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MONDAY, JU LY 20, 2 009 Copyright 2009 The New York Times

Supplemento al numeroodierno de la Repubblica

Sped. abb. postale art. 1legge 46/04 del 27/02/2004 Roma

LENS

The doldrums of the Great Reces-sion has given way to the do-overera. Sitting still and waiting it outmay mean getting left behind. In-stead, businesses are thinking of

ways to repack-age, renameand revise theirproducts andstrategies tomake the cus-tomer feel goodabout spendingagain.

Theres asaying: When times are good,advertise. When times are tough,advertise more, Dan Beem, presi-dent at Cold Stone Creamery, an ice-cream chain based in Arizona, toldThe Timess Stuart Elliott.

The recession has become themother of reinvention. And what

better time than now to revampwith some plastic surgery? Maybe

those sagging jowls are as much ofa weight as a lackluster retirementaccount. But a face-lift is no longerjust a face-lift. Its now branded asthe Lifestyle Lift or the QuickLift,wrote The Timess Catherine SaintLouis. Patients pick an advertisedoperation, and are then referred bya national organization to a doctorwho will perform the procedure,wrote Ms. Saint Louis.

Whats new is this is plastic sur-gery being marketed to the publicas a widget, or product, Dr. BrianRegan, a plastic surgeon in SanDiego, told Ms. Saint Louis. Peopleare buying, so buyer beware.

The retail industry is also get-ting a face-lift. High-end stores likeNeiman Marcus and Saks willoffermore midpriced merchandise, wroteThe Timess Stephanie Rosenbloom.J.C. Penney is installing self-service

computers to help customersbrowse. And Macys stores will bestocking merchandise that custom-ers request and getting rid of itemsthey complain about.

I think in this economy wereseeing a lot more of an open dia-logue with the retailers than we hadin the past, Adele Arkin, who runsan exercise-and-socialize group inNew York that gathers in shoppingmalls, told Ms. Rosenbloom.

Companies now want to showthat they are on the same level asthe customer and are approach-able, which means names a nd logosarechanging.

Logos have become less official-looking and more conversational,Patti Williams a professor of mar-keting at the University of Pennsyl-vanias Wharton School, told TheTimess Bill Marsh. Theyre notyelling. Theyre inviting. T heyremore neighborly.

Bold, block capital letters arereplaced by lower case to soften t hevoice of corporate authority. Sprigs,

bursts and friendly flourishes oflogos like Kraft Foods and Amazon.com create logos that smile, Mr.Marsh wrote. And happier colorsabound: electric blue, yellow, red,

purple, orange and green.All these efforts are trying to

get the consumer to feel betterabout buying more stuff. And thereis plenty of new stuff: food, cars,drugs and soap.

But many marketers are bringingout new products under the ban-ner of brands that consumers arealready familiar with, wrote Mr.Elliott. After all, companies dontwant to rebrand themselves outof existence. Hagen-Dazs Five,an ice cream made of five naturalingredients (basically the same asthe ingredients in its regular icecream), sells under its brand of su-perpremium desserts. The productmight be new, or rather, new-ish, yetits already familiar.

Aliza Freud, chief executive atShe-Speaks, which helped the Ha-gen-Dazs Five campaign, told Mr.

Elliott: This is a very good time forbrands to get out there in new anddifferent ways.

Even if its about selling the sameold product.

O

N JULY 20, 1969, at 9:56:20 p.m. at

NASA headquarters in Houston,

Texas, Neil A. Armstrong steppedfrom the ladder of Apollo 11s lunar mod-

ule to the surface of the

Moon. His first words:

Thats one small step for

man, one giant leap for

mankind. He presumably

meant one small step for

a man, but the a was

lost in the static, or perhaps he simply for-

got it in his understandable excitement.

Mr. Armstrong tested the footing and

determined that he could move about eas-

ily in his bulky white spacesuit and heavy

backpack while under the influence oflunar gravity, which makes everything

weigh one-sixth of what it weighs on

Earth. After 19 minutes, he was joined

outside by another astronaut, Edwin E.

Aldrin Jr. The two immediately set up a

TV camera away from the spacecraft to

give people back home a broader view of

the lunar landscape and their operations.

Years later, the third crew member,

Michael Collins, who remained in lunar

orbit in Apollo 11s command module while

Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Aldrin walked on

the moon, would recall the world tour the

astronauts took after the mission. He waswarmed by their reception, not so much by

the adulation as the expressions of shared

accomplishment. People they met felt they

had participated in the landing, too.

In the 2007 documentary film In the

Shadow of the Moon, Mr. Collins said:

People, instead of saying, Well, you

Americans did it, everywhere they said:

We did it! We, humankind, we, the hu-

man race, we, people did it!

It occurred to me, as I covered the land-

ing for The Times at Mission Control in

Houston, that if Christopher Columbus

or Captain James Cook were alive, theymight be less astonished by two men land-

ing on the Moon than by the millions of

people, worldwide, watching every step of

the walk as it happened. Exploring is old,

but instantaneous telecommunications is

new and marvelous.

In just 1.3 seconds, the time it takes for

radio waves to travel the 383,000 ki lome-

ters from Moon to Earth, each step by

PHOTOGRAPHS BY NASA, EXCEPT TOP RIGHT

Astronauts from the United States Apollo 11 mission took a walk on the Moons Sea of Tranquillity in 1969 and set up a television camera so millions around the world could watch.

JOH N N OBLE

WILFORD

ESSAY

From Bailouts to Burnishing

III

VIII

VI

WORLD TRENDS

American recruits

join jihad groups.

ARTS & STYLES

Toyo Itos quest to

find balance.

MONEY & BUSINESS

Oils volatile swings

hobble industry.

Our Moon

For comments, write tonytweekly@nytimes.com.

Continued onPage IV

40 Years Ago, the World Watched Humans Set Foot on Lunar Soil

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O P I N I O N & C O M M E N T A R Y

II MONDAY, J ULY 20, 2009

Tangled Trade Talks

The World Strategy for IranWhen George Washington was a young man, he copied

out a list of 110 Rules of Civilit y and Decent Behavior inCompany and Conversation. Some of the rules in his listdealt with the niceties of going to a dinner party or meet-ing somebody on the street.

Lean not upon anyone, was one of the rules. Read noletter, books or papers in company, was another. If anyone come to speak to you while you are sitting, stand up,was a third.

But, as the biographer Richard Brookhiser has noted,these rules were not just etiquette tips. They were de-signed to improve inner morals by shaping the outwardman. Washington took them very seriously. He workedhard to follow them. Throughout his life, he remainedacutely conscious of his own rectitude.

In so doing, he turned himself into a new kind of hero.As the historian Gordon Wood has written, Washingtonbecame a great man and was acclaimed as a classical he-ro because of the way he conducted himself during t imesof temptation. It was his moral character that set him offfrom other men.

Washington absorbed, and later came to personify whatyou might call the dignity code. The code was based on thesame premise as the nations Constitution that humanbeings are flawed creatures who live in constant peril offalling into disasters caused by their own passions. Artifi-cial systems have to balance and restrain their desires.

The dignity code commanded its followers to be disin-terested to put national interests above personal inter-ests. It commanded its followers to be reticent to neverdegrade intimate emotions by parading them in public.It also commanded its followers to be dispassionate todistrust rashness and political enthusiasm.

Remnants of the dignity code lasted for decades. Formost of American history, politicians did not publicly cam-paign for president. It was thought that the act of publiclypromoting oneself was ruinously corrupting. For most ofAmerican history, memoirists passed over the intimaciesof private life. Even in the 19th century, people were ap-palled that journalists might pollute a wedding by cover-ing it in the press.

Today, Americans still lavishly admire people who

are naturally dignified, whether they are in sports (JoeDiMaggio and Tom Landry), entertainment (LaurenBacall and Tom Hanks) or politics (Ronald Reagan andMartin Luther K ing Jr.).

But the dignity code itself has been completely obliter-ated.

We can all list the causes of its demise. First, there iscapitalism. We are all encouraged to become managersof our own brand, to self-promote and broadcast our owntalents. Second, there is the cult of naturali sm. We are allencouraged to to liberate our own feelings. Third, thereis charismatic evangelism with its penchant for publicconfession. Fourth, there is radical egalitarianism and itshostility to aristocratic manners.

The old dignity code has not survived modern life.Every week there are new scandals featuring people

who simply do not know how to act. For the first few weeksof summer, three stories have dominated public conversa-tion, and each one exemplifies a branch of indignit y.

First, there was the press conference of Mark Sanford,the Republican governor of South Carolina. Here was a

guy utterly lacking in any sense of reticence, who wasgiven to rambling self-exposure even in his moment ofdisgrace. Then there was the death of Michael Jacksonand the discussion of his life. Here was a guy who was ap-parently untouched by any pressure to live according tothe rules and restraints of adulthood. Then there was Sar-ah Palins press conference. Here was a woman who as-pires to a high public role but is unfamiliar with t he traitsof equipoise and constancy, the sources of authority andtrust. In each of these events, one sees people who simplyhave no social norms to guide them as they try to navigatethe currents of their own passions.

Americans still admire dignity. But the word has be-come unmoored from any larger ethical system.

But its not right to end on a note of cultural pessimismbecause there is the fact of President Obama. Whateverpolicy differences people may have with him, we can allagree that he exemplifies reticence, dispassion and traitsassociated with dignity. The cultural effects of his presi-dency are not yet clear, but they may surpass his policyimpact. He may revitalize the concept of dignity for anew generation and embody a new set of rules for self-mastery.

