MONDAY, JUNE 14, 2010 Copyright © 2010 The New York Times

Supplemento al numeroodierno de la Repubblica

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

LENS

The Museum of Modern Art’s De-partment of Architecture and De-sign acquired @ — the “at” sign, asymbol of our technological and so-

cial relationships.The Library ofCongress, the210-year-oldfederal culturalinstitution in theUnited States,is archiving thecollectedworksof Twitter, the mi-croblogging ser-vice, whose users

send out 55 million tweets a day in140 or fewer characters.“Taken together, they are likely

to be of considerable value to fu-ture historians,” wrote The Times.

“They containmore observations,recorded at the same times by morepeople, than ever preserved in anymedium before.”The medium for messages has rap-

idly changed, many combining theold with the new. Correspondenceand communication is full of burstsof information, quick and of-the-moment thoughts, instantaneity,abbreviations and location-centricmessages à la Foursquare.Which means, if you are writing a

letter, an invitation or a thank-younote by hand, you are already run-ning late. Paper communicationis going the way of most things —away. But the nostalgia for it is stillstrong, and that is the driving forcebehind the year-old online statio-nery service, Paperless Post.

Users can design, send and tracke-vites on the Web, with virtualstationery that has an elegant feel,from visible paper grain to curlicuehandwriting. One can almost smellthe cardstock. Click on the hyper-real envelope and a pretty little in-vitation card pops out. Click it to fillout the reply card.“The Internet has been kind of a

vacuum in terms of aesthetics,” Al-exa Hirschfeld, the founder (alongwith her brother), told The Times.“We wanted to leverage functional-ity with design.”There are others out in the ether

who are also taking that route.Remember such niceties as gram-mar and proper punctuation? OnTwitter, there is a subculture ofgrammar police who patrol people’s

tweets that are rife with typos,misspellings and other mistakes,wrote The Times. People with Twit-ter accounts like Grammar Fail,Grammar Hero and Word Policeoften give intense feedback to otherusers.“I don’t want to get them worked

up,” Tom Voirol, who runs theTwenglish Police from his home inSydney, Australia, told The Times.“I just want to point things out.”In the middle of all the digital

noise is another bastion of eti-quette: a lettered set that lives andbreathes by the hand-written andhand-engraved. Some are social as-pirants, others just like the feel of anartisan’s hand. They favor luxurystationery made with hand-cutdies and a variety of fonts and ink

shades. Demsey & Carroll, foundedin 1878, sells to these stationeryaficionados at high prices: $350 for100 notecards; $500 for tissue-linedenvelopes tomatch.“I really think about who I’m

writing to and what they would ap-preciate,” Elizabeth Mayhew, a life-style expert, told The Times. “Thatprocess is such a different emphasis from writing a quick e-mail.”Pamela Fiori, formerly the editor

of Town & Country magazine, toldThe Times: “In a world increasinglyuncivilized, it’s important that wehave some ties to tradition. And Ihonestly think that what we’re los-ing with e-mail are our memories.”But one can always consult the

Twitter archive to recover thosefleeting thoughts. ANITA PATIL

By MATT RICHTEL

San FranciSco

WHEN ONE OF the most important e-mail

messages of his life landed in his in-box a

few years ago, Kord Campbell managed to

overlook it.

Not just for a day or two, but 12 days. He finally saw

it while sifting through old messages: a big company

wanted to buy his Internet start-up.

“I stood up from my desk and said, ‘Oh my God, oh

my God, oh my God,’ ” Mr. Campbell said. “It’s kind

of hard to miss an e-mail like that, but I did.”

The message had slipped by him amid an elec-

tronic flood: two computer screens alive with e-mail,

instant messages, online chats, a Web browser and

the computer code he was writing.

While he managed to salvage the $1.3 million deal

after apologizing to his suitor, Mr. Campbell contin-

ues to struggle with the effects of the deluge of data.

Even after he unplugs, he craves the stimulation he

gets from his electronic gadgets. He forgets things

like dinner plans, and he has trouble focusing on his

family.

His wife, Brenda, complains, “It seems like he can

no longer be fully in the moment.”

Y&u' B'"$% &% C&mpu)#'(

Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls and

other incoming information can change how people

MICHELLE LITVIN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Studies find that people hooked on gadgets and multitasking may suffer more stress and have difficulty ignoring irrelevant information. The Thakkar family at home.

