in Chief— barely big enough for a table and a small sofa/daybed. You’d think some-body who puts in her kind of hourswould get a little plusher ride. During her day in Peru, she had given several speeches and multiple TV interviews,toured a textile factory, taken part in a conference on women’s empowermentand spent an evening with PresidentOllanta Humala and his wife, Nadine Heredia.

“It was a long dinner, but it reallywas a good conversation,” said Clin-ton earnestly, describing the presi-dent, his wife and the other officialsshe’d talked with, including the Pe-ruvian minister of development andsocial inclusion, whom she termed“very savvy.” Clinton is from the per-sonal relationship school of foreignpolicy. Her approach to day-to-daydiplomacy is not unlike the way shefound her footing as a candidate forthe United States Senate. Remember

the listening tours? Lots and lots oflistening tours.

“So, last night at dinner we sat downand had drinks — there were only like8 or 10 of us — and we just talked,” she said, recounting the evening. “Whensomebody comes along like him whohas good values, really does careabout what he’s talking about, there’s no substitute for just time spent one on one in small groups.”

If Hillary Clinton ran for presidentagain, she would probably be the best-prepared candidate in American histo-ry: one who’s lived in the White House,served in the United States Senate, a woman who knows virtually everyhead of state in the world and also has a strong opinion about the merits ofthe Peruvian minister of development and social inclusion.

Joe Biden might arguably comeclose. But we’re not going to talk about Joe until we figure out what Hillary’s going to do.

Would all that background meanshe’d be a great president? Whoknows? Americans are always try-ing to figure out what qualities theyshould look for in a candidate, and westill have no idea. Republicans weresure this was the time for a successfulbusinessman-turned-governor, butmaybe not. Going into the Oval Office, the elder George Bush was much bet-ter prepared than Barack Obama, butwe re-elected the one with the shorter résumé.

And would people like a PresidentHillary Clinton as much as they likedthe woman who lost the nomination,who won us over with her remarkableability to bounce back from disaster?

I always wondered how she regards the arc of her own life. Controversialfirst lady to betrayed first lady to be-loved first lady. Clumsy carpetbag-ging Senate candidate to New Yorktreasure. Failed presidential candi-date to international icon. The theme,it seemed to me, was that you play the cards you’re dealt.

Clinton stared for a few seconds. “Ichoose my cards,” she said firmly. “Ichoose them. I play them to the bestof my ability. Move on to the nexthand.”

So the question is, what hand doesshe choose next?

As everyone knows, Clinton’s re-maining time in the cabinet is limited.She long ago told President Obamathat she wanted to leave after his first term was up. “Obviously, if he wantsto get somebody confirmed, I’d besensitive to that. But it’s not going tobe much longer.”

Then she is going to chill. While

there are many topics on which HillaryClinton speaks with great passion, at this moment there are very few about which she is as intense as her desire to not do anything.

“I am so looking forward to nextyear,” she said. “I just want to sleepand exercise and travel for fun. Andrelax. It sounds so ordinary, but Ihaven’t done it for 20 years. I wouldlike to see whether I can get untired.I work out and stuff, but I don’t do itenough and I don’t do it hard enoughbecause I can’t expend that much en-ergy on it.”

Notice that we are less than a min-ute into her paean to not doing any-thing, and she is planning her work-outs.

It seems reasonable to assume thatright now, Clinton’s lack of interest ina presidential race is genuine. Despiteher legendary ability to fall asleep at will — even on that airplane daybed— she is really, really tired. And, at 65, she has no way of knowing how fullyher body will rebound when she stops punishing it.

If Clinton follows through on herplan to not decide anything for ayear, it would put the 2016 presiden-tial speculation on ice, at least on theDemocratic side. And that would be asignal service to the American pub-lic, which needs an election break.No way should we be forced to thinkabout who we want to see in the de-bates 47 months down the line. Al-though we will still have to spend along time listening to uninterrupteddiscussions about Jeb Bush versusPaul Ryan.

In Lima, Clinton addressed a confer-ence called “Power: Women as Driv-ers of Growth and Social Inclusion”wearing a black pantsuit and brightshirt. It brought back memories. One of her unheralded contributions to the cause of American women in politics

was to wear exactly that same outfitevery day during her first campaignfor Senate. After a while, nobodytalked about her clothes anymore,and I envisioned a glorious future inwhich women running for office could just toss on their black pantsuit in the morning and head for the door. Butwhen Clinton ran for president, shewent for variety. I always thought itwas a shame, but she said she’d justgotten bored.

At the conference, she told the audi-ence that she had just read a — yes!— home decorating magazine, which included a 20-page feature on textiles from the Andes, a classic example ofbig business springing from women’s crafts. For a long time, Clinton said,when she talked about giving women opportunity, “I could see some eyesglazing over.” But now, she said,people are beginning to see that em-powering women leads to economicdevelopment. That you don’t espouse women’s rights because it’s a virtuous thing to do but because it leads to eco-nomic growth.

If she does drop out of politics andmove on, this will probably be Clin-ton’s future. Championing the causeof women, continuing her mega-lis-tening tours around the globe, having serious conversations about issues of great import and minimal glamour. At State, she’s dug deep into the bureau-cracy, trying to ensure that Americandiplomacy will be promoting women’s empowerment many secretaries downthe line. “We’ve created some posi-tions,” Clinton said, making a list. “We have embedded it in the quadrennialdiplomacy and development reviewprocess …”

That’s the thing about Hillary Clin-ton. Most famous woman in the world,but still a sucker for the quadrennialdiplomacy and development reviewprocess.

GAIL COLLINS

Mrs. Clinton’s Next Move

RUTH GWILY

Repubblica NewYork

Page 3: MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012 Living In Google’s …download.repubblica.it/pdf/2012/esteri/nyt-19-nov.pdfOPINION & COMMENTARY II THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY MONDAY, NOVEMBER

W O R L D T R E N D S

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012 IIITHE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

By JACKIE CALMES

WASHINGTON — For Presi-dent Obama, emboldened by his decisive re-election and lessons learned over four years in office, the renewal of budget talks with Repub-licans is a second chance to finallyfulfill his promise to end gridlock inWashington, associates say.

Mr. Obama’s aides say he will notsimply hunker down for weeks ofclosed-door negotiations as he did inmid-2011, when partisan brinkman-ship over raising the nation’s debtlimit damaged the economy andhis political standing. He will travelbeyond the Beltway at times to rallypublic support for a deficit-cuttingaccord that mixes tax increases onthe wealthy with spending cuts.

Though many business leaders backed Mitt Romney, scores haveformed a coalition to push for a bud-get compromise similar to the one the president seeks. He hopes to en-list them to persuade Republicans in Congress to accept higher taxeson the assurance that he can deliver Democrats’ votes for future reduc-

tions in entitlement programs likeMedicare and Medicaid.

“Every president learns lessonsfrom their successes and failures, and President Obama is no differ-ent,” said Dan Pfeiffer, his com-munications director. “There is no question that lessons were learned in the summer of 2011 that will im-pact his approach to the presidencyfor the next four years.”

And with the election campaignover, the campaign for the Obamalegacy begins: Mr. Obama will keephis grass-roots organization in placeto “have the president’s back,” as itsmembers like to say, on the budgetnegotiations and other issues.

Ultimately, success or failure willdepend on Mr. Obama, starting withhis attempts to steer negotiationsduring the lame-duck Congress to asuccessful two-part conclusion.

First, he has to avert the “fiscal

cliff” created by the combinationof expiring tax cuts and unemploy-ment benefits with across-the-boardcuts in military and domestic pro-grams set to take effect after Janu-ary 1. Both parties seek agreementon alternative savings that would beless damaging to the economy thanup to $700 billion in immediate taxincreases and spending cuts.