There are few things that could domore damage to the already batteredglobal economy than an old-fashioned

trade war. So we have been increas-ingly worried by the protectionistrhetoric and policies being espousedby politicians across the globe.

Against this bleak backdrop, it isespecially good news that the worldsleading developed and developing na-tions have committed to complete astalled global trade agreement (theso-called Doha Round) by next year.For that to happen, leaders espe-cially in the United States, Europe,India, China and Brazi l are going tohave to muster real sense and politicalcourage.

The World Trade Organization fore-casts that exports from developedcountries will fall 14 percent this yea r,while exports from developing nationswill contract 7 percent. The collapse isparticularly damaging for poor coun-tries that are heavily dependent onexports. But it is also intensifying t hedownturn in many rich countries. Re-

viving trade is essential for recovery.The talks, begun in Doha, Qatar,in 2001, had long been in limbo. Theybroke down last year after big devel-oping countries China and India, inparticular rejected demands fromthe wealthy nations that they lowertariffs on imports of goods and openservice sectors to more competition.

But there are signs that t he collapsein trade have awoken many leaders tothe advantages of strong internation-al rules to keep trade channels open.This is particularly true of China,which has suddenly found its exportson the receiving end of tariff increasesand antidumping suits.

There is no guarantee that a dealcan be pulled off. President Obamawill have to provide lots of leadershipto convince developing countries tomake serious offers on market access,

and to convince reluctant members ofthe United States Congress that theywill have to make concessions, too.

Big developing countries havebeen reluctant to reduce tariff ceil-ings, allowing themselves the optionto increase their tariffs at any mo-ment. They have been unwilling toopen service sectors, like accountingor electricity generation, to foreigncompetition. They insist on being ableto increase their barriers to protectfarmers against sharp increases infood imports from cheaper producersabroad. They must be willing to makeconcessions on these points.

The rich West will also have to givemore. The United States and Europemust slash agricultural subsidiesmore aggressively and refrain fromadding more. The United States willhave to reduce its own agriculturalbarriers and might have to offer morevisas to professionals from countrieslike India.

The Doha Round was originally con-ceived in the wake of the 9/11 attacks

as a way to encourage developmentin the poorest countries by providingthem access to export markets in therich world. This is still its goal.

The Group of 8 industrialized na-tions took an important step on Thurs-day by pledging to invest $20 billionover three years to bolster agriculturalproduction in some of the worlds poor-est countries. We were made nervousby reports on Friday that suggestedsome contributors might already berethinking their generosity.

So far, Mr. Obama has been reluctantto spend any political capital at homeon trade. But it is important for thepresident to follow through. The talksopened in Doha were supposed to helpthe worlds poorest countries. Theyhave now acquired an even broaderpurpose: reviving global cooperationand the g lobal economy.

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

The worlds wealthy nations havegiven Iran until late September toagree to restraints on its nuclear pro-gram. If there is no progress, PresidentNicolas Sarkozy of France declared atthis weeks Group of 8 summit, wewill have to take decisions on impos-ing tougher sanctions.

We hope Mr. Sarkozy and the otherG-8 leaders mean it. For seven years,the world powers have pursued a feck-less strategy that failed to halt Iransefforts to master nuclear fuel produc-tion. More deadlines, without any realfollow-through, will send a dangerousmessage to nuclear wannabes who al-ready see Iran and North Korea defy-ing repeated demands from the United

DAVID BROOKS

In Search of Dignity

People always ask: What can I do to make a differ-ence?

So many people in poor countries desperately need as-sistance. So many pe ople in rich countries would like to

help but fear their donat ions would line the pocket of a cor-rupt official or be lost in an a id bureaucracy. The result is ashort circuit, leaving both sides unfulfilled.

Thats where Scott Harrison comes in.Five years ago, Mr. Harr ison was a nig htclub promoter

in Manhattan who spent his nights surrounded by fr iendsin a blur of alcohol, cocaine and marijuana. He lived in aluxurious apartment and drove a BMW but then on avacation in South America he underwent a spiritual crisis.

I realized I was the most selfish, sycophantic and mis-erable human being, he recalled. I was the worst personI knew.

Mr. Harrison, now 33, found an aid organization thatwould accept him as a volunteer photographer if he paid$500 a month to cover expenses. And so he did. The orga-nization was Mercy Ships, a Christian aid group that per-forms surgeries in poor countries with volunteer doctors.

The first person I photographed was a 14-year-old boynamed Alfred, choking on a four-pound benign tumor inhis mouth, filli ng up his whole mouth, Mr. Harrison re-called. He was suffocating on his own face. I just wentinto the corner and sobbed.

A few weeks later, Mr. Harrison took Alfred withthe tumor now removed back to his vi llage in the West

African country of Benin. I saw everybody celebrating,because a few doctors had given up their vacation time,he said.

Mercy Ships transformed Mr. Harrison as much as itdid Alfred. Mr. Harrison returned to New York two yearslater with a plan: he would form a charity to provide cleanwater to save lives in poor countries.

Armed with nothing but a natural gift for promotion,Mr. Harrison started his group, called charity: water and it has been stunningly successful. In three yea rs, hesays, his group has raised $10 million from 50,000 individ-ual donors, providing clean water to nearly one millionpeople in Africa and Asia.

The organization now has 11 full-time employees, al-most twice as many unpaid interns, and more than halfa million followers on Twitter (the United Nations has3,000). New York City buses were plastered with free ban-

ners promoting his message, and Sa ks Fifth Avenue gaveup its store windows to spread Mr. Harrisons gospel.American schools are signing up to ra ise money.

Scott is an important marketing machine, lifting one

of the most critical issues of our time in a way that is sexyand incredibly compelling thats his gift, said Jacque-line Novogratz, head of the Acumen Fund, which investsin poor countries to overcome poverty.

Mr. Harrison doesnt actually do the tough aid work. Hepartners with humanitarian organizations and pays themto dig wells. In effect, hes a fund-raiser and marketer often the most difficult piece of the a id puzzle.

So whats his secret? Mr. Harrisons success seems todepend on three precepts:

First, ensure that every penny from new donors will goto projects in the field. He accomplishes this by cajolinghis 500 most committed donors to cover all administra-tive costs.

Second, show donors the specific impact of their contri-butions. Mr. Harrison grants naming r ights to wells. Heposts photos and G.P.S. coordinates so donors can look uptheir wells on Google Earth. A nd in September, Mr. Har-rison is going to roll out a new Web site that will matcheven the smallest donation to a particular project that canbe tracked online.

Third, leap into new media and social networks. Thisspring, charity: water raised $250,000 through a Twes-tival a series of meetings a mong followers on Twitter.

Last year, it raised $965,000 by asking people with Sep-tember birthdays to forgo presents and instead solicitcash to build wells in Ethiopia. The campaign went viralon the Web, partly because Mr. Harrison invests in clever,often sassy videos.

One popular video shows well-heeled Manhattanitesstepping out of their luxury buildings and lining up to fil ljerrycans with di rty water from a lake in Central Pa rk.We watch a mother offer the murky water to her children and the upbeat message is: you can help ensure thatother people dont have do that, either.

Mr. Harrisons underlying idea is that giving shouldbe an infectious pleasure at the capacity to bring aboutchange.

Guilt has never been part of it, he said. Its excite-ment instead, presenting people with an opportunity you have an amazing chance to bui ld a well!

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Clean, Sexy Water

The Intelligence column will return next week.

Nations Security Council.We dont know if there is any mix

of incentives or sanctions that wouldwork. Certainly President George W.Bush, for all his tough talk and bully-ing ways, never tried to find it.

We also know that if any strategyhas a serious chance of success, it mustbe fully embraced not only by the Eu-ropeans but also by Russia and China.So it was disheartening to hear Rus-sian officials boasting about wateringdown the G-8 statement on Iran.

Dealing with Tehran is even harderafter last months bogus presidentialelection sparked weeks of protest andrepression. President Obama and theother G-8 leaders were right to deplorethe violence. But Mr. Obama is alsoright to stay open to engagement, evenif its a long shot.

Irans political tug of war is far fromover. There are signs that Mr. Obamasoffer of direct talks may have helpeddeepen fissures inside the politicalestablishment. The bad news is thatAmerican hard-liners are still encour-aging Israeli hard-liners to fantasizeabout a military strike.

President Obama told CNN thatWashington has not given Israel agreen light to attack. He needs tomake sure the Israelis believe him. Astrike would only feed Irans nuclearappetite and drive its program evenfurther underground.

The United States must make clearto Iran the advantages of coming infrom the cold. It must work to craft atough package of sanctions that couldmake Irans clerical and military eliterethink their destructive plans. Tenweeks is not a lot of time. And Iransprogram is moving ahead.

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W O R L D T R E N D S

MONDAY, JULY 20 , 2009 III

Gulf of Aden

Indian

Ocean

1991 A civil war leadsto the collapse ofSomalias lastfunctioninggovernment.

2006 An Islamistgroup controlsSomalia for six monthsuntil Ethiopian forces,backed by the U.S.,invade. The eventprompts a politicalawakening amongyoung Somalis aroundthe world.

2007 The first wave ofMinneapolis residentstravel to Somalia andjoin the Shabaabmilitia.

2009 Ethiopianswithdraw, and the civilwar intensifies.

THE NEW YORK TIMESSource: UNHCR Somalia

Note: Numbers collected from April to June. Regional boundaries in Somalia are disputed.