The Sincerest Forms of Expression

Continued on Page IV

III VII VIIIworld trends

In Afghanistan,

rule of the gun.

health & fitness

Alzheimer’s stalks

a Colombian family.

arts & stYles

Turkey’s divisions, on

display in museums.

As Gadgets Take Over, Focus Falters

Repubblica NewYork

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ii MONDAY, JUNE 14, 2010

Direttore responsabile: EzioMauro

Vicedirettori: Gregorio Botta,

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Caporedattore centrale: Fabio Bogo

Caporedattore vicario:

MassimoVincenzi

Gruppo Editoriale l’Espresso S.p.A.

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•

Supplemento a cura di: Alix Van Buren,

FrancescoMalgaroli

When the going gets tough, the

tough take accounting. When the job

market worsens, many students fig-

ure they can’t indulge in an English

or a history major. They have to study

something that will lead to a job.

So it is almost inevitable that over

the next few years, as labor markets

struggle, the humanities will continue

their long slide. Once the stars of uni-

versity life, humanities now play bit

roles. The labs are more glamorous

than the libraries.

But allow me to stand up for the his-

tory, English and art classes, even in

the face of today’s economic realities.

Studying the humanities improves

your ability to read and write. You will

have enormous power if you are the

person in the office who can write a

clear and concise memo.

Studying the humanities will give

you a familiarity with the language

of emotion. Very few people have the

ability to create a great brand: the

iPod. Branding involves the location

and arousal of affection, and you can’t

do it unless you are conversant in the

language of romance.

Studying the humanities will give

you a wealth of analogies. People think

by comparison — Iraq is either like

Vietnam or Bosnia; your boss is like

NarcissusorSolon.Peoplewhohavea

wealth of analogies in their minds can

think more precisely than those with

few analogies..

Finally, and most importantly,

studying the humanities helps you be-

friend The Big Shaggy.

Let me try to explain. Over the past

century or so, people have built vari-

ous systems to help them understand

humanbehavior: economics, political

science,game theoryandevolutionary

psychology. These systems are use-

ful in many circumstances. But none

completely explain behavior because

people have yearnings and fears that

reside in an inner beast you could call

The Big Shaggy.

You can see The Big Shaggy at work

when self-destructive overconfidence

overtakes oil engineers in the gulf,

when go-go enthusiasm intoxicates

investment bankers or when bone-

chilling distrust grips politics.

Those are the destructive sides of

The Big Shaggy. But this tender beast

is also responsible for the fierce deter-

mination that drives the soldiers in Af-

ghanistan to risk death for buddies or

a family they may never see again.

The observant person goes through

life asking: Where did that come from?

Why did he or she act that way?

The answers are hard to come by

because the behavior emanates from

deep inside The Big Shaggy.

Technical knowledge stops at the

outer edge. If you spend your life rid-

ing the links of the Internet, you proba-

bly won’t get too far into The Big Shag-

gy either, because the fast, effortless

prose of blogging (and journalism)

lacks the heft to get you deep below.

But over the centuries, there have

been rare and strange people who pos-

sessed the skill of taking the upheav-

als of thought that emanate from The

Big Shaggy and representing them in

the form of story, music, myth, paint-

ing, liturgy, architecture, sculpture,

landscape and speech. They left rich

veins of emotional knowledge that are

the subjects of the humanities.

It’s probably dangerous to enter ex-

clusively into this realm and risk being

caught in a cloister, removed from the

market and its accountability.

But doesn’t it make sense to spend

some time in the company of these

languages — learning to feel differ-

ent emotions, experiencing different

sacred rituals and learning to see in

differentways?

If you’re dumb about The Big Shag-

gy, you’ll probably get eaten by it.

BP’s calamitous behavior in the

Gulf of Mexico is the big oil story of

the moment. But for many years,

indigenous people from a formerly

pristine region of the Amazon rain-

forest in Ecuador have been trying

to get relief from an American com-

pany, Texaco (which later merged

with Chevron), for what has been

described as the largest oil-related

environmental catastropheever.