Second, for the long term, success means consensus on a framework to overhaul the tax code and ben-efit programs in 2013 to control themounting federal debt.

“This election is the second chance to be what he promised in2008, and that is to break the grid-lock in Washington,” said KennethM. Duberstein, a Reagan White House chief of staff who voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 and later ex-pressed disappointment. “But itseems like this is a replay of 2009and 2010, when he had huge majori-ties in the House and Senate, rather than recognizing that ‘we’ve gotto figure out ways to work togetherand it’s not just what I want.’ ”

George C. Edwards III, a leadingscholar of the presidency at TexasA & M University who wrote a bookon Mr. Obama’s presidency titled“Overreach,” said, “He didn’t un-derstand the limits of what he coulddo. They thought they could continu-ously create opportunities and theywould succeed, and then there wouldbe more success and more success,and we’d build this advancing-tidetheory of legislation .

“And that was very naïve, verysilly. Well, they’ve learned a lot, I think ,” he said.

“Effective leaders,” Mr. Edwards added, “exploit opportunities rath-er than create them.”

Democrats said the White House’sstrategy of focusing both inside andoutside of Washington was smart.

The president must use his lever-age soon, some Democrats added.In particular, Mr. Obama has toconvince Republicans that he wouldveto an extension of the expiringBush-era tax cuts for incomes of$250,000 and higher, said John Pod-esta, a chief of staff to President BillClinton who oversaw Mr. Obama’s2008 presidential transition.

The top tax rate of 35 percent would increase after December 31to 39.6 percent, raising about $1 tril-lion over 10 years.

“The Republicans think he caves,”Mr. Podesta said, “and he has to dis-abuse them of that.”

NEWS ANALYSIS

Obama Will TakeHis Case to the Public

The president has a short period when hecan set the tone.

The Philippineseyes sex education and contraception aid.

Manila Seeks Way to Slow Baby Boom

LALO DE ALMEIDA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

By FLOYD WHALEY

MANILA — In the main ward atDr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital,171 women and nearly as many new-borns share fewer than 100 beds. Doz-ens more expectant mothers line thestreet outside, some sleeping on thesidewalk while waiting to get in.

The women, most of whom cannotafford to give birth at a private hos-pital, move from the street, to the la-bor room, to the delivery room, to the maternity ward and back out the door, usually in less than 48 hours. “It’s anever-ending story, 24 hours a day, ev-ery day,” said Dr. Romeo Bituin, who added that the government-run ma-ternity hospital was legally requiredto serve as a safety net for the poor.“We can’t reject patients. If we turnthem away, where will they go?”

The House of Representatives in the Philippine Congress decided in Augustto end debate on a reproductive healthbill that would subsidize contraceptionand require sex education in a coun-try with one of the highest birthrates in Asia. Sponsors of the bill want theHouse to schedule a vote.

The bill’s proponents, led by Presi-dent Benigno S. Aquino III, say themeasure will give poor women achance to have fewer children andrise out of poverty. Opponents, backedprincipally by the Roman CatholicChurch, say the bill is out of step withthe moral tenets of the overwhelm-

ingly Catholic Philippines and argue a high birthrate lessens poverty.

“Our country’s positive birthrateand a population composed of mostly young people are the main players thatfuel the economy,” said Jose Palma,the president of the Catholic BishopsConference of the Philippines.

The birthrate in the Philippines is24.98 per 1,000 people, versus 13.7 per 1,000 in the United States. The world’s average birthrate so far in 2012 is

19.15 births per 1,000 people, accordingto the Central Intelligence Agency’sWorld Factbook. Fabella, in a formerprison, delivers more babies than any other Philippine hospital. Last year,17,639 babies were born there.

The women are allowed into the hos-pital only when they are ready to givebirth. After the birth, they sleep twoto a bed in the maternity ward. If theyhave a healthy delivery, they are senthome after one day. “We don’t have thecapacity to let them come in early orstay long after delivery,” said Dr. An-

toinette Pacapac, a spokeswoman.The hospital averages 60 deliveries

a day in the summer and about 80 aday in the peak delivery season, Sep-tember to December. Fabella charges 3,000 pesos, about $70, for a normal de-livery. Women who cannot afford that pay what they can. Some babies havebeen delivered for 100 pesos, about$2.40. Some expectant mothers showup without a peso.

Most of the women have never had sexual or reproductive health edu-cation, and many cannot afford con-traception. “If they received thesethings for free, they would use them,and fewer of them would end up here,”Dr. Bituin said. “We need to advocate reproductive health in the communityat the grass roots. The church is al-ready there spreading their message through services every Sunday.”

The hospital offers family planning information, but budget constraintsprevent it from giving patients contra-ceptives .

Jelly Galia, 44, with seven children, was in Fabella’s main ward after her eighth child died after birth. She saidher husband is an unemployed taxidriver, and the family lives in a slum. “I don’t want to have any more ba-bies,” she said, wiping away tears.

“I would take the pills, but we don’t have money to buy those. We’ll try‘control,’ ” she said, using the localterm for abstinence.

By SIMON ROMERO

BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil — The establishment that opened here thisyear has features that demanding clients expect from a love motel. Bra-zil, after all, is a world leader in these short-stay pleasure palaces, which beckon couples for trysts away from prying eyes.

But Belo Horizonte’s newest lovemotel stands apart from the crowd inone crucial aspect. It is for dogs.

Animalle Mundo Pet, an eight-story enterprise in an upscale districtin this city of 2.4 million people, intro-duced the dog motel alongside aisles featuring items like beef-flavored Dog Beer (nonalcoholic), a dog spa with a Japanese soaking tub, and ca-nine apparel.

“I adore the romantic feel of thisplace,” said Andreia Kfoury, 43, a manager at a technology company who peeked inside the motel, Motel

Pet, with her husband and their York-shire terrier, Harley.

“I’m definitely bringing Harleyback here when it’s time for him to breed,” a smiling Ms. Kfoury said. “He is very macho, and would be a hit in this place.”

Whether dogs like Harley actually need a romantic curtained-off suite to breed seems beside the point. Somedog owners simply like the concept of a love motel and are willing to pay about $50 for each session.

The beehivelike atmosphere at the pet megastore, which employs a staff of 35 (not counting the veterinarians on call), points not only to Brazil’ssurging pet dog population, now about 36 million, but also to changes in society after years of economicgrowth and shifting demographic patterns.

Similar stores thrive in other cities; in São Paulo, plastic surgeons provide

Botox injections for dogs.Since an economic stabilization

program was put into effect in the 1990s, per capita income has risen inBrazil, according to the World Bank, allowing people to spend more on pets. Families have gotten smaller,according to government statistics,giving pets new importance in manyhomes. And life expectancy hasclimbed to 73, from 67, adding to the years people may turn to pets as com-panions.

The emergence of a middle-class Brazil has led to a rapid growth inservices for dogs. Brazil is at the top in per capita ownership of dogs weighing nine kilograms or less, withnearly 20 million, said Euromonitor, a market research company.

“I was tired of practicing law and saw that the dog market was taking off,” said Daniela Guimarães Loures, 28, a Dalmatian owner who invested

$1 million with her brother to open Animalle in July. The siblings nowoffer lodging for dogs and cats, a pet taxi, a dog cafe selling beef-flavored muffins, and a store selling specialty products like Chic Animale, a $40 per-fume for dogs.

The dog owners filing into Ani-malle often cannot resist gawking behind the blinds of Motel Pet. “The ambience here is lovely,” said Teresa

Cristina Carvalho, who showed her Shih Tzu puppy, named Mel, the ac-commodations. “We’ll return whenMel is in heat,” she said, adding that in the meantime she would buy a bottle of Dog Beer.