20,000

150,000

1,000

S O M A L I A

ETHIOPIA

42,800

SOMALILAND PUNTLAND

KENYA

297,400

DJIBOUTI

YEMEN

142,000

Bossaso

The civil warin Somalia hasdisplaced nearlytwo million people,most in the lastthree years.

Shirwa

Ahmeds

suicide attack

Mogadishu,

Burhan

Hassan was

killed here

The Shabaab, a

radical Muslim

militia, controls

almost the entire

south and

central portions

of Somalia.

Major events

REFUGEES

By ANDREA ELLIOTT

MINNEAPOLIS For a group of students whooften met at the Carlson School of Managementon the University of Minnesota campus, the mottoNowhere but here seemed especially fitting.

They had fled Somalia as small boys, escap-ing a catastrophic civil wa r. They came of age asrefugees in Minneapolis, becoming naturalizedUnited States citizens and embracing basketballand school dances, hip-hop and shopping malls.By the time they reached college, their dreamsseemed within grasp: one planned to become adoctor; another, an entrepreneur.

But last year, in a study room at Carlson, themen turned their energies to a different enter-prise.

Why are we sitting around in America, doingnothing for our people? one of the men, Moham-oud Hassan, a skinny, 23-year-old engineeringmajor, pressed his friends.

In November, Mr. Hassan and two other stu-dents dropped out of college and left for Somalia .

Word soon spread that they had joined the Sha-baab, a militant Islamist group aligned with AlQaeda that is fighting to overthrow the fragileSomali government.

The students are among more than 20 youngAmericans who are the focus of what may be themost significant domestic terrorism investiga-tion since 9/11. One of the men, Shirwa Ahmed,blew himself up in Somalia in October, becomingthe first known American suicide bomber. OnJuly 13, authorities in Minneapolis unsealed anindictment that charges Salah Osman Ahmedand Abdifatah Yusuf Isse with providing mate-rial support for terrorism. And two other Soma-li-American men suspected of fighting with theShabaab were shot dead July 10 in a battle in theSomali capital.

An examination by The New York Times re-veals how a far-flung jihadist movement found afoothold in Americas heartland. Most of the menare former Somali refugees who left the TwinCities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in two waves,starting in late 2007. Wh ile religious devotion mayhave predisposed them to sympathize with the

Islamist cause, it took a major geopolitical event the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006 tospur them to join what they saw as a legitimateresistance movement, said friends of the men.

Generation of RefugeesIn the first wave of Somalis who left were men

whose uprooted lives resembled those of immi-grants in Europe who have joined the jihad. Theyfaced barriers of race and class, religion and lan-guage. Mr. Ahmed, the 26-year-old suicide bomb-er, struggled at community colleges before drop-ping out. His friend Zakaria Maru f, 30, fell in witha violent street gang and later stocked shelves ata Wal-Mart.

If failure had shadowed this first group of men,the young Minnesotans who followed them to So-malia were succeeding in America. Mr. Hassan,the engineering student, was a rising star in hiscollege community. Another of the men was a pre-medical student who had once set his sights on aninternship at the prestigious Mayo Clinic.

A Crisis of Belonging

At Roosevelt High School, Shirwa Ahmed wasa quick study. He memorized hip-hop lyrics. He

practiced on neighborhood basketball courts.He took note of the clothing and vernacular of hisAfrican-American classmates, emulating whathe could.

Much as he tried, he failed to fit in.Youre not black, his peers taunted. G o back to

Africa.Somali and A frican-American students clashed

frequently at the school. How can they be mad atme for looking like them? Mr. Ahmeds friend Ni-cole Hartford recalled him saying. Were fromthe same place.

Even as Mr. Ahmed met rejection at school,he faced disapproval from relatives, who com-plained he was mixing with ghetto people, Ms.Hartford recalled. It was a classic conundrum foryoung Somalis: how to be one thing at school andanother at home.

News developments from Somalia, followed ob-sessively by the adults, held little interest amongteenagers. Yet young men like Mr. Ahmed re-mained tethered to Somalia by the remittances

they were pressed to send. Af ter school every day,he joined a stream of teenagers headed for theairport, where he pushed passengers in wheel-chairs. He sent half of his income to Somalia, torelatives we dont even know, his friend Ni mcoAhmed said.

After graduating from high school in 20 00, Mr.Ahmed seemed to flounder, taking communitycollege classes while working odd jobs, friendssaid. But he had done better than many peers,who turned to crime and gangs.

At the root of the problem was a crisis of be-longing, said Mohamud Galony, a science tutorwho was friends with Mr. Ahmed and is the uncleof another boy who left. Young Somalis had beenraised to honor their fam ilies tribes, yet felt dis-connected from them. They want to belong, butwho do they belong to? Galony, 23, said.

The first wave of men to leave for Somalia werein their 20s and 30s and had been fixtures at theAbubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center, the larg-est Somali mosque in Minneapolis. All this talk ofthe movement must stop, the imam, Sheikh Ab-dirahman Sheikh Omar Ahmed, recalled telling

a crowd at the mosque. Focus on your life here. Ifyou become a doctor or an engineer, you can helpyour country. Over there you will be a dead bodyon the street.

In the audience were several young men whoalso would soon disappear.

An Inquiry IntensifiesNever did I imagine that I would step into this

here, in the Midwest, said Ralph S. Boelter, asquare-jawed Wisconsin native who took overthe Federal Bureau of Investigations Minneapo-lis office in early 2007.

While federal investigators had tracked themovements of American recruits to the Shabaabsince at least early 2008, the F.B.I.s case accel-erated after Shirwa Ahmeds suicide attack thatfall.

Investigators in Minneapolis approached So-malis on the street, in their homes, at the Abuba-kar mosque and on the University of Minnesotacampus. Community leaders say that more than50 people were subpoenaed to appear before afederal grand jury in Minneapolis and another

jury was convened in San Diego. In April, F.B.I.agents raided three Somali money-wiring busi-nesses in Minneapolis. By t hen, the investigationhad expanded to smaller Somali communitiesaround the country.

Young Somali Immigrants in America Answer a Call to Jihad

Ramla Bile contributed reporting from Minne-apolis and Margot Williams from New York.

MUSTAFA ABDI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE G ETTY IMAGES

NICOLE BENGIVENO/THE NEW YORK TIMES

There are indications that three Twin Citiesmen have returned, possibly after defecting fromthe Shabaab. A friend of the men still in Soma liasaid they had no thought of attacking America.Why would I do that? the friend recalled theformer pre-medical student, Adbisalan Ali, say-ing on the phone last spring. My mom could bewalking down the street.

The central question driving the F.B.I. inves-tigation is whether American citizens have pro-vided material support to the Shabaab, either inthe form of personnel or money.

Meanwhile, some Somali parents in the TwinCities have taken to hiding their sons passports.

The tension in the community has turned in-ward at times, with some blaming the Minneapo-lis mosque for brainwashing the young menand possibly raising money for Islamist groupsin Somalia.

The mosques leaders denied this, in turn ac-cusing families of shirking responsibility fortheir children. Thats their obligation, to knowwhere their kids are going, said Farhan Hurre,the mosques executive director.

For many older Somalis in Minnesota, the deep-est mystery is why so many young refugees wouldrisk their lives and futures to return to a countrythat their parents struggled so ha rd to leave.

Some Somali-Americans abandonedtheir inner-cityneighborhood inMinneapolis,above, to fight inSomalia. Shabaabfighters participatein a drill nearMogadishu.

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W O R L D T R E N D S

IV MONDAY, JULY 2 0, 200 9

A Flight to the Moon Changed Our View of the EarthONLINE: AN HISTORIC JOURNEY

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From Page I

Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Aldrinwas seen, and their voices heard,throughout the world they had for thetime being left behind. In contrast to

explorations previous landfalls, thewhole world shared in this moment.During their 2-hour, 21-minute

Moon walk, the astronauts plantedan American flag, deployed threescientific instruments for collectingdata in the months after theirdeparture, and picked up samples ofrock and soil.

Mr. Aldrin, at one point, describedthe bounding kangaroo hops of theirmovements in the low lunar gravity.Sometimes it takes about two orthree paces to make sure that yourfeet are underneath you, he said.And about two or th ree, maybe four,easy paces can bring you to a fairlysmooth stop.

The astronauts paused for a tele-phone call from the White House.Because of what you have done,President Richard M. Nixon told them,the heavens have become a part ofmans world.

The year before the first landing, anearlier mission in the lunar programhad set out to circum navigate theMoon for the first time. The flight ofApollo 8 came at the end of one of themost tumultuous years in Americanhistory. The country in 1968 was di-vided and demoralized.

Opposition to the Vietnam War hadforced President Lyndon B. Johnsonto withdraw from a run for a notherterm. The Reverend Dr. Martin Lu-ther King Jr. fell dead in Memphis,Tennessee, from an assassins bullet,a tragedy that incited a riot of a rsonand looting in scores of cities. Themourning and fury had hardly sub-sided when Robert F. Kennedy wascut down by another assassins bullet,in Los Angeles.

No one in power, as I recall, seri-ously advocated canceling or defer-ring the Apollo mission. Yet amid ashooting war abroad and bitter unrest

at home, going to the Moon slippedlower in the publics order of priori-ties. It dismayed me to think that inthis climate, the first human voyagesto the Moon might wind up as irrel-evancies. Selfishly, I wanted the storyto be as big and inspiring of awe asI had counted on when I took the as-signment. I wanted the same countrythat had decided to go to the Moon tobe relieved and enthralled when atlast we succeeded.