“As horrible as the gulf spill has

been, what happened in the Amazon

was worse,” said Jonathan Abady, a

New York lawyer who is part of the

legal team that is suing Chevron on

behalf of the rainforest inhabitants.

It has been a long and ugly legal

fight and the outcome is uncertain.

But what has happened in the rain-

forest is heartbreaking, although it

has not gotten nearly the coverage

that the BP spill has.

What’s not in dispute is that Texa-

co operated more than 300 oil wells

for the better part of three decades in

a vast swath of Ecuador’s northern

Amazon region, just south of the bor-

der with Colombia. Much of that area

has been horribly polluted. The lives

and culture of the local inhabitants,

who fished in the intricate water-

ways and cultivated the land as their

ancestors had done for generations,

have been upended in ways that have

led to widespread misery.

Texaco came barreling into this

delicate ancient landscape in the

early 1960s with all the subtlety and

grace of an invading army. And when

it left in 1992, it left behind, accord-

ing to the lawsuit, widespread toxic

contamination that devastated the

livelihoods and traditions of the local

people, and took a severe toll on their

physicalwell-being.

A brief filed by the plaintiffs said:

“It deliberately dumped many bil-

lions of gallons of waste byproduct

from oil drilling directly into the

rivers and streams of the rainforest

covering an area the size of Rhode

Island. It gouged more than 900 un-

lined waste pits out of the jungle floor

— pits which to this day leach toxic

waste into soils and groundwater. It

burned hundreds of millions of cubic

feet of gas and waste oil into the at-

mosphere, poisoning the air and cre-

ating ‘black rain’ which inundated

the area during thunderstorms.”

The quest for oil is, by its nature,

colossally destructive. And the

riches to be made are so vastly cor-

rupting that governments refuse to

impose the kinds of rigid oversight

and safeguards that would mitigate

the damage to the environment and

its human and animal inhabitants.

Pick your venue. The families

whose lives and culture depend upon

the intricate web of waterways along

the Gulf Coast of the United States

are in a bind similar to that of the in-

digenous people zapped by nonstop

oil spills and the oil-related pollution

in the Ecuadorean rainforest. Both

havebeen treatedcontemptuously.

The oil companies don’t care. Shell

can’t wait to begin drilling in the Arc-

tic Ocean off Alaska. The companies

pretend that the spills won’t happen.

They always say that their drilling

operations are safe.

Their assurances mean nothing.

President Obama has temporarily

halted the so-called Arctic oil rush.

What we’ve learned from the BP de-

bacle in the gulf, and from the rain-

forest, and so many other places, is

just how reckless the oil companies

can bewhenit comes to safeguarding

life, health and the environment.

They’re dangerous. They need the

most stringent kind of oversight, and

swift and severe sanctions for seri-

ous wrongdoing. At the same time,

we need to be searching with a much,

much greater sense of urgency for vi-

ableenergyalternatives.

Chevron doesn’t believe it should

be called to account for any of the

sins Texaco may have committed. A

spokesman said that the allegations

of environmental damage were wild-

ly overstated and that even if Texaco

had caused some pollution, it had

cleaned it up and reached an agree-

ment with the Ecuadorean govern-

ment that precluded further liability.

The indigenous residents may be

suffering but the Chevron-Texaco

crowd feels real good about itself.

The big money was made, and the

trash was left behind.

bob herberT

Disaster in the Amazon

david brooks

History

For Dollars

By the time I met the poet Andrei

Voznesensky in the early 1980’s, he

was in that limbo in authoritarian

societies reserved for forces too pow-

erful to destroy but too dangerous to

let loose.

His poetry was quietly published.

He traveled abroad. At his wooden

dacha in the renowned writer’s vil-

lage of Peredelkino outside Moscow,

he and his writer wife, Zoya Bogus-

lavskaya, openly received foreign-

ers.

Hestruck me as anything buta reb-

el. He was more the country gentle-

man,. But it had not been all that long

since he was one of the “shestidesiat-

niki,” the generation of the ’60s, who

sprouted in the cultural “thaw” that

Nikita Khrushchev opened with his

denunciation of Stalin in 1956. Almost

instantly, brilliant shoots unfurled

through the cracks in the ice — poets,

writers, painters and musicians who

seemed to instantly pick up where

their silenced, cowed or murdered

predecessors had left off.