“Mel gets agitated with so muchstimulation, and needs to relax a bit,” Ms. Carvalho said. “Come to think of it, I need some peace and quiet aswell.”

Peter Baker contributedreporting.

JES AZNAR FOR THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE

Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in Manila is required to service the poor, and it is busy 24 hours a day.

BELO HORIZONTE JOURNAL

A Love Palace Caters to the Canine Set

TeresaCristinaCarvalho,with her Shih Tzu, Mel, toureda megastore for petsin BeloHorizonte.

Repubblica NewYork

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W O R L D T R E N D S

IV MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

TUNISIA

LIBYA

Tunis

Tripoli

KaKaKa nirouan

ALGERIA

Mediterranean Sea

Gulf of

Gabes

160 Kilometers

traffic from Google’s search enginecontinued to decline. Nextag’s re-sponse? It doubled its spending onGoogle paid search advertising inthe last five months.

The move was necessary to retainshoppers, Mr. Katz says, becausean estimated 60 percent of Nextag’straffic comes from Google . “We had to do it,” Mr. Katz says.

Google has nurtured a landscape of opportunity. Its ecosystem gener-ates $80 billion a year in revenue for 1.8 million businesses, Web sites and nonprofit organizations in the Unit-ed States alone, it estimates.

But Google has drawn the atten-tion of antitrust officials as it hasmovedbeyondsearch and search ad-vertising into fields like online com-merce and local reviews. Indeed,the United States government haslaunched against it the most exhaus-tive investigation of a major corpora-tion since Microsoft in the 1990s.

The staff of the Federal TradeCommission has recommendedpreparing an antitrust suit againstGoogle, according to people briefed

on the inquiry, who spoke on the con-dition they not be identified.

The antitrust issue is whetherGoogle uses its search engine to fa-vor its offerings over rivals. This isalso the subject of negotiations withregulators at the European Union.

Google is continually adjusting itssearch algorithm — the smart soft-ware that determines the relevance,ranking and presentation of search results, typically links to other Web sites. Google has long maintainedthat its algorithm weeds out low-quality sites. But Google’s algorithmis secret, and changes can leave Websites scrambling.

Vote-USA.org, a nonprofit groupstarted in 2003 that posts free sam-ple ballots, saw traffic fall sharplyby 2008, says Ron Kahlow, who runs Vote-USA.org. “We dropped off the face of the map on Google.”

A breakthrough came througha personal connection, who got aGoogle engineer to investigate. The problem, Mr. Kahlow learned, wasthat the site’s state Web pages alsohad information for national candi-

dates. To Google’s algorithm, du-plicate content on a site suggests ashady shortcut to try to make a site look bigger than it is.

Mr. Kahlow fixed that andVote-USA.org moved off Google’sblack list. But this past election hewatched, concerned that Googlewould promote its own tools for find-ing where to vote and sample ballots,just like his site offers.

“ I’m sure they’re aware of theamount of money that’s being spent in politics and I’m sure they’d liketo get their fingers in the pie,” Mr.Kahlow said.

Last year, small news sites across America disappeared from Google, their readership plummeting.

“There was no explanation whyor place you could go for more infor-mation,” says Hal Goodtree, editorand publisher of CaryCitizen, a local news site in Cary, North Carolina.

Google does not compete withsiteslike CaryCitizen in reporting localnews. But Lance Knobel, a founderof Berkeleyside, a local news site inBerkeley, California, said sites likehis do compete with Google for local advertising.

As the company builds up GooglePlus Local, its local business listing and review service, Mr. Knobel saysGoogle’s search engine could give it“a tremendous advantage.” A personseeking information about a localbusiness may be steered to Google Plus Local rather than to Berkeley-side, he says.

CaryCitizen and Berkeleysidehave been restored to Google, whichblamed mistakes for their omission.

Speaking at a conference in Octo-ber, Larry Page, a founder of Googleand its chief executive,addressed theissue of competing with other Webbusinesses. He pointed to GoogleMaps in 2005. “If you think backthen,” he said, “we had the same kindof criticisms, like, ‘Oh, there’s al-ready MapQuest.’ Anybody heard of them? No one uses them anymore.”

Today, MapQuest has half the num-ber of monthly visitors that GoogleMaps has, according to comScore.

Google’s goal, Mr. Page suggests, is continual improvement of itsproduct, which means adding more services that collect and parse dataeven if some competitors may suffer. Google has argued that forcefully toregulators because in antitrust, con-sumer benefit weighs heavily.

But this is an evasion to competi-tors like Nextag , which shifted itsstrategy to become less vulnerableto what it sees as Google’s charge in-to commerce. The revised plan, Mr. Katz says, “gives us a shot at being a very healthy company.”

mosques,” said Sheik Tai’eb al-Ghozzi,70, the Friday Prayer leader at theGrand Mosque here. “Now everythingis out of control — the situation is bet-ter but needs control.”

To this day, Salafi clerics like Dr.Khelif, who espouse the most puritan-ical, most orthodox interpretation ofIslam, emphasize themes that includeputting Islamic law into effect imme-diately, shunning the West and joining the jihad in Syria. Democracy, they in-sist, is not compatible with Islam.

“If the majority is ignorant of re-ligious instruction, then they areagainst God,” said Sheik Khatib al-Id-rissi, 60, considered the spiritual guideof all Tunisian Salafis.

The Arab Spring began in Tunisia,and its ability to reconcile faith andgovernance may well serve as a ba-rometer for the region.

Some analysts link the assertive

Tunisian Salafi movement to whatthey consider a worrying spread ofviolent extremism across North Af-rica — including a murderous attackon the American diplomatic missionin Ben ghazi, Libya, and a mob looting parts of the United States Embassy inTunis.

Senior government officials said thevarious groups share an ideology andare in contact with one another. There have been several episodes of jihadists caught smuggling small arms fromLibya to Mali or Algeria across Tuni-sia, for example, said Ali Laarayedh,the interior minister.

President Moncef Marzouki blamedthe ousted government for the spread of Islamic extremism, saying it hadgutted traditional religious education over the past 50 years.

The government, dominated by the Renaissance Party, is struggling tocontain the problem without resorting to the brutal methods of the toppled

dictatorship. It has jailed about 800Salafis, said Samir Dilou, the human rights minister, and arrests of thoseadvocating violence accelerated af-ter protesters looted the AmericanEmbassy compound on September 14in response to a video mocking theProphet Muhammad.

The word Salafi encompasses abroad spectrum of Sunni fundamental-ists whose common goal is resurrect-ing Islam as practiced by the Prophet Muhammad when he founded the faithin the seventh century. Salafis range from peaceful proselytizers to thosewho spread Islam by force.

In Kairouan, 160 kilometers south of Tunis, Salafis control 5 of the city’s 35mosques, said Sheik Ghozzi, the GrandMosque’s prayer leader.

“The Salafis find themselves em-powered because they have not faced any resistance from the government,”said Sheik Ghozzi.

Sheik Ghozzi and other critics ac-

cuse the extremists of pushing a farless tolerant version of Islam than thatlong practiced in Tunisia.

“They want their own imams whouse their words, who speak theirlanguage,” Sheik Ghozzi said. It was

worshipers who asked Dr. Khelif notto return after that first Friday, Sheik Ghozzi said. But Dr. Khelif, 60, the son of a famous Grand Mosque imam, saidonly misguided Tunisians consider hispreaching somehow foreign.

“Islam is the Islam that was re-vealed to the prophet — it was not Is-lam revealed to my father or any otherTunisian father,” he said.

In Tunis in October, five men set fire to the shrine of Leila Manoubia, a 13th-century saint. Tunisian women wrote their names on the walls if they want-ed to get married or pregnant. Salafis condemn such prayers as idolatry.