Earthrise, 1968

Apollo 8 proved to be an inspirationat this crucial time. The astronauts Frank Borman, James A . Lovell Jr.and William A. A nders flew to theMoon and circled it 10 times i n orbitswithin 100 ki lometers of the lifelesssurface. Their television camerarecorded the gray plains and widecraters, one scene after another of ev-

erlasting desolation.On the fourth orbit, as Apolloemerged from behind the Moon, Mr.Borman, the comma nder, exclaimed:Oh, my God! Look at that pictureover there! Heres the Ea rth comingup. Wow, that is pretty! The astro-nauts gasped at the sight of Earth, ablue and white orb sparkling in theblackness of space, in contrast to thedead lunar surface in the foreground.

The sight moved the poet ArchibaldMacLeish to write in The Times: Tosee the Earth as it truly is, small andblue and beautiful in that eternalsilence where it floats, is to see our-selves as riders on the Earth together,brothers on that bright loveliness inthe eternal cold brothers who knownow they are truly brothers.

NASA later released the picturesthe astronauts had taken of Earth-rise. These were even more inspiringand humbling, the missions prized

keepsake. Time magazine closed outthe troubled year with the Earthrisephotograph on its cover, accompaniedby a one-word caption, Dawn.

In a 2008 book, Earth rise: How

Man First Saw the Earth, RobertPoole contends that the picture wasthe spiritual nascence of the environ-mental movement, writing that it ispossible to see that Earthrise markedthe tipping point, the moment whenthe sense of the space age flippedfrom what it meant for space to what itmeans for Earth.

Another Apollo 8 surprise was instore. Late on Christmas Eve 1968, onone of the final orbits, Mr. Anders an-nounced, The crew of Apollo 8 have amessage that we would like to send toyou. While a camera focused on t heMoon outside the spacecraft w indow,Mr. Anders read the opening wordsof the creation story from the Book ofGenesis.

In the beginning God created theheaven and the Earth, he began.And the Earth was without form,and void; and darkness was upon theface of the deep. Mr. Lovell then took

over with the verse beg inning: AndGod called t he light day, and the dark-ness he called night. Mr. Bormanclosed the reading: And God calledthe dry land Earth; and the gatheringtogether of the waters called He Seas;and God saw that it was good.

The Genesis Flight

At the conclusion, a hushed audi-ence throughout the lands of Earthheard Mr. Borman sign off from theMoon: And from the crew of Apollo8 we close with good night, good luck,a Merry Christmas and God bless allof you all of you on the good Earth.Today, Apollo 8 is still spoken of as theGenesis flight.

The inclusiveness of these experi-ences was remarkable, given thespace races origins in an atmosphereof fear and belligerence. It all startedwith the Sputnik alarm in 1957, when

the Soviet Union launched the firstspacecraft, giving rise to invigoratedUnited States efforts in science andtechnology. It was followed by Presi-dent John F. Kennedys challenge to

the nation in 1961 to put a stronauts onthe Moon by the end of the decade.Looking back, three of the nine

Apollo lunar missions stand out fromthe others as especially emotionalexperiences.

Apollo 11 m ade history. Kennedysbold commitment was fulfilled, andthose alive then have never forgottenwhere they were and their feelingswhen humans first walked on theMoon. Apollo 13 was an epic suspenseunfolding in real time to a global audi-ence. Three astronauts went forth,met disaster, faced death and barelylimped back to the safety of home.And Apollo 8, as the first flight ofhumans beyond Earths low orbitalconfines, restored momentum andmagnitude to the adventure of reach-ing for the Moon.

Mr. Collins, who was the capsulecommunicator in Mission Controlfor Apollo 8, said th at the essence of

that flight was about leaving, andthat Apollo 11s was about arriving.As you look back 100 years from now,which is more important, the ideathat people left their home planet orthe idea that people arrived at theirnearby satellite? he asked himself.Im not sure, but I think probably youwould say Apollo 8 was of more sig-nificance than Apollo 11, even thoughtoday we regard Apollo 11 as being t heshowpiece and zenith of the Apolloprogram, rightly so.

The Launching

In memory, after all this time,Apollo 11 resists relegation to the pasttense. In the wee hours of July 16, 1969,the summer air of the Florida coast iswarm and still as we drive toward alight in the distance. Its preternatu-ral glow suffuses the sky ahead but,strangely, leaves the land where we

are in natural darkness.After the first checkpoint, where

guards at Kennedy Space Centerinspect our badges and car pass, thesource of the light comes i nto view.

The sight is magnetic, drawing us on.Strong xenon beams converge on Pad39A, highlighting the mighty Saturn 5rocket as it is being fueled.

A few more kilometers, anothercheckpoint, and Doug Dederer, a free-lancer for The Times, and I approachthe Vehicle Assembly Building, amammoth presence rising above theflat terrain of sand, palmetto and la-goons stretching to the Atlantic.

Along an embankment stretches aline of trailers for the larger news or-ganizations and imposing studios forthe three major television networks.At The Timess trailer, Doug and I un-load the car. We switch on the air- con-ditioner and fill the refrigerator withsandwiches and cans of soda. We hookup small TV sets and a telephone, andspread the spacecraft manuals andpress kits on a desk. I stretch out on

the floor to catch some sleep.In the early light of dawn, the threeApollo 11 astronauts take the dr ivefrom their quarters to the launchingpad. Everything is on schedu le for aliftoff at 9:32 a.m.

Precisely on schedule, Jack King,the voice of Apollo, intones the finalcountdown. 5-4-3. Ignition. Orangeflame and dark smoke erupt fromhuge nozzles at the base of the Saturn5. The rocket hesitates, held down byheavy steel arms. 2-1, King continues.We have liftoff.

Once at full thrust, and unbound,the 3,463-metric-ton spaceshipstrains to overcome gravity, and for aheart-stopping second or two appearsto be losing the fight. T hen, ever soslowly, it rises and clears the tower.

Only now do the staccato t hunder-claps from the engines reach the presssite, confirming once again that soundtravels more slowly than light. The

blasts beat on your chest and shakethe ground you stand on. The experi-ence is visceral, the Saturn movingearth and smacking us with good-byes. The spacefarers are off over theocean, fire and vapor trailing behind,on their way to the Moon.

Apollos Legacy

Apollo 11 effectively ended the spacerace. The Russians conceded as muchby their subsequent space endeavors.Handicapped by failures in testingtheir own heavy-lift rocket, they neverattempted a human flight to the Moonand turned instead to long-durationflights in low orbit.

American astronauts made sixmore journeys to the Moon, all suc-cesses, excepting Apollo 13. But publicinterest was flagging. A battlehadbeen won, people seemed to feel, sobring the boys home.

By the end of 1972, the last of the 12men to walk on the Moon packed upand returned home. The uncertainfuture for human spaceflight mutedthe celebrations at the space centerin Houston. At the conclusion of thatflight, Apollo 17, I solicited historiansassessment of the significance of theseearly years in space. Arthur M. Schle-singer Jr. predicted that in 500 years,the 20th century would probably beremembered mainly for humanitysventures beyond its native planet. Atthe close of the century, he had notchanged his mind.

How brief the space race was, the 12years from Sputnik to the first Moonwalk, but thrilling, mind-boggling,even magnificent at times. No one hasbeen back to the Moon since 1972.

Yet spaceflight is now embeddedin our culture, so much so that it isusually taken for granted a far cryfrom the old days when the world held

its breath for the United States earlyMercury missions of Alan B. ShepardJr. and John Glenn, and watched,transfixed, the pictures from the moonin July 1969. That was then; no astro-

nauts today are household names. Yetspace traffic is thick and integral to theinfrastructure of modern life.

Seldom does it cross our minds thatour voices and text messages are car-ried across continents and oceans via

satellites. Our weather and the effectsof global warming are t racked fromspace. Our news, including reports ofastronaut missions now relegated toback pages, is disseminated throughspace. We view the spectacular im-ages from the planet Saturn and thefar cosmos with less thought to howthey were obtained than of the beautyand abiding mystery they call to ourattention.

The United States has now em-barked on a program to return astro-nauts to the Moon by 2020 to establisha more permanent research presencethere and prepare for eventual humanflight to Mars. But in the absence ofthe cold war motivation, the effortlacks the money and the political man-date that favored Apollo. Another en-terprise on the scale of Apollo is, in theforeseeable future, unimaginable.

Someday, however, a par ty of spacetravelers may make the pilgrimage

to Apollo 11s landing site on the Seaof Tranquillity, a broad basin thatis a smudge on the right face of theMoon, as seen from Earth on clearnights. The encampment, knownas Tranquillity Base, should be justas Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Aldrinleft it. Change comes slowly on thearid, airless Moon, and barring anintervening shower of meteorites, theAmerican flag and t he forlorn baseof the lunar module should look li kenew. And the astronauts boot printsshould still appear fresh in t he graypowdery regolith.

An Age of Heroes

For a brief time, when spaceflightwas fresh and exciting, we embracedastronauts as heroes who took risks toreach grand goals. We believed thenmore readily in heroes, people who re-flect what it is that we feel is admirable

in humanity, who inspire us at least tostrive to live up to some ideal image.Only four years before Sputnik,

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgaywere hailed as heroes for making thelast giant leap for mankind of thepre-space-age generations. Theirascent to the top of Mount Everest, ashigh as anyone can aspire and still berooted on terra firma, culminated anera of crossing oceans, penetratingcontinental interiors and reaching theends of the earth. They crested a di-vide in exploration between the moreindividual exploits of yore and thegreater team efforts mobilized to chal-lenge newer frontiers of achievement.