Mr. Voznesensky, who died on

June 1 at age 77, was part of a clutch

of young poets — Yevgeny Yevtush-

enko, Robert Rozhdestvensky, Bella

Akhmadulina — who packed stadi-

ums.

Their poems, like those of the

revolutionary poet Vladimir Maya-

kovsky, were not for literary salons.

They were meant to be performed

in public, before agitated throngs.

They were at once freewheeling,

ironic, muscular, emotional, jocular,

radical, controversial and invariably

thrilling.

“We had an urge to shout at the top

of our voices,” Voznesensky wrote

years later. “The ’60s found them-

selves in the synthesis of the world

and the stage, the poet and the ac-

tor.”

The thaw sent Mr. Voznesensky

frequently to the West, where he was

lionized as a harbinger of a new,post-

Stalin Russia. But the staid, brutish

party chieftains back home were not

so charmed, and before long Khrush-

chev ended the thaw as abruptly as

he had started it. Mr. Voznesensky

was his exhibit No. 1 at the celebrated

reception in 1963 at which Khrush-

chev vented his rage at the artists.

But the true writer in the Soviet

Union never lost moral power. “The

poet is two people,” Mr. Voznesensky

once said. “One is an insignificant

person, leading the most insignifi-

cant of lives. But behind him, like an

echo, is the other person who writes

poetry. Sometimes the two coexist.

Sometimes they collide; this is why

certain poets have tragic ends.”

He certainly knew of what he

spoke. As the ’60s faded into history,

it became fashionable to view the

“shestidesiatniki” as quislings, to

scoff at their populism and their qua-

si-official status. But the person in

Mr. Voznesensky who wrote poetry

reached deep into Russian hearts.

His poem “A Million Red Roses,”

put to music and sung by Alla Pu-

gacheva, helped create her vast

popularity.

By the time he died, Mr. Voznesen-

sky had been heaped high with awards

anddistinctions.His deathprompted

a predictable outpouring of tributes

from Russia and around the world. I

was especially struck by one from a

blogger named Gerasim, evidently a

man of the ’60s himself, in response to

someone who had lamented that the

last of Russia’s spiritual and moral

guideposts were dying off.

“Very convenient!” scoffed

Gerasim. “So they’re the guilty ones.

They died, you see, and took the

guidepostswith them.”

He added: “No, brother! It won’t

work that way. People rejected their

guideposts themselves, while they

were still alive. And these same peo-

ple, if they want to, can bring them

back.”

serge sChmemaNN

Poets, Dictators and Faded History

MOISES SAMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Much of the area in Ecuador’s northern Amazon where Texaco operated oil wells has been polluted, like this river.

AppleAnd the RegulatorsMobile computers like Apple’s iP-

hone and iPad are among the most

transformative information de-

vices since the personal computer.

So it makes sense for the Federal

Trade Commission and the Jus-

tice Department to review Apple’s

policies governing programmers’

access to its devices to see if they

violateantitrust laws.

When it introduced the iPad, Ap-

ple rewrote its agreement with de-

velopers of computer applications

— known as apps — that run on

its devices. Before, programmers

could write apps using third-party

platforms.

Apple now wants developers to

write apps specifically for its gad-

gets. The company also changed

its terms of agreement with de-

velopers to prohibit them from us-

ing software from third parties to

“send Device Data to a third party

forprocessingoranalysis.”

Apple argues that these changes

are legitimate efforts to offer con-

sumers a flawless experience on

its devices. Apple said the ban on

sharing data with other programs

was a way to protect the privacy of

iPhone and iPad users.

Yet regulators are concerned

about Apple’s pattern of behavior.

The Justice Department is also in-

vestigating whether Apple is abus-

ing its dominance in the digital mu-

sic market to punish labels that do

business deals with rivals.

The question is whether Apple’s

policies lock rivals out of new

markets.Regulatorshavetodecide

whether the ban on third-party pro-

gramming platforms is an effort to

hinder development of apps for sys-

tems like Google’s Android.

For its tactics to violate antitrust

laws, Apple would need to possess

what is known as a “dominant”

market share. But Apple controls

only about a quarter of the smart-

phonemarket..