“I want Tunisia to be a place where a woman can wear a veil or not, where we can pray or not,” said Asma Ah-madi, 34, who said she started visiting the shrine at age 15. “They are trying to burn our identity to replace it withsomething we don’t know,” she said.

Con tin ued from Page 1

American Military Turns Focus to Pacific

Companies Adapting

To Life With Google

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON — In November2011, President Obama stood beforethe Australian Parliament and issueda veiled challenge to China’s ambi-tions in Asia: “As a Pacific nation, the United States will play a larger andlong-term role in shaping this regionand its future.” A year later, the details of his pledge — along with a nascentAmerican military buildup in the Pa-cific — are emerging.

This summer, about 250 UnitedStates Marines, the first of 2,500 to bedeployed to Australia, trained with theAustralian Army and with other mili-taries in Thailand, Malaysia and In-donesia. Next spring, the first of fourlittoral combat ships, fast new vessels meant to keep a watch on the Chinese Navy, is to begin a 10-month deploy-ment in Singapore.

In an amphibious drill on Guam inSeptember, which did not go unnoticedin Beijing, Japan’s Self-Defense Forcesand American Marines “retook” a re-mote island from an unnamed enemy.

But as Defense Secretary Leon E.Panetta headed off November 11 forhis fourth trip to Asia in 17 months,criticism was intensifying among de-fense policy experts that the “pivot” to the Pacific remains mostly verbal, al-though it is still enough to antagonizethe Chinese.

Pentagon officials acknowledge thatthey are in the early stages of the policyand that much of the hardware — the new ships and P-8 Poseidon maritime reconnaissance planes, for example —will not arrive in the region for years.They also say that if Congress does notagree to a fiscal deal this fall, the Pen-tagon will not be able to pay for much

of the Asia strategy. For now, the Pentagon is shifting

weapons like the B-1 and B-52 long-range bombers and Global Hawkdrones to the Pacific from the MiddleEast and Southwest Asia as the war inAfghanistan winds down.

China, which has spent the past yearasserting territorial claims to disputedislands that would give it vast control over oil and gas rights in the East and South China Seas, remains suspicious about American intentions.

“We hope the U.S. can respect theinterests and concerns of other par-ties in the region, including China,”said Gao Yuan, a spokesman for theChinese Embassy in Washington.

Mr. Panetta, traveling to Australia,Thailand and Cambodia ahead of atrip to the region by Mr. Obama later this month, was promoting what thePentagon prefers to call a rebalancing in the region, which involve s increasesin troop strength, military exercisesand numbers of ships, and strongermilitary ties with Asian nations.

The United States has 320,000 troopsin the Pacific region, and the Pentagonhas promised there will be no reduc-tions as troops are drawn down in Af-ghanistan and elsewhere. The alreadylarge military presence is one reason there has been skepticism that an ad-ditional 2,500 Marines in Australiaamounts to more than show. It did pro-voke a sharp response from Beijing.

Having joint training with othercountries in Asia can be done fairlyquickly. The United States has in-creased the number of exercises and opened them up to more countries — amessage to China that America is work-ing to improve the capabilities of the

militaries in its strategic backyard.This summer, India and Russia par-

ticipated for the first time in Hawaiiin the world’s largest internationalmaritime exercise, Rim of the Pacific,but the United States excluded China,drawing a protest from Beijing. China is invited in 2014.

Mr. Panetta has said that by 2020, theUnited States will have 60 percent of itsships in the Pacific and 40 percent in theAtlantic, compared with the current 50-50 split. The Pentagon has not specifiedwhat kinds of ships or how many wouldmake up the 60 percent, although Mr. Panetta has said they would include sixaircraft carriers and a majority of theNavy’s cruisers, destroyers, subma-rines and littoral combat ships.

The Pentagon’s efforts to shoreup alliances and increase militarycooperation with allies in Asia haveprompted negative reactions fromChina. In September, Japan and theUnited States reached a major agree-ment to deploy a second American ad-vanced missile-defense radar on Japa-nese territory, which was immediatelycriticized by the Chinese. And in the past year, the Obama administration has stepped up talks with the Philip-pines about expanding the Americanmilitary presence there.

One measure of the region’s grow-ing importance is that Mr. Panettaand General Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,now hold a secure video conferenceevery other week with the top com-mander for Asia and the Pacific, Admi-ral Samuel J. Locklear III. Pentagonofficials say the frequency is similar to that of video conferences with Ameri-can commanders in war zones.

LARRY DOWNING/REUTERS

Con tin ued from Page 1

Arab Spring Faces Battle Over Pulpits in Tunisia

THE NEW YORK TIMES

A secret algorithm that changes is ruling many ventures’ fate.

President Obama’splans for a strongerPacificrole haveriledChina. Hespoke totroops inAustralialast fall.

Sheik Tai’eb al-Ghozzi, leader ofthe Grand Mosque in Kairouan,has accused extremists of pushinga far less tolerant version of Islam.

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

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012 VTHE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

Who can fix the American econo-my? It’s not the Federal Reserve. TheFed has been injecting more and morecapital into the economy because atleast in theory capital fuels capital-

ism. But cash hoards in the billions aresitting unused atFortune 500 corpora-tions and at privateequity funds.

Executives mightfinance three types of innovations with their capital. I’ll call the first type“empowering” innovations. Thesetransform complicated, costly prod-ucts available to a few into simpler,cheaper products available to many.

The Ford Model T was an empower-ing innovation. So is cloud computing,which transformed information tech-nology that was previously accessible only to big companies into something even small companies can afford.

Empowering innovations createjobs, because they require more people to build, distribute, sell and service these products. Empoweringinvestments also use capital to ex-pand capacity.

The second type is “sustaining” innovations. Like the Toyota Prius,these replace yesterday’s productswith today’s products and create few jobs.

The third type is “efficiency” in-novations. These reduce the cost of making and distributing existingproducts and services. Minimillsin steel are one example. Such in-novations reduce the number of jobs,

because they streamline processes.But they also preserve many remain-ing jobs because without them entire companies and industries would dis-appear in competition against com-panies abroad that have innovated more efficiently.

Efficiency innovations also emanci-pate capital. Without them, capital isheld captive on balance sheets.

Industries typically transition through these three types of in-novations. By way of illustration,companies had to hire hundreds of thousands of people to make and sellempowering PCs. These companies then designed and made better com-puters, sustaining innovations that inspired us to keep buying newer andbetter products. Finally, companieslike Dell made the industry muchmore efficient. This reduced net em-ployment, but freed capital.

Ideally, the three innovations oper-ate in a recurring circle.

In the seven American recoveries from recession between 1948 and 1981, according to the McKinsey Glob-al Institute, the economy returned to its prerecession employment peak inabout six months.

But the 1990 recovery took 15months to reach the prerecessionpeaks of economic performance. Afterthe 2001 recession, it took 39 months.And now our machine has been grind-ing for 60 months. But why?

The answer: efficiency innova-tions are liberating capital, and inthe United States this capital is being reinvested into still more efficiencyinnovations. In contrast, America isgenerating many fewer empower-ing innovations. We need to reset the balance between empowering and

efficiency innovations.In my book “The Innovator’s Di-

lemma,” I show how successful com-panies can fail by making the right decisions in the wrong situations. America today is in a macroeconomic paradox that we might call the capi-talist’s dilemma. Executives, inves-tors and analysts are doing what isright, from their perspective and ac-cording to what they’ve been taught.

But when capital is abundant and cer-tain new skills are scarce, the same rules are the wrong rules. Continuing to measure the efficiency of capital prevents investment in empoweringinnovations that would create the new growth we need because it woulddrive down their returns.