On this side of the divide, potentialheroes get lost in the crowd of col-laborators and overshadowed bytheir enabling technology. Even theamazing technology itself, so swiftlydomesticated for the workplace andhome, soon seems too ordinary to be

remarkable. Our laptops have a g reat-er capacity than any of t he computersin the Apollo Project.

Neil Armstrong has earned thelast word. I think well always be inspace, he said in a 2001 interview forthe American space agencys oral-history program. But it will take uslonger to do the new things than t headvocates would like, and in somecases it will take external factors orforces which we cant control andcant anticipate that will cause thingsto happen or not happen.

Mr. Armstrong then struck a notethat resonates with his contempo-raries, and that includes me. He andhis Apollo 11 crew were born in thesame year, 1930, three years before Iwas; we were the right age at the righttime and places to participate in a sin-gular adventure in h istory, whateverits legacy as seen through the eyes oflater generations.

We were really very privileged,he said, to live in that thin slice ofhistory where we changed how manlooks at himself and what he mightbecome and where he might go.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY NASA

EXPLORERS Neil A.Armstrong, top, wasthe first to step ontothe Moon, followed19 minutes later byEdwin E. A ldrin Jr.,center. Apollo 11slunar module, knownas the Eagle, carriedthe two astronautsto the surface fromlunar orbit.

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W O R L D T R E N D S

MONDAY, JULY 2 0, 200 9 V

0 kg 25 50 75 100 125 150 175

CAR

BUS

SCOOTER

MINIBUS

2.5 people

40

1.5

gasolinediesel

electricnatural gas

two-stroke

four-stroke

gasoline

diesel

diesel

natural gas

hydrogen fuel cell

12

ModeAverage occupancy

Mass transit in developing countries generates far fewergreenhouse-gas emissions per passenger than private vehicles do.

CO2-equivalent emissions

per passenger-kilometer (estimated range)

Sources: International Energy Agency; Transportation in

Developing Countries, Pew Center on Global Climate Change THE NEW YORK TIMES

Clean Buses Versus Traditional Vehicles

By JOHN TAGLIABUE

OVERTURINGEN, Sweden Itwas a lousy blueberry season in2007, said Siv Wiik, 70, one of a pair ofSwedish grandmothers now creditedwith discovering what experts saymay be one of the richest gold depos-its in Europe. That year it was toocold in the spring, so t here were fewberries, she said.

Berry picking is a serious businessto Mrs. Wiik, who was born in thisvillage of 171, and her friend, HarrietSvensson, 69. For 40 years the two,widows with children and grandchil-dren, have explored every patch offield and forest clearing in the region,hunting for mushrooms and wildberries blueberries, raspberries,blackberries, cloudberries.

But the women are also amateurgeologists. They never leave homefor a stroll in forests or fields without

their geologists hammers, with their12-centimeter handles, and theirmagnifying eyepieces, dangling fromribbons around their necks.

So in that terrible August when theblueberry crop failed, they decided topoke around for minerals. They wentto a place called Sorkullen, far downan unpaved logging road, where treeshad recently been felled, upendingthe earth and exposing rock to the air.Using their hammers, they clearedsoil from around the stones, dig-ging for about six hours, deeper anddeeper, until they found a rock with adull glimmer.

The women phoned Arne Sund-berg, of the Geological Survey of

Sweden in Uppsala, who came thefollowing day. When he looked, hethought something was wrong withhis eyepiece, said Mrs. Svensson,laughing. Analysis showed that thestone contained more than 23 gramsof gold per ton; most active mines inSweden yield less than 5 grams.

The women entered a sample inan annual geological competitionrun by Mr. Sundberg. You must findsomething thats new and unusual,that looks promising for the futu re,Mr. Sundberg said by telephone. Itcould be a new mine, not just gold, butsomething new. It was the first timethe ladies entered.

Needless to say, they won.

They proceeded to obtain the rightsfor a large area around the find, t henentered into negotiations, alone andwithout lawyers, with about 20 min-ing companies from Sweden andabroad, finally choosing Hansa Re-sources, of Vancouver, Canada.

This month, Hansa began boringat the site to obtain samples to sendto Vancouver for analysis. Whetherits gold or not, even with a high-gradeore, you cannot see it with the nakedeye, said Anders Hogrelius, projectmanager for the drilling. This was asurprise, and I think its positive, sinceit shows that its worthwhile to go out-side the traditional mining areas.

The windfall for the women has un-til now been modest. Hansa paid thewomen about $125,000 for the miningrights, and if a second round of boringis authorized this fall, the companywill pay an additional $225,000. Butthe women have also been given a 20

percent stake in any future miningactivities, which could yield a bonan-za for many years to come.

By then Ill be out in the church -yard, Mrs. Wiik said with a laugh.

MUNICH The collapse of Com-

munism in the East two decades agodid not provide much of an openingfor the Catholic Church to influ-ence economic policy, but perhaps

the near-collapse ofWestern capitalismwill. Two Germanauthors one namedMarx, the other hispatron in Rome arecertainly hoping so.

The first is Reinhard Marx, arch-bishop of Munich and Freising, whohas written a best seller in Germa nythat he titled Das Kapital (and inwhich he addresses that other Marx Karl as dear namesake). Thesecond is Pope Benedict XVI, whorecently published his first papalencyclical on economic and socialmatters. It has a more gentle title,Charity in Truth, but is based onthe same essential line of thinking.Indeed, Archbishop Marx had a

hand in advising the pope on it.The message in both is that globalcapitalism has lost its moral com-pass and that Roman Catholic teach-ings can help set Western economics

right by encouraging

them to focus more onjustice for the weakand closely regulatingthe market.

ArchbishopMarxand other Catholicsyearn for reform, notclass warfare. In that, they are fol-lowing a long and fundamental lineof church teaching. What is differentnow is that some of them see this eco-nomic crisis as a moment when thechurchs economic thinking just mayattract serious attention.

There is no way back into an oldworld, Archbishop Marx said in arecent interview, before the encycli-cal was issued. We have to affirmthis world, but critica lly.

Catholic voices have long hadinfluence on the debate in the Westabout social justice, but never asmuch as the church would havewished. Pope John Paul II was an

important voice in bringing downCommunism. But he had to watchin the 1990s as Eastern Europe em-braced its polar opposite a ratherpure form of secular capitalism,

instead of any Catholic-influencedmiddle way.

John Paul II was often very clearwhat he was against: He was agai nstunbridled capitalism and the kind ofsocialism of the Soviet sphere, saidJohn Allen, the National CatholicReporter Vatican watcher. What hewas for was less clear.

Now Archbishop Marx, 55, is try-ing to develop a new approach. Inhis book, he offers a vision of a worldgoverned by cooperation among na-tions, with a welfare state as the coreof a market economy that reflectsthe love-thy-neighbor imperatives ofCatholic social thought.

On the first point, ArchbishopMarx is in good, cosmopolitan com-pany; many officials, from New Yorkto London to Beijing, are callingthese days for a world in greater reg-

ulatory harmony. Hesounds considerablymore German whenexhorting the world to

create, or recast, the welfare state.People need the welfare state beforethey can give themselves over tothe very strenuous and sometimesvery risky games of the marketeconomy, Archbishop Marx said.

Of course, the archbishop sayshe realizes that a Europ eansideal of welfare states and border-straddling institutions might nothave universal appeal. At the endof his book, he quotes Jean-ClaudeJuncker, the prime minister of Lux-embourg, who has said, I approveof the notion that Europe sees itself,unpretentiously, as a model for theworld, but the consequence of that

is that we would have to constantlychange that model because we arenot the world.

Neither, he might have added, isthe Roman Catholic church.

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

BOGOT, Colombia Like mostthoroughfares in booming cities of thedeveloping world, Bogots SeventhAvenue resembles a noisy, exhaust-coated parking lot a tangle of carsand minibuses that have long provid-

ed transportation for the masses.But a few blocks away, sleek red ve-hicles full of commuters speed downthe four center lanes of Avenida delas Amricas. The long, segmented,low-emission buses are part of a novelpublic transportation system calledbus rapid transit, or B.R .T. It is morelike an above-ground subway than acollection of bus routes, with seven in-tersecting lines, enclosed stations thatare entered through turnstiles withthe swipe of a fare card and coachesthat feel like trams inside.

Versions of these systems are beingplanned or built in dozens of develop-ing cities around the world MexicoCity, Cape Town, Jakarta, Indonesia,and Ahmedabad, India, to name a few providing public transportationthat improves traffic flow and reducessmog at a fraction of the cost of build-ing a subway.

But the rapid transit

systems have anotherbenefit: they may holda key to combating cli-mate change. Emissionsfrom cars, trucks, busesand other vehicles in thebooming cities of Asia,Africa and Latin Amer-ica account for a rapidlygrowing component ofheat-trapping gaseslinked to global warming.While emissions fromindustry are decreasing,those related to trans-portation are expected torise more than 50 percentby 2030 in industrializedand poorer nations. And80 percent of that growthwill be in the developingworld, according to datapresented in May at an in-ternational conference in

Bellagio, Italy, sponsoredby the Asian DevelopmentBank and the Clean Air Institute.