It is not obvious how the market

should be defined, however. There

are about four times as many ap-

plications written for Apple as for

Android devices. And experts es-

timate that Apple accounted for

virtually all the roughly 2.5 billion

app downloads last year. Antitrust

regulators are right to look into

whether the company is leverag-

ing this clout to stymie the develop-

ment of applications for its rivals,

closing thedooroncompetition.

No company should be allowed to

simply wall off a market. It is up to

antitrust regulators to ensure that

competitionprevails.

Repubblica NewYork

wor ld t r ends

MONDAY, JUNE 14, 2010 III

By SIMON ROMERO

BOGOTÁ,Colombia —The person-nel file compiled by the RevolutionaryArmed Forces of Colombia on Guer-rilla No. 608372 seems mundane atfirst.It says she was born on February

13, 1978, taught languages in Pereira and Manizales, and in 2002 joined theAntonio Nariño urban cell in Bogotá, from which she received explosivestraining. A photograph shows an al-luring young woman in a beret. Nom de guerre: Alexandra.But as a cache of documents cap-

tured by Colombian security forcesfrom a guerrilla redoubt in 2009 con-firms, this was no ordinary rebel.The file is a new piece of the puzzlesurrounding the woman, whose real name is Tanja Nijmeijer and who iscapturing the imagination of her ad-opted land, Colombia, and her homecountry, theNetherlands.“She’s one of the most fascinating

figures in our long war, present atmany of its critical junctures overthe last decade,’’ said León Valen-cia, a former guerrilla and one of the authors of a new book about Ms. Ni-

jmeijer.The book and a separate documen-

tary, which was broadcast last monthon Dutch television, are adding to Ms.Nijmeijer’s complex tale, contending that the Dutch-born guerrilla is notonly alive but has risen to the innercircle of the rebel group, known as theFARC.Raised in the village of Denekamp

in the north of the Netherlands, Ms.Nijmeijer took up radical politics asa student of Spanish in Groningen.From there she went in search of ad-venture a decade ago to Colombia,then in the throes of the ugly war.After a short while, she chose a side, joined the FARC and in 2003 vanishedinto Colombia’s jungles.The world might never have heard

of Ms. Nijmeijer, now 32. But Co-

lombian soldiers found her diaries,handwritten in Dutch, in a FARCcamp raided in 2007, which caused asensation here that year, offering arare window into daily life within the FARC.In some entries, she described the

boredom of the guerrillas, living inthe hinterlands. In others, she longed for her family in the Netherlands. Inyet others she described her sexualescapades with fellow rebels, whilelambasting the domination of female recruits by male commanders.Throughout her writings, she

touched repeatedly on a theme thatseemed to vex the rebels themselves:whether they stood foranythingany-more, having evolved from their ide-alistic origins into a force that com-fortably financed itself from the drug trade and survived by kidnappings,extortion and the forced recruitment of children as combatants.“How will it be when we take pow-

er?’’Ms. Nijmeijer wrote. “The wivesof the commanders in Ferrari TestaRossas with breast implants eatingcaviar?”Not much was heard from Ms. Ni-

jmeijer after the disclosure of herwritings, save for a video from 2005obtained by Colombian officials andbroadcast here. The images showedher in fatigues, flashing a smile andasking her parents to forgive herfor disappearing into this country’swar.FARC leaders have recognized

that the tale of their Dutch combat-ant might hold some allure for otheridealists.“It goes without saying that she’s

beautiful,’’ the FARC boasted on itsWeb site last month. “She also speaksEnglish, Spanish and Dutch. But, it’s surprising how modest she is! Thatmust be because she comes from afamily that worked on the land. She’s proud of that heritage.’’

By MATT BAI

WASHINGTON — President Obama is that rare politician who is also a gifted writer, and he under-stands the power of a good metaphor. So you had to believe, on some level at least, that the president could ap-preciate the poetic significance of that cloud of oil, ubiquitous on cable television, spewing endlessly from a 1,500-meter-deep puncture in the Gulf of Mexico. Mr. Obama’s admin-istration, too, had been breached, and the accumulating cloud threatened to obscure its considerable achieve-ments — particularly the compre-hensive reforms of health care and federal education spending — as the president heads toward the halfway point in his term.The man-made catastrophe in the