We’re pouring more capital into anocean of capital, and by so doing, weare trying to solve the wrong problem.

Is there a solution? These three ideas may seed a productive discus-sion:

CHANGE THE METRICS Right now,capital is abundant and cheap. But we can no longer waste education,subsidizing it in fields that offer few jobs. Optimizing return on capital will generate less growth than opti-mizing return on education.

CHANGE CAPITAL-GAINS TAX

RATES Tax rates on personalincome climb as we make more money. In contrast, there are just two tax rates on investment income: short-term and long-term.

We should instead make capital gains regressive over time, based onhow long the capital is invested. Tax-es on short-term investments should continue to be taxed at personalincome rates. But the rate should bereduced the longer the investment isheld.

This policy change should have apositive impact on the federal deficit,from taxes paid by companies and their employees that make empower-ing innovations.

CHANGE THE POLITICS The major political parties are both wrong when it comes to taxing and distrib-uting to the middle class the capital of the wealthiest 1 percent. Without empowering products and ser-vices in our economy, most wealthredistribution will be spent buying sustaining innovations, replacingconsumption with consumption. Wemust give the wealthiest an incen-tive to invest for the long term. Thiscan create growth.

VICTO NGAI

CLAYTON M.

CHRISTENSEN

ESSAY

Solutions for a Capitalist Dilemma

Clayton M. Christensen is a businessprofessor at Harvard and a co-author of “How Will You Measure Your Life?”

Repubblica NewYork

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VI MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

The other day, I slipped a GPS tracking device into my wife’s car.I put another tracker in my 2-year-old’s diaper bag and sent him off to the nanny. I also threw one into

my parents’ vehiclewhile they took myson out to the park.

My spying wasmeant only as an ex-periment, but I stillfelt guilty.

These small gad-gets work by connecting to GPS sat-ellites and cellular networks to fol-low subjects and report back their lo-cations. I could look up the trackersonline, either on the Web or througha smartphone app. They could alsobe configured to send alerts. If myparents’ vehicle broke the speedlimit, I might get a text alert.

There are defensible uses for such devices. Some parents use trackers to make sure their children get to school and back safely. There’s the elder-care market. And don’t forget the dog: a tracker can let you knowif it wanders out of your yard.

Among the companies offer-ing devices is Amber Alert GPS, founded by a businessman who temporarily lost his 3-year-old at anamusement park. Carol Colombo,

the chief executive, said most cus-tomers buy the device for children between the ages of 2 and 10 — old enough to be mobile, but too young to carry a cellphone. Still, with a press of a button, your child can send a text or initiate a voice callwith you.

I found the Amber Alert extremelysimple to set up and use. The com-pany’s Web site allows you to con-figure and monitor the tracker, andits iPhone and Android apps alsowork well. Amber Alert offers morecustomizable alert settings thanany other child-tracking system Itested: there’s an option to receivean alert each time your child comeswithin 150 meters of an address on asex-offender database. The devicesells for $200, and it requires a ser-vice plan, which is $14.99 a month forbasic tracking features, and $24.99 amonth with extras, including voice-calling and sex-offender alerts.

Securus eZoom is slightly largerthan the Amber Alert and doesn’t

have some of that device’s features,but it is cheaper. The eZoom sells for$99.99, and its monthly plan is $19.99.If you pay for two years at once, theprice drops to $12.99 a month.

Securus also makes the eCare for seniors who need medical help. It has a button that initiates a voice call to an emergency call center. The eCare sells for $99.99, with a $29.99-a-month service plan.

There also is a GPS device de-signed for keeping track of yourself. The SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger,which sells for $119.99 and requires a $99-a-year contract, is meant for adventurers who routinely wander far off the grid. If you find yourselfin an emergency, you can alert res-cuers to your location. You can alsosend a message letting your friends know you’re fine and they can track your progress on a map. The SPOThas led to dozens of rescues.

Securus and Amber Alert ser-vices allow you to monitor multipletrackers. The chief executives of both companies argue that GPStracking can help parents avoid act-ing overly protective. It’s difficult for some parents to get over the fearof letting their children wander out into the world. A GPS tracker can help parents conquer that anxiety.

Amber Alert and Securus bothrecommend that parents don’t hide the trackers from their chil-dren. The trackers work best ifchildren know that they can usethem to alert their parents during an emergency. Privacy becomes more important to children as theyget older. “If the parents have a deal — ‘You can use my car if we put a locator on it, and if you ever get ina bind, I’ll know exactly where you are’ — most teenagers won’t mind that,” said Chris Newton, the chief executive of Securus.

Neither Amber Alert nor Securus markets its devices to people who are looking to invade other people’sprivacy. Both require at least a yearlong service contract, but why sign up for a year if you only want to track your straying spouse’s where-abouts for the next few weeks?

With that customer in mind,Rocky Mountain Tracking, a GPS firm, created a monthly rental planfor its personal tracking device, called Ghost Rider. For $99.95 a month, you’ll get the device and a service plan without a contract. You can use the device however you wish as long as you obey the law.Gary Whitney of Rocky Mountainsaid, “Occasionally I’ll get a person — usually it’s the wife — who feels guilty about doing it.” Then he add-ed, “But not so guilty that they don’tgo ahead and get the device.”

By CAROLINE TELL

Not long ago, the only way to break a social engagement was to do it in per-son or on the phone. An effusive apol-ogy was expected.

But now, when our fingers tap ourway out of social obligations withtexts and instant messages, the bar-riers to canceling have been lowered.Not feeling up for going out? Just typea note on the fly (“Sorry can’t make ittonight”) and hit send.

And don’t worry about giving ad-vance notice. The later, the better.

“Texting is lazy” and frivolous, saidAndy Cohen, a television talk showhost. “You’re not treating anythingwith any weight, and it turns us all into 14-year-olds. ”

Ashley Wick, the founder of Wick & Company, a firm based in New York,organized an intimate dinner this fallto introduce a designer she representsto about 10 editors. Invitations weresent out two weeks earlier, but that

afternoon almost half of the attendees canceled via e-mail. “Offline rules ofetiquette no longer seem to apply,” Ms.Wick said. “People hide behind e-mailor text messages to cancel appoint-ments, or do things that feel uncom-fortable to do in person.”

If the unpleasantness of having todisappoint a host or dinner date wasone reason commitments were hon-ored in the past, technology has ren-dered that moot.

“People don’t feel bad shooting some-one a text to cancel, but no one would ever pick up the phone and say, ‘Let’shave dinner next week because I want

to go to this party instead,’ ” said Dan-ielle Snyder, 27, a founder of the jewelryline Dannijo. “But when you say it outloud, you realize how bad it sounds.”

Adding to the guilt-free canceling isthe assumption that we’re glued to oursmartphones, which means that peo-ple often wait until the last moment to send regrets.

“They’ll automatically think I’veseen it because they sent it,” said Ja-son Binn, the founder of DuJour maga-zine .

Richard Ling, a professor of commu-nication at the IT University of Copen-hagen, coined a term for these mobile-lubricated social interactions: micro-coordination. Before cellphones, hesaid, people made plans based on pre-arranged times and places, whereasnow we can micro-coordinate, oradjust plans according to real-timeevents, be it a traffic jam or a late night at the office.

“The mobile phone has made that

kind of coordination much more nu-anced,” Dr. Ling said. “We might havethree or four different things going on at once, and one thing might fall apart,or another thing might come through,so there’s a basic indeterminacy welive with now.”

Micro-coordination is perhaps mostevident among teens and 20-some-things, who grew up using instantmessaging and texting.