Bus rapid transit systems like Bogo-ts, called TransMilenio, might holdan answer. Now used for an average of1.6 million trips each day, TransMilen-io has allowed the city to remove 7,000small private buses from its roads,reducing the use of bus fuel and as-sociated emissions by more than 59percent since it opened its first line in

2001, according to city officials.In recognition of this feat, Trans-

Milenio last year became the onlylarge transportation project approvedby the United Nations to generate andsell carbon credits. Developed coun-tries that exceed their emissions lim-its under the Kyoto Protocol can buycredits from TransMilenio to balancetheir emissions budgets, bringing Bo-

got an estimated $100million to $300 million sofar, analysts say.

Bogot was huge andmessy and poor, so peoplesaid, If Bogot can do it,why cant we? said En-rique Pealosa, an econo-mist and a former mayorof the city who took Trans-Milenio from a concept toits initial opening in 2001and is now advising othercities. In 2008, Mexico Cityopened a second success-ful bus rapid transit linethat has already reducedcarbon dioxide emissionsthere, according to LeeSchipper, a transporta-

tion expert at StanfordUniversity in California,and the city has applied to sell carboncredits as well.

But bus rapid transit systems arenot the answer for every city. In theUnited States, where cost is less con-straining, some cities, like Los Ange-les, have built B.R.T.s, but they tendto lack many of the components ofcomprehensive systems like Trans-Milenio, and they serve as an addition

to existing rail networks.In some sprawling cities in India,

where a tradition of scooter use maymake bus rapid transit more difficultto create, researchers are working todevelop a new model of tuk-tuk, or mo-torized cab, that is cheap and will runon alternative fuels or with a highlyefficient engine. There are three mil-lion auto rickshaws in India alone, andthe smoke is astonishing, so this couldhave a huge impact, said Stef vanDongen, director of Enviu, an environ-mental network group in Rotterdam,the Netherlands, that is sponsoringthe research.

TransMilenio moves more passen-gers per kilometer every hour thanalmost any of the worlds subways.Most poorer cities that have built sub-

ways, like Manila and Lagos, Nigeria,can afford to build only a few limitedlines. And bus rapid transit systemscan be built more quickly, accordingto Walter Hook, executive director ofthe Institute for Transportation andDevelopment Policy, in New York.

Almost all rapidly developing cit-ies understand that they need a metroor something like it, and you can geta B.R.T. by 2010 or a metro by 2060,he said.

Bogots Buses Offer a Lesson in Green Transport

POOL PHOTO BY LOSSERVATORE ROMANO-VATICAN, VIA GETTY IMAGES

SCOTT DALTON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A bus rapid transit system in Bogot, Colombia, improvestraffic flow, saves money and reduces carbon emissions.

CARTER

DOUGHERTY

ESSAY

OVERTURINGEN JOURNAL

A EurekaMoment

In Sweden

Catholicism as AntidoteTo Turbo-Capitalism

A bad season forblueberries turns into agood year for gold.

Pope BenedictXVI, signing hisencyclical oneconomic matters,which called forgreater socialresponsibility on

the part of business.

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

VI MONDAY, JULY 20 , 2009

8483 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09

The wide swings in the price of oil in recent months are similar to only two

other periods in recent decades: the gulf war in 1990-91 and the OPEC price

wars of the mid-1980s.

Source: International Monetary Fund; Bloomberg

SPOT PRICE PER BARREL OF CRUDE OIL

Adjusted for inflation

+20%

+10

-10

-20

-30

$150

120

90

60

30

0

Gulf warAsian

financial crisisSeptember

11OPEC price wars

DAILY CHANGE IN SPOT PRICE

By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM

In a different economy, BillyMitchell and Nicole Drucker of SanFrancisco might have spent $10,000on an engagement ring. But Ms.Drucker is out of work and they needto save for a house. So in April, Mr.Mitchell got down on one knee andproposed with a $4,000 diamond ringhe had bought on the Internet.

We had to decide, where do wewant the money? he said. On herfinger?

In this economy, many consum-ers would rather keep their money

in their wallets than on their fingers,necks or ears. As people re-examinetheir budgets, jewelry is one of theeasiest places to cut back.

The half-carat is the new three-carat, explained Hayley Corwick,who writes for Madison Avenue Spy,a blog about designer sales.

The new frugality is putting apainful squeeze on the jewelry in-dustry. It has forced diamond minesto curtail production, led to deep dis-counting at jewelry chains, spurredhundreds of store closings and re-sulted in job cuts at boutiques anddepartment stores.

Because jewelry is expensive in-ventory that moves slowly even inbetter economic times, many storesare laden with debt even thoughwholesale global prices of polisheddiamonds were down 15.4 percent inJune compared with a year earlier.

Experts say that when the shake-

out is over, far fewer jewelers will beleft. About 20 percent more Ameri-can jewelers will go out of businessthis year than did last year, accord-ing to Kenneth Gassman, president

of the Jewelry Industry ResearchInstitute.

The jewelry chains that have filedfor bankruptcy in the last year or soinclude Fortunoff, Whitehall Jewel-ers, Friedmans, Christian Bernardand Ultra Stores.

Still in business but posting lossesare big jewelry chains, both high endand low from Harry Winston andBulgari to Zales and Claires Stores.

And while the venerable Tiffany& Company is still making money,sales have dropped 34 percent at itsstores in the United States that have

been open at least a year.Major mass-market retailers in-cluding Wal-Mart, J.C. Penney, BJsWholesale Club and Costco havecited jewelry as one of their worst-performing categories this year.Ofthe consumers still buying jewelry,many are trading down to less ex-pensive items. Blue Nile, the onlinejeweler, said some people were opt-ing for engagement rings made ofsemiprecious stones.

For the retailers the good news,relatively speaking, is that thechains say the rate of decelerationhas slowed in the last three months.No one is declaring a recovery, oreven that the market has reached abottom. But Tiffany, which has beenselling its signature six-pronged di-amond solitaire engagement ringssince 1886, is confident the sparklewill return.

Were going through a business

cycle, Mark L. Aaron, vice presi-dent for investor relations at Tiffanysaid. There will eventually again bea rising tide of affluence around theworld.

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

FONTAINEBLEAU, France French workers normally take offmuch of the summer, but this monththere is something of a revolution go-ing on here at this former royal cha-teau southeast of Paris. The throngsof tourists will be jostling alongsidestonemasons, restoration experts andother artisans paid by the French gov-

ernments $37 billion economic stimu-lus program.Their job? Maintain in pristine con-

dition the 800-year-old palace of morethan 1,50 0 rooms where Napoleon bidadieu before being exiled to Elba andwhere Marie Antoinette enjoyed agilded boudoir.

Besides Fontainebleau, about 50French chateaus are to receive a face-lift, including the palace of Versailles.Also receiving funds are some 75 ca-thedrals, including Notre Dame inParis. A museum devoted to Laliqueglass is being created in Strasbourg,while Marseilles is to be the home of anew 10 million euro center for Mediter-ranean culture.

All told, Paris has set aside 100 mil-lion euros for what the French like tocall their cultural patrimony. It is aFrench twist on how to overcome theglobal downturn, spending borrowedmoney avidly to beautify the nation

even as it also races ahead of the Unit-ed States in more classic Keynesian

ways: fixing potholes, upgrading rail-roads and pursuing other projects.

America is six months behind; ithas wasted a lot of time, said PatrickDevedjian, the minister in chargeof the French stimulus. By the timeWashington gets around to doling outmost of its money, he sniffed, the cri-sis could be over.

The confidence evident in the wordsof Mr. Devedjian, a close adviser toPresident Nicolas Sarkozy, echoes abroader pride among French businessand political leaders that their govern-ment has done a better job dodging theworst of the economic turmoil than itsEuropean neighbors.

Yet France remains highly vulner-able to rising unemployment. The Or-ganization for Economic Cooperation

and Development, expects the Frenchjobless rate, currently 8.9 percent andlower than the 9.5 percent rate in theUnited States, to hit 11.2 percent by theend of 2010.

Under French regulations, unem-ployed workers are guaranteed up to67 percent of their former salary andcan collect as much as 70,000 eurosannually in benefits for two years.Were insulated from the shocks, butthe next generation will pay for it,warned Herv Boulhol, head of theFrance desk at the O.E.C.D.

For now, though, the deluge seemsfar off into the future at Fontaineb-leau, much as it did to Louis XIV, theSun King, who spent each fall herefor his annual hunt. The well-tendedgardens and canals shimmer, whileartisans repair the courtyards andkitchen buildings where royal feastswere once prepared.

This was the heart of the castlebecause court life revolved around

meals, said Jacques Dubois, a spokes-man for the Chteau de Fontainebleau.And this money allows us to finishconstruction thats been going on foryears.

By JAD MOUAWAD

The extreme volatility that hasgripped oil markets for the last 18months has shown no signs of slowingdown, with oil prices rising sharplysince the beginning of the year despitean exceptionally weak economy.

The instability of oil and gas pricesis puzzling government officials andpolicy analysts, who fear it couldjeopardize a global recovery. It is alsohobbling businesses and consumers,who are already facing the effects of astinging recession, as they try in vainto guess where prices will be a yearfrom now, or even next month.

A wild run on the oil markets hasoccurred in the last 12 months. Lastsummer, prices surged to a recordhigh above $145 a barrel. As the globaleconomy faltered, oil tumbled to $33 abarrel in December. But oil rose 55 per-cent since the beginning of the year, to$70 a barrel, before falling less than $60early this week.

To call this extreme volatilitymight be an understatement, saidLaura Wright, the chief financial of-ficer at Southwest Airlines, a compa-ny that has sought to insure itself bybuying long-term oil contracts. Over

the past 15 to 18 months, this has beenunprecedented. I dont think it can beeasily rationalized.

Volatility in the oil markets in thelast year has reached levels not re-corded since the energy shocks of thelate 1970s and early 1980s, according toCostanza Jacazio, an energy analystat Barclays Capital in New York.

These gyrations have rippled acrossthe economy. The automakers Gen-eral Motors and Chrysler have beenforced into bankruptcy as customersshun their gas-guzzling automobiles.Airlines are on pace for another yearof deep losses because of rising jetfuel costs. And households, alreadycrimped by falling home prices,mounting job losses and credit pres-sures, are once more forced to monitortheir discretionary spending.

The recent rise in oil prices is re-

prising the debate from last year overthe role of investors in the commod-ity markets. Federal regulators in theUnited States announced July 7 thatthey were considering new restric-tions on speculative traders in mar-kets forenergy products.

Government officials around theworld have become concerned abouta possible replay of last years surge.Energy officials from the EuropeanUnion and OPEC, meeting in Viennalast month, said that the speculationissue had not been resolved yet andthat the 2008 bubble could be repeat-ed without more oversight.

Many factors that pushed oil pricesup last year have returned. Supplyfears are creeping back into the mar-ket, with a new round of violence in Ni-gerias oil-rich Niger Delta crimpingproduction. And there are increasingfears that the political instability inIran could spill over onto the oil mar-ket, potentially hampering exports.

The OPEC cartel has also been re-markably successful in reining inproduction in recent months to keepprices from falling. Even as prices re-covered, members of the Organizationof the Petroleum Exporting Countrieshave been unwilling to increase pro-

duction.Top officials said that OPECs goal

was to achieve $75 a barrel oil by theend of the year, a target that has beenendorsed by Saudi Arabia, t he groupsleading member.

Neither the organization, nor itskey members, has any real interestin halting the rise in oil prices, said areport by the Center for Global EnergyStudies, a consulting group in Londonfounded bya former Saudi oil minister.

For the global airline industry, thelatest price surge is certain to translateinto more losses this year, accordingto the industrys trade group, I.A.T.A.

Airlines have not yet felt the full im-pact of this oil price rise, according toI.A.T.A.s latest report. Likewise, au-tomobile showrooms emptied out asgasoline prices rose, forcing GeneralMotors and Chrysler to cut productionas they wade through ba nkruptcy.

For Jeroen van der Veer, who re-tired as chief executive officer of RoyalDutch Shell, prices are increasinglydictated by long-term assessments ofsuply and demand, rather than currentmarket fundamentals. He advised tak-ing a long-term view of the market.

Oil has never been very stable , Mr.van der Veer said.

Wild Swings in the Price of Oil Jeopardizes Economic Recovery

ED ALCOCK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Restoration work on the Grand Commun, next to the Palace ofVersailles, is part of Frances $37 billion plan to help the economy.

France FightsDownturn

With CulturalRestorations

For Jewelers, RecessionHas Dulled the Sparkle

Alice Pfeiffer contributed reportingfrom Paris.

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Location ofglass boxes

103rd floor

The glass observation boxes extend1.3 meters out of the building.

The new 103rd-floor observation booth at the Sears Tower,in Chicago, takes advantage of new technology to useglass as a load-bearing element.

Dont Look Down

Supporting

steel frame

Glass floor

Glass wallssupport theweight of thefloor and theviewers,and transferthe load tothe steelframe.

Glass box shown inretracted position below

Gasket deflated

The floor, sides and ceiling ofthe observation boxes are madeof three sheets of half-inchtempered glass bondedtogether with polymer film.

Glass elements are joinedtogether with stainless steelfasteners. Some joints havea silicone layer to allow forthermal expansion.

A gliding mechanism drivenby an electric motor allowsthe four glass boxes to bepulled inside the tower forcleaning and maintenance.

MECHANISM

An inflatable gasket seals the glass boxin place. Deflating the seal allows thebox to be moved in and out. Heatingcables prevent ice buildup and keepthe seal from freezing to the glass.

WALL

INFLATABLEGASKET

HEATINGCABLES

BUILDING

FACADE

SEAL

TEMPEREDGLASSSHEET

Laminated glass

POLYMER FILM

Sources: Skidmore, Owings& Merrill; MTH Industries

GLASS FLOOR

GLASS WALL

FASTENER

STRUCTURAL GLASS FASTENER

EXTENDED

POSITION

GLASS BOX RAILS AND BEARINGS MOTOR

RETRACTED

POSITION

MAINTENANCE

POSITION

Side view

MIKA GRNDAHL/THE NEW YORK TIMES

S C I E N C E & T E C H N O L O G Y

MONDAY, JULY 20 , 2009 VII

The visions seem to intrude fromthe brains depths at the worst pos-sible times during a job interview, ameeting with the boss, an apprehen-sive first date, an important dinner

party. What if I starteda food fight with thesehors doeuvres?Mocked the hostsstammer? Yelled out aracial slur?

That single thoughtis enough, wrote Edgar Allan Poe inThe Imp of the Perverse, an essayon unwanted impulses. The impulseincreases to a wish, the wish to a de-sire, the desire to an uncontrollablelonging.

He added, There is no passion innature so demoniacally impatient, asthat of him who, shuddering upon theedge of a precipice, thus meditates aplunge.

Or meditates on the question: AmI sick?

In a few cases, the answer may beyes. But a vast majority of peoplerarely, if ever, act on such urges, a ndtheir susceptibility to rude fantasiesin fact reflects the workings of a nor-mally sensitive, social brain, argues a

paper published recently in the jour-nal Science.

There are all kinds of pitfalls insocial life, everywhere we look; notjust errors but worst possible errors

come to mind, and they come to mindeasily, said the papers author, DanielM. Wegner, a psychologist at Harvard.And having the worst thing come tomind, in some circumstances, mightincrease the likelihood that it will hap-pen.

The exploration of perverse urgeshas a rich history, running throughthe stories of Poe and the Marquisde Sade to Freuds repressed desiresand Darwins observation that manyactions are performed in direct op-position to our conscious will. In thepast decade, social psychologistshave documented how common suchcontrary urges are and when t heyare most likely to alter peoples be-

havior.At a fundamental level, function-

ing socially means mastering onesimpulses. The adult brain expends atleast as much energy on inhibition as

on action, some studies suggest, andmental health relies on abiding strat-egies to ignore or suppress deeplydisturbing thoughts of ones owninevitable death, for example. Thesestrategies are general, subconsciousor semiconscious psychological pro-grams that usually run on automaticpilot.

Perverse impulses seem to arisewhen people focus intensely on avoid-ing specific errors or taboos. Thetheory is straightforward: to avoidsaying that a colleague is a raginghypocrite, the brain must first imag-ine just that; the very presence of thatcatastrophic insult, in turn, increasesthe odds that the brain will unleash it.

We know that whats accessiblein our minds can exert an influenceon judgment and behavior simplybecause its there, its floating on thesurface of consciousness, said Jamie

Arndt, a psychologist at the Universityof Missouri.

The empirical evidence of this in-fluence has been piling up in recentyears, as Dr. Wegner documents inthe new paper.The risk that peoplewill slip depends in pa rt on the levelof stress they are u ndergoing, Dr.Wegner argues. Concentrating in-tensely on not staring at a prominentmole on a new acquaintances face,while also texting and trying to followa conversation, heightens the riskof saying: We went to the mo le Imean, mall. Mall!

A certain relief can come from justgetting it over with, having that worstthing happen, so you dont have to

worry about monitoring in anymore,Dr. Wegner said.

All of which might be hard to ex-plain, of course, i f youve just insultedthe dinner party.

By HENRY FOUNTAIN

CHICAGO To truly appreciate how glasscan be used structurally, make your way to 233South Wacker Drive in downtown Chicago. Moreprecisely, make your way 412 meters above SouthWacker, to the 103rd floor of the Sears Tower.

Once there, take a few steps over to the westwall, where the facade has been cut away. Thentake one more step, over the edge.

Youll find yourself on a floor of glass, suspend-ed over the sidewalk just over a kilometer below.If you cant bear looking straight down past yourfeet, shift your gaze out or up the walls areglass, too, as is the ceiling. Youve stepped intoa transparent box, one of four that jut 1.3 metersfrom the tower, hanging from cantilevered steelbeams above your head. The glass walls a re con-nected to the beams, and to the glass floor, withbolts. But whats really saving you from oblivionis the glass itself.

The boxes, which opened recently as part of anextensive renovation of the towers observationdeck, are among the most recent, and more out-

landish, projects that use glass as load-bearingelements.But all glass structures have at least a bit of dar-

ing about them, as if they a re giving a defiant an-swer to the question: You cant do that with glass,can you?

You can. Engineers, architects and fabrica-tors, aided by materials scientists and softwaredesigners, are building soaring facades, archingcanopies and delicate cubes, footbridgesand staircases, almost entirely of glass.Theyre laminating glass with polymersto make beams and other componentsstronger and safer each of the SearsTower sheets is a five-layer sandwich and analyzing every square centimeterof a design to make sure the stressesare within precise limits. And they areexperimenting with new materials andmethods that could someday lead toglass structures that are unmarked bymetal or other materials.

Ultimately what were all strivingfor is an all-glass structure, said James

OCallaghan of Eckersley OCallaghanStructural Design, who has designedwhat are perhaps the worlds best-knownglass projects, the staircases that are aprominent feature of every Apple Store.

Through it all, theyve realized onething. Glass is just another material,said John Kooymans of the engineeringfirm Halcrow Yolles, which designed theSears Tower boxes.