gulf does not yet constitute an exis-tential threat to Mr. Obama’s presi-dency. (There’s not much Mr. Obama can do about it at this point, anyway.) But then, it is never really one crisis that diminishes a president as much as a succession of crises, avoidable or not. And this might be the real danger for Mr. Obama’s administra-tion — not that the spill itself remains unmanageable, but that it comes to represent a pattern in the public mind, a sense that too many dangers at once (mines and foreign economies collapsing, possible war on the Ko-rean peninsula) seem to be gushing beyond his reach.As much as we talk about ideology

and competence, our judgment of presidents doesn’t hinge on either of these things in isolation. What mat-ters is the perception — or perhaps the illusion — that one is shaping events, rather than being shaped by them. The modern presidency is about chaos versus control.George W. Bush was undone, dur-

ing his second term, not only by a sluggish economy or the failure to find biological weapons in Iraq, but also by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the cascade of unsettling headlines about bird flu and failing banks, suicide bombers and Korean missiles. This stood in contrast to his predecessor, Bill Clinton, who could not have done more to sink his own presidency had he tried, but who left office with strong approval ratings nonetheless — in part because of a surging economy, but also because he seemed at his most commanding when unpredictable crises threat-ened toundermineour collectivesense of order.Political chaos theory has always

been integral to the American presi-dency. And yet a president’s ability to confront chaos seems more central to the office now than it was, say, a half-century ago, when almost no one blamed Dwight Eisenhower for al-lowing quiz show scandals or Missis-sippi tornadoes to go unchecked. On a deeper level, we may be react-

ing to our own lack of control. For about 40 years, Americans have been trying to negotiate an increasingly unstable economic and cultural land-scape. The chaos is all around us, and what we ask of a president, increas-ingly, is to somehow use the instru-ments of government to rein it in.Mr. Obama seems to find it particu-

larly hard to adjust to this role, per-haps because he has always defined himself as an outsider to Washington — someone who would reform gov-ernment, but not necessarily master its inner workings.The problem here for Mr. Obama is

that, almost 18 months after assum-ing office, he still seems to regard himself as something of an intellectu-al critic of government. The transition is long behind us, which means the president embodies thegovernmenthe once assailed and is held account-able, fairly or not, for its failures.

By DEXTER FILKINS

TIRIN KOT, Afghanistan — Themost powerful man in this aridstretch of southern Afghanistan isnot the provincial governor, nor thepolice chief, nor even the commanderof the Afghan Army.It is Matiullah Khan, the head of a

private army that earns millions ofdollars guarding NATO supply con-voys and fights Taliban insurgentsalongside American Special Forces.In little more than two years, Mr.

Matiullah, an illiterate former high-way patrol commander, has grownstronger than the government ofOruzgan Province, not only supplant-ing its role in providing security butusurping its other functions, his rivalssay, like appointing public employeesand doling out government largess.His fighters run missions with Ameri-can Special Forces officers, and whenAfghan officials have confronted him,he has either rebuffed them or hadthemremoved.“Oruzgan used to be the worst

place in Afghanistan, and now it’s thesafest,’’ Mr. Matiullah said in an in-terview in his compound here, where supplicants gather each day to payhomage and seek money and help.“What should we do? The officials arecowards and thieves.”Mr. Matiullah is one of several semi-

official warlords who have emergedacross Afghanistan in recent months,as American and NATO officers tryto bolster — and sometimes even sup-plant — ineffective regular Afghanforces in their battle against the Tali-ban insurgency.In some cases, these strongmen

have restored order, though at theprice of undermining the very insti-tutions Americans are seeking tobuild: government structures likepolice forces and provincial adminis-trations that one day are supposed to be strong enough to allow the Ameri-cans and other troops to leave.For the Americans, who are racing

to secure the country against a dead-line set by President Barack Obama, the emergence of such strongmenis seen as a lesser evil, despite howcompromised many of them are. InMr. Matiullah’s case, American com-manders appear to have set aside re-ports thatheconniveswith bothdrugsmugglers and Taliban insurgents.“The institutions of the govern-

ment, in security and military terms, are not yet strong enough to be able toprovide security,” saidMajor Gener-al Nick Carter, commander of NATO

forces in southern Afghanistan. “But the situation is unsustainable andclearly needs to be resolved.”Many Afghans say the Americans

and their NATO partners are mak-ing a grave mistake