Rachel Libeskind, a 23-year-oldartist who lives in the TriBeCa neigh-borhood of Lower Manhattan, is con-stantly navigating her social circlesfrom her iPhone. S he’ll triple- or even quadruple-book plans on weekendnights, knowing there’s only a 60 per-cent chance she’ll engage in any ofthem.

“People will text me, ‘Let’s do some-thing this week,’ and I’ll have three or four plans laid out for the week, and on average, more than half of them fallthrough,” Ms. Libeskind said. “The

social plans I make are always chang-ing, always shifting.”

Moreover, it’s not considered boorishwhen her peers abandon one another.“Because there is very little at stake interms of having these plans, it’s not thatrude,” she said. “It’s implicit because that’s how everyone is operating.”

The fashion designer Cynthia Row-ley said that her mobile-enabled sociallife has allowed her to expand friend-ships “without having to put in the facetime.”

While it may offend etiquette ex-perts, micro-coordination does of-fer certain benefits. “Most peoplecelebrate the ability to change plansor fluidly manage plans,” said ScottCampbell, an associate professor ofcommunication studies at the Univer-sity of Michigan.

“We don’t have to pick a place, oreven a time. We can just make it hap-pen in real time. Lots of folks get ex-cited by that.”

By NICK BILTON

There have been two major mile-stones in photography in the last cen-tury. The first was the invention of the self-timer, which Kodak began selling during World War I. The second came a few years ago, as teenagers stood at mirrors taking pictures of themselves with camera phones to share online.

The camera phone is perfect forthe social networking era. But evensmartphones have a limitation: youneed to hold them.

As the smartphone has pushedsome camera companies off a cliff, atiny, ultrahigh-resolution camera thatcan record that very feat has taken off into the stratosphere, figuratively and literally.

The GoPro, which costs $200 to $400,was mounted on Felix Baumgartneras he sky-dived 39 kilometers. It hasbeen affixed to jets traveling at Mach 5 and surfboards sent down 30-meter waves.

GoPro has sold three million cam-eras in three years. The market re-search firm IDC says that makes the GoPro the most popular video camera in the country.

In October, the company, whichbegan 10 years ago with a disposablecamera strapped to surfers’ wrists,unveiled the Hero3. You might think a product announcement from a camera

company would feel like the lead-up to a funeral. But it felt more like a cele-bration for someone who was going to live forever. Big-wave surfers showedtheir GoPro shots to sky divers, who, in turn, had their own stories to show.

How did this happen? Nick Wood-man, the founder and inventor of Go-Pro, says, “Right place, right time.”

It was almost that simple. Mr. Wood-man, 37, made the first, crude GoProwhen he went to Indonesia on a surf-ing trip. He wanted to take pictures

of a friend in the water. But when heturned the camera around to take pic-tures of himself, he realized the com-pany’s potential.

“The big ‘aha’ moment was in 2007, when we realized the bigger opportu-nity wasn’t just making wearable cam-eras for photographers,” Mr. Woodmansaid. “It was making wearable camerasfor people to photograph themselves.”

This was happening at about thetime Google was buying YouTube, and sites like Twitter and Facebook were

going mainstream.Mr. Woodman began selling inex-

pensive mounts that could attach the GoPro to anything: surfboards, bi-cycles, helmets, body harnesses, cats, you name it.

What happened next was astound-ing: people started to develop a rela-tionship with GoPro.

“One of the magical things thatstarted happening with the company was our customers felt compelled togive us credit in their photos and vid-eos,” Mr. Woodman said.

A search on YouTube for “GoPro”nets more than half a million videos.Millions of photos and videos litter so-cial networking sites, all tagged withthe camera’s name in the same waypeople highlight their friends.

Now, the appeal is moving beyondextreme sports enthusiasts, whoseidea of fear is sitting in a cubicle, to thepeople who sit in cubicles watchingGoPro videos. The big camera compa-nies are trying to displace GoPro, butthey may be a decade too late.

“For the last 50 years, companieslike Nikon and Canon have been fo-cused on precision, which has itsbenefits but also has its limits,” saidChase Jarvis, a photographer and di-rector. “GoPro is incredibly disruptiveto these legacy camera makers, and I can tell you, their launch parties feel a little bit different. They are from a dif-ferent culture.”

Devices have comeunder some scrutinyfor privacy issues.

No Need to Apologize or Cancel Plans in Person; Just Send a Text Message

Tracking Wandering DogsAnd Wayward Children

Camera Captures Daredevil s’ Moves

Brian X. Chen contributed reporting.

Technology makes the rules of etiquette seem passé.

Surfers and sky divers can film their adventures unassisted.

COURTESY OF GOPRO

The GoPro camera, which can be attached to just about anything, allows people to photograph themselves.

FARHAD

MANJOO

ESSAY

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A R T S & S T Y L E S

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012 VIITHE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

By JON PARELES

Fifty years.“You can’t get away from that num-

ber,” Keith Richards said with a chuck-le by telephone from Paris, where theRolling Stones have been rehearsing . The Stones, led by Mick Jagger andMr. Richards, played their first gig in1962.

And with less than two months re-maining in this anniversary year, the machinery of commemoration hasswung into motion.

There are arena concerts scheduled in London (November 25 and 29) and Newark, New Jersey (December 13and 15). There are documentaries new (on HBO) and old (on DVD). There are even two new Stones songs recordedthis year: “Doom and Gloom,” a Jag-ger song that mentions fracking, and “One More Shot,” written by Mr. Rich-ards.

In one way the Stones have been do-ing the same thing for half a century:playing obstinately unpolished rock’n’ roll. Yet around that music, everyconceivable meaning has changed.

What once was taken as radical,wanton, even dangerous has become old-school. The songs that once out-raged parents are now oldies to passon to the grandchildren. “You’d gone all the way from ‘It’s too dangerous to go’ to people bringing their children” to shows, Mr. Jagger said from Paris.And a band that was once synonymouswith a riotous volatility has become — despite all commercial, cultural andchemical odds — a symbol of stability.Members now describe the band withan unexpected word for the RollingStones: discipline. “Although it seems to be shambolic, it’s a very disciplinedbunch,” Mr. Richards said.

The guitarist Ronnie Wood, whojoined the band in 1975, agreed. “Nomatter what was going on on the out-side, no matter how much we whoopedit up,” he said, “we felt a responsibility, and we still do, to make great music.”

Simple familiarity, through the pas-sage of time and generations, is onereason the Stones’ popularity has en-dured. Yet since the late 1980s, whenthe Stones pulled themselves togetherafter some rough patches to make“Steel Wheels” and return to the sta-dium circuit, arguably every tour andalbum has been largely a victory lapfor what they accomplished in theirfirst 20 years.

By then Mr. Jagger and Mr. Rich-ards had forged a catalog of greatsongs — “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfac-tion,” “Ruby Tuesday” and “Honky

Tonk Women,” to name a few clas-sics.

The band’s box office potential isunmistakable. Latter-day Stones stu-dio albums, when they get around tomaking them, have each sold at least a million copies in the United Stateswithout major hit singles.

Nostalgia and durable songs arepart of the Stones’ perpetual appeal.So are the big-stage rock spectaclesthat the band helped pioneer, with py-rotechnics or perhaps a cherry-picker lifting Mr. Jagger over the crowd.

It doesn’t hurt ticket sales that Mr.

Jagger, at 69, is still limber enough toprance, twitch and shimmy all over a stage.

The Rolling Stones keep their sound loose: it’s practiced and not to be mis-taken for sloppy; precisely imprecise.Above Charlie Watts’s drumming the band’s two guitars share a musicalcat’s cradle. “We’re always sliding be-tween rhythm and lead,” Mr. Richardssaid.