Its a material that has been around formillennia. Although glass can be made in count-less ways to have any number of specific uses toconduct light as fibers, say, or serve as a backingfor electronic circuitry, as in a laptop screen structural projects almost exclusively use soda-lime glass, made, as it has always been, largelyfrom sodium carbonate, limestone and silica.

For years, the basic composition of soda-limeglass has not changed much, said Harrie J. Ste-vens, director of the Center for Glass Research atAlfred University in western New York State. Its

the same glass, more or less, that is used for thewindows in your home and the jar of jam in yourrefrigerator.

Pristine glass is very strong. But like a new c arthat plummets in value the moment it is driven offthe lot, glass starts to lose its strength the instantits made. Tiny cracks begin to form through con-tact with other sur faces, or even with water vaporand carbon dioxide.

Even one gas molecule can break a silicon-oxygen bond in glass, generating a defect, said

Carlo G. Pantano, a professor of materials scienceat Pennsylvania State University. While glass isvery strong in compression, tensile stresses willmake these tiny fissures start to grow, bond bybond. Thats what makes glass break, Dr. Pan-tano said. And if it doesnt break, it weakens it.

Unlike steel or other materials, glass does notdeform or otherwise give advance warning of fail-ure. If breakage occurs, maintaining the integrityof the structure is paramount so t hat people on orbelow it are safe.

Already, some engineers are starting to useadhesives to join glass directly to glass. LucioBlandini, an engineer with Werner Sobek Engi-neering and Design in Stuttgart, Germany, usedadhesives to create a thin glass dome, 8 metersacross, for his doctoral thesis in a clearing in Stut-tgart. I think adhesives are the most promisingconnection device, Dr. Blandini said. It allowsglass to keep its aesthetic qualities. His firm isusing adhesives in parts of structures being builtat the University of Chicago and in Dubai.

Making GlassBear Its ShareOf the Load

BENEDICT

CAREY

ESSAY

Inappropriate urgesarise when we try toavoid taboos.

When Mischief Takes Over the Brain

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By PATRICK HEALY

BEIRUT Along the Beirut Riverjust outside of the city center is an in-dustrial neighborhood of small ware-houses and factories, car dealershipsand crumbling, squat buildings thatbear the scars of bullets from Leba-nons wars. It is a place, in other words,where a cultural space that would bethe envy of New York has come to life.

The Beirut Art Center, a 1,500-square-meter space occupying two floors of aformer factory, opened on January 15,and it has quickly emerged as a populardestination for Beirutis, tourists andart critics across Lebanon.

Through July 14 it housed a provoca-tive exhibition of work by 20 Lebaneseartists titled The Road to Peace:Paintings in Times of War, 1975-1991,a collection of pieces that portray t hetrauma of the Lebanese civil war. Mostof the work had not been shown publiclybefore, the exhibition organizers say,

and reflected the art centers ambitionsto become a major cultural player in amodern, peaceful Lebanon.

Planning for the art center beganin 2005. Lamia Joreige, a visual art-ist, and Sandra Dagher, previouslythe director of the gallery Espace SDin downtown Beirut, said that theythought that the city lacked the mu-seums and cultural spaces worthy ofa metropolis of its size and history.Specifically, they said in an e-mailinterview, they saw a need for a con-temporary art center that could mountsolo and group shows of Lebanese art-ists to complement the government-supported museums in Beirut.

The war between the Hezbollahparamilitary forces and Israel dur-ing the summer of 2006 slowed theirsearch, but eventually they agreedon the factory space in the Jisr el-Watineighborhood, where construction ofresidential projects and a municipal

school are also bringing new life to thestreets.Although Beirut Art Center has not

been open for a long time, it has ver yquickly become a cultural landmark inthe city, Ms. Dagher said.

The title of the recent exhibitioncame from a series of print drawingsby Aref Rayess that depict Lebanesesurvivors of war. In one drawing afamily takes shelter with a gunmanbehind a brick wall as chaos ensuesnearby; in another, shadowy faceswith pained expressions are etchedinto city buildings.

The specter of death suffused theexhibition. Theo Mansours MassGrave blends red, crimson and otherbloodlike colors in acrylic forms ofcorpses and writhing bodies, manywith their mouths agape as if scream-ing.

In the work The April the LiliesDied by Mohammad Rawas, etch-

ings and stencil drawings depictingdestruction during 1983 include thebombed-out barracks where, in Oc-tober of that year, 241 Americans whowere part of a multinational peace-keeping force were killed.

When I came back to Beirut in 1981,I deliberately ignored and avoidedworking on the theme of war until1983, when the war had its severe tollon me through the death of a very closefriend, Mr. Rawas said in a statementposted near the work. The war mademe aware of the futility of art whoseraison dtre was considered to simplyplease the eye.

The most surprising piece was in asmall, windowless room off the maingallery space. Three adult-size cas-kets were arranged on the floor; theywere filled with small lighted candlesthat dripped wax and with stacks ofbooks about art and creation; on thetop of one pile was a book whose cover

simply read, Imagination a visualcue that stayed in the mind of visitorsto the art center as they poured backonto the streets of a newly vital Beirutneighborhood.

TOKYO After nearly fourdecades of work, Toyo Ito has earneda cult following among architectsaround the world, although he is littleknown outside his home country,

Japan. Throughhis strange andethereal buildings,he has created abody of work almostunmatched in itsdiverse originality.

Over the past decade, as manyof his contemporaries have piledup one commission after another,Mr. Ito has largely remained on thesidelines. He is rarely mentioned inconversations about semicelebritieslike Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid orJacques Herzog.

Mr. Itos status may finally beabout to change. A stadium with apythonlike form that he designedfor the World Games was recently

unveiled to a global audience inKaohsiung, Taiwan.Even more ambitious are his

plans for the Taichung operahouse, which is scheduled to go i ntoconstruction sometime next year.A work of striking inventiveness,it has already been touted as amasterpiece. Its porous ex terior,which resembles a gigantic sponge,is as wildly imaginative in its wayas Frank Gehrys Guggenheimmuseum in Bilbao, Spain. Its designwas a large reason Mr. Ito was

recently awarded his first Americancommission, the Berkeley ArtMuseum in California.

But even if Mr. Ito begins to landthe big, lucrative commissions thathe so obviously deserves, he maynever be completely accepted by abroad popular audience. He does nothave the intimidating, larger-than-life persona of a Koolhaas. Nor is he aflamboyant presence like Ms. Hadid,who is often compared to an operadiva because of her striking looksand imperial air.

Mr. Ito, by comparison, can beunassuming. A small, compactman with a round face framed by

rectangular glasses and darkhair, he is easygoing and rarelyflustered. And he has the rareability to consider his projectswith a critical eye.

His career can be read as alifelong quest to find the precisebalance between seeminglyopposing values individualand community, machine andnature, utopian fantasies andhard realities.

His ability to find suchbalances consistently has madehim one of our great urban poets.

The Tama Art UniversityLibrary, west of Tokyo, is set at theedge of a dreary hillside ca mpus. Itwas conceived as an irregular grid of

delicate concrete arches. Inside, thearches are arranged at odd angles toone another.The floor of an informalexhibition space follows the slope ofthe surrounding landscape so thatfrom inside, the relationship of thetwo seems fluid.

The result is a kind ofantimonument. The image we holdof a heavy, traditional arch becomessomething fragile and ethereal. Thedesigns aim is to liberate us fromthe oppressive weight of history and,in the process, open up imaginative

possibilities.Since the librarys completion his

ambitions have led to a startlingrange of new designs, like hisrecently opened Za-Koenji PublicTheater in Tokyo. The theatersuneven tentlike form seems to be aresult of the forces colliding aroundit, like speeding trains and arcanezoning requirements.

The design for the 44,000-seatKaohsiung stadium, by contrast,seems to be as much about theanxieties of a mass event as abouta shared emotional experience. Itseeks to maximize our awareness ofthe outside world while still creatinga sense of enclosure.By embracingambiguity, his work forces us to look

at the world through a w ider lens.I sometimes feel that we arelosing an intuit ive sense of our ownbodies, Mr. Ito lamented. Childrendont run around outside as much asthey did. They sit in f ront of computergames. Some architects have beentrying to find a language for this newgeneration, with very minimalistspaces. I am looking for somethingmore primitive, a kind of abstractionthat still has a sense of the body.

The in between, he added, ismore interesting to me.

TOMIO OHASHI; LEFT, MARC BIBO

Irregular concrete arches define the Tama Art University Library,above, designed by Toyo Ito. Mr. Itos recent projects include astadium in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, left.

NICOLAI

OUROUSSOFF

ESSAY

Buildings That Suggest the World Beyond

Face of War

Pervades

Art Center

It was ridiculous when someconservative religious leaderscomplained of a hidden homosexualagenda lurking behind the jellyfishand floating plankton of SpongeBob

SquarePants.Ridiculous, but

not totally absurd.Adults have beentrying to detectsome sort of subtextto that cheerful,

almost inexplicably popular cartoonseries on the childrens televisionnetwork Nickelodeon since it firstbubbled to the surface a decade ago.

There have been books,dissertations and seminarsdedicated to the study of the fun-loving yellow kitchen spongewho lives in a pineapple underthe sea. There was a theatrical-release movie version. President

Obama said during the campaignthat SpongeBob was his favoritetelevision character. David Bowieand Johnny Depp are among themany stars who boast or blog about

having been guest stars.To fete the shows 10th

anniversary, Nick