But songs and showmanship stilldon’t fully explain the Stones’ hold on their audience. Soon after forming,they made a choice as fateful as their musical tastes. Their early-1960s man-ager, Andrew Loog Oldham, urgedthem to become the “anti-Beatles”:the opposite of an ingratiating, uni-formed, clean-cut pop-rock band.

“The Beatles being so squeakyclean, they were obviously wearing the white hat,” Mr. Richards recalled. “The other role to play was putting theblack hat on.”

That attitude not only freed theStones to look and behave as theypleased, but made them rock arche-types, living out a freedom that fanscould only wish for.

The Stones’ distant whiff of anarchy is still a draw, especially because it’sunderscored by the tight-but-loose sound of the band, the way even ven-erable songs sound up for grabs.

The Stones say that morale is highat the Paris rehearsals. “Once the gui-tar straps are put over their heads, it’sback into it,” Mr. Watts said. “ It’s what we do.”

Mr. Richards pronounced himself“amazed” at the band’s longevity.“There’s just a feeling that we weremeant to do this, we have to do this,and we’re just following the trail.”

The ironic secret to a wild group’s popularitylies in its discipline.

The Stones Hit 50 and Make Anarchy Sound Old-School

Animation 30 Years in the Making By ROBERT ITO

In 1996 the Hungarian Film Festival of LosAngeles screened 18 minutes of early footagefrom “The Tragedy of Man,” an animated workin progress by the director Marcell Jankovics.

In the segment Lucifer and Adam visit a so-cialist community sometime in Earth’s grimfuture, a time when poetry and rose cultivation are banned, babies are issued numbers rather than given names, and the desiccated corpses ofcitizens are recycled to make household goods.Michelangelo — or at least his reincarnatedform — is a frustrated factory worker; Platospends his time herding oxen.

“The people loved it,” Bela Bunyik, the festi-val’s founder, recalled of that preview.

As it turns out, that footage was just a small excerpt from a film that wouldn’t be completed until 2011, fitting for an epic that begins at the

dawn of creation, ends with man’s last gaspand includes stopovers in ancient Greece, 17th-century Prague, Dickensian London and outer space, among others.

At 160 minutes, including the intermission, thefilm offers up one visual spectacle after the next.Each of the 15 sections is animated in a differentstyle .

“It won’t be a film everybody will see,” Mr.Jankovics admitted.

The full version of “The Tragedy of Man” isscheduled to have its American premiere No-vember 18, returning to the same festival 16years after that initial screening and nearlythree decades since Mr. Jankovics first began

working on the film. Festivals in Poland, Portugal, Armenia and

Canada were also scheduled to show the filmthis month.

“The Tragedy of Man” is an adaptation of thepoet Imre Madach’s play of the same title, whichhas been translated into 90 languages and is con-sidered one of the great works of Hungarian lit-erature. The action takes place over the course ofone very long dream, as Adam, Eve and a chattyLucifer visit the world’s great civilizations at theheight of their power, only to watch as humanity’snoblest hopes and dreams come to naught.

Mr. Jankovics is Hungary’s best-known livinganimator. In 1976 his film “Sisyphus,” a short-formmasterpiece about the boulder-pushing king, wasamong the nominees for an Academy Award; thenext year his “Kuzdok” (“The Struggle”) won thePalme d’Or for short film at Cannes.

“In Hungary people know him in the way theyknow Walt Disney,” said Paul Morton, who stud-ied Hungarian animation in Budapest in 2008.

Mr. Jankovics worked on one section of “Trage-dy of Man” at a time. As soon as a section was fin-ished, he’d go about raising money for the next.

The crews he led as the film’s director andwriter changed substantially over the years,with animators retiring or dying.

“The voice of God and Lucifer remainedthrough the whole production,” Mr. Jankovicssaid. “But Adam and Eve grew old, so younger actors were brought in.”

The last bit of money to complete the film camein 2008, when Mr. Jankovics allowed GeneralMotors to use “Sisyphus” in an ad for the GMC Yukon Hybrid.

“Tragedy” has now played throughout Hun-gary, where it has been praised by critics, as wellas at festivals in Russia, Serbia and the CzechRepublic. There are no plans at the moment for a commercial release.

The film ends with the timely return of Eveand God and this heavenly directive: Keepstruggling, keep striving, no matter how lousy life gets.

It’s hardly a feel-good ending, but for Hungar-ians, at least, it’s a satisfying one.

While in Budapest, Mr. Morton said, he heard a local woman explain one fundamental differ-ence between Hungarian stories and Americanones: He said she told him: “You always end the story with ‘and they lived happily ever after.’ Weend our stories, ‘and they lived happily ever af-ter … until they died.’ ”

MOZINET

Each of the 15 sections in ‘‘The Tragedy of Man’’ is animated in a different style .

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

TheRolling Stonesmade a fateful decision intheir early years tobe the ‘‘anti-Beatles.’’The bandin Londonin 1965.

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T H E WAY W E E AT

VIII MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

By ELAINE SCIOLINO

CHAVAGNAC, France — In the fallof 1988, a local farmer and self-trainedcook named Danièle Delpeuch was ap-proached by mysterious governmentofficials with an unusual proposition:Would she move immediately to Paristo become the personal chef of Presi-dent François Mitterrand?

She pointed out that her ewes were ready to give birth. The reply from oneofficial was swift: “Madame, this is nota position that can be refused.”

In his first seven-year term, Mr.Mitterrand was served by an all-malestaff skilled in haute cuisine. After hisre-election, he wanted simple countrycooking .

“I want a woman of the countrysidein my kitchen!” he told his aides. So Ms.Delpeuch abandoned her animals andvegetable garden in the Périgord for a two-year adventure preparing the president hearty meals .

“If you make me the cuisine of mygrandmother, I will be satisfied,” Mr. Mitterrand told Ms. Delpeuch.

“That’s a difficult task, Mr. Presi-dent,” she replied. “No one can matcha grandmother. I’ll try.”

Now the story of the chef and thepresident has been celebrated in a fic-tion-frosted film, “Les Saveurs du Pal-ais” (which means both “The Tastesof the Palace” and “The Tastes of the Palate”), released in October. TheWeinstein Company has bought theAmerican rights to the film, which willbe called “Haute Cuisine.”

Ms. Delpeuch, who is 70, is travelingaround Europe, talking about both thefilm and her cooking. “People didn’tknow who the real cook was, and nowthey do,” Ms. Delpeuch said. “The filmis opening doors for me.”

In real life, Ms. Delpeuch was by nomeans a simple woman of the French countryside by the time she wasplucked from her farm and sent toParis.

Born in Paris into a working-classfamily, she moved when she was 12 withher mother to her grandmother’s farm,with its 700-year-old stone farmhouse,after her father’s death.

She campaigned in the 1970s to revivethe moribund foie gras industry. In 1974,she began foie gras weekends, attract-ing gastronomes, including Americantourists, to eat and stay at the farm. She sold her foie gras to famous Frenchchefs like Joël Robuchon.

A few years later, she founded the re-gion’s first cooking school, turned partof her home into a small restaurant thatfeatured local products, taught cooking courses in the United States, became friends with Julia Child and lived for awhile in Paris. In 1980, the French ag-ricultural industry decorated her asChevalier du Mérite Agricole, its high-est honor.

So when Culture Minister Jack Langwas ordered to find a chef for Mr. Mit-terrand, it was Mr. Robuchon who re-ferred him to Ms. Delpeuch.

The film captures the struggle be-tween “Hortense Laborie,” as Ms.Delpeuch is called in the movie, agifted but stubborn cook determinedto impose her authentic cuisine on thetable of the president, and an army of bureaucrats and chefs equally deter-mined to follow the rigid norms of theÉlysée Palace.

Hortense, played by Catherine Frot,endures the taunts of the head chef andhis all-male team and becomes a self-righteous Joan of Arc of the kitchen.

Bernard Vaussion, the current Ély-sée chief chef, who was a sous-chef at the time, said of the tone in the Élyséekitchen: “Sure it was macho in those days. The woman was supposed tocook at home, for the family. The menwere the artists of the kitchen. She hadthe idea that she had been appointed

by the president, and that no one else mattered.”

After her time with the president, Ms.Delpeuchreturned to the farm.In 2000, without the means to support herself, she answered an ad for a highly paidjob as a cook in Antarctica. She spent 14 months cooking for 60 people at a French research station there.

At the Élysée today, much of whatMs. Delpeuch served during the Mitter-rand era is off limits. But some thingshave not changed. Although dozens offemale interns have passed throughthe Élysée kitchen in recent years, allthe permanent chefs today are men.

Battle of Sexes Fueled

French Culinary War

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

LA PAZ, Bolivia — A new revolu-tionary has arrived in Bolivia. But he is a chef, not a Che.

Claus Meyer, a well-known Danish chef and restaurant entrepreneur,is an owner of Noma, a Copenhagen restaurant loved by food critics for its locavore purism and avant-garde cooking methods. Restaurant maga-zine, a trade journal, ranks it the best restaurant in the world.

Now Mr. Meyer is building a res-taurant in La Paz, an experimentin Andean haute cuisine that comes with hefty side orders of revolutionand high ambition.

Mr. Meyer described the restau-rant, Gustu, due to open in January,as much more than a place to get afancy meal in the continent’s poorest country. He describes it as the start of a Bolivian food movement thatwill rediscover local ingredients likellama meat, chuos (potatoes dehy-drated high in the Andes) and coca, the plant that is used to make cocainebut that has long been used here as a mild stimulant, a tea and a medicinal herb.

Gustu’s mission will be to teach Bo-livians how to eat in healthier ways; spur economic growth, tourism and exports; and support local farmers. If all goes well, Mr. Meyer said, therestaurant will use food to changethe destiny of a country.

Michelangelo Cestari, one of thehead chefs, said it would be the mostadvanced restaurant in the country,

full of high-tech gadgets of molecular gastronomy that atomize, froth and otherwise transform foods.

The restaurant will serve onlyingredients grown or created in Bo-livia. Wines will come from the coun-try’s few wineries, and liquor willbe limited largely to singani, a local grape brandy.

Mr. Cestari, a pastry chef, is from Venezuela and has worked for years in fine restaurants in Europe. So has his fellow head chef, Kamilla Seidler,who is Danish. The only Bolivian

among the restaurant’s top cooks isChristian Gómez, the senior sous-chef, who worked for years in Spain.

They are keenly aware of the riskof being outsiders. “Perhaps it’s ar-rogant to think we can come hereto develop a gastronomy,” Mr. Ces-tari said, “but we hope we can pushsomething.”

He said the menu would includeitems inspired by Bolivian dishes,like lamb on a cross, made by splay-ing a whole lamb on an iron cross and cooking it slowly over a smoky fire; or calapurca, a soup heated by plac-

ing a hot rock in the bowl. “We don’t want to do French food

or fusion or nouvelle,” Mr. Gómezsaid. “We want to do something new with a Bolivian identity.”

Mr. Cestari said the average din-ner tab would be $50 to $60 a person, which he said is on par with other top restaurants here but still shockedseveral Bolivians. The minimumwage here is about $143 a month.

Mr. Meyer will also open a moreeconomical bistro and bakery. Andhe said all profits from the restau-rant would go to charitable projectsin Bolivia, which he chose partlybecause it was a developing countrywith a wide range of unique ingre-dients.

The project also includes a cook-ing school for young Bolivians from poor families, which will, Mr. Meyer hopes, create a new generation of ex-perimentally minded chefs.

On a recent morning, studentswere busy making pork chops andyucca fries. Then some headed off to a nearby market.

Ms. Seidler said she often learnsfrom her students. One of them,Belén Soria, 24, said she grew uphelping her grandmother cook andsell api, an inexpensive, sweet corngruel .

“Everyone has their own knowl-edge, things their grandparentstold them,” she said. But, “We’re all curious to prepare new things, withour own stamp,” she said. “Original things.”

In Bolivia, a Culinary Revolution

Last year chefs at the WhiteHouse, using a kit bought by Presi-dent Obama, produced their ownbeer with honey harvested at theWhite House.

The president wasphotographed overthe summer enjoy-ing the White HouseHoney Ale, which prompted a relent-less demand that the

administration hand over samplesor discuss its methods. The WhiteHouse yielded and published arecipe.

The president said the beer was good. Was it? The New York Times enlisted Garrett Oliver, the brewmas-ter at Brooklyn Brewery, to make abatch .

After steeping, boiling, cooling, fermenting and settling, Mr. Oliver stowed away 38 corked bottles tomature in a conditioning room. One

month later, the beer was ready to betasted.

Mr. Oliver said the beer might not be ready, but our patience had reached its limit. Home brewers rely on the ancient technique of initiating a small second fermentation in the bottle before capping it. The carbon dioxide produced turns into the bub-bles that animate the beer.

If the second fermentation had gone wrong, we’d know. The uncork-ing would be accompanied by a sigh, or worse, silence. Mr. Oliver removed the cork, and with it came a resound-ing pop.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we havebeer,” he said.

The beer poured out a lovely au-burn brown with touches of red. Itwas hazy, indicating that dead yeast cells had not completed their journey to the bottom of the bottle. A rocky head of foam was textured and heldits form. We drank, tentatively at

first .The verdict: It was good. Very

good.The aromas were floral with a

touch of orange and a metallic note that I sometimes find in honey. Onthe palate, it was breezy, fresh, tangy and lightly bitter, not dry but not at all sweet. The soft carbonation en-hanced the texture. It didn’t have theinsistent rush of bubbles of a mass-produced beer, or the snappy twang of a pilsner, but rather the soft fizz of a British cask ale.

“It’s not without complexity,” Mr. Oliver said, “and it’s an interesting,broad sort of bitterness, a British typeof bitterness, which fits the sort of hops they used.”

The White House brewers chose British hops, Kent Goldings and Fug-gles, which yield a more generalized sort of bitterness than the sharper grapefruit and pine of Americanhops .

As the beer was exposed to air, it seemed to become brighter andjuicier .

The honey influenced the beer in al-most every aspect — texture, aroma,flavor — except sweetness. Mr. Oliver

said a request to the White House for a jar of its own honey went unan-swered, so he used local wildflower honey .

In analyzing the beer as it was brewed, Mr. Oliver feared it might betoo sweet. He pondered whether, ona second try, he would make the beer drier.

But after tasting it, he found it “ per-fectly balanced.”

The beer is still young. Six months from now, the brew, easy drinking at 4.89 percent alcohol, might develop some nutty, sherrylike characteris-tics. For now, it’s a people’s beer that ought to please a wide spectrum of drinkers, from novices to aficionados.

“It has character, but it’s alsocrowd-pleasing,” Mr. Oliver said. “It’s a politically friendly beer in that regard, and isn’t that what we’re all looking for?”

From the White House, Beer We Can Believe In

KIRSTEN LUCE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

DAMIEN LAFARGUE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Danièle Delpeuch cooked for President Mitterrand, who cravedhis grandmother’s cooking.

MERIDITH KOHUT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A Danish chef is using only Bolivian ingredients at his restaurant in La Paz, like llama meat, dehydratedpotatoes and coca. Students of his cooking school visited a market in the city.

An effort to alter a poor nation’s fatewith its food.

The lightly bitter White House Honey Ale can appeal to a widespectrum of drinkers.

ERIC

ASIMOV

ESSAY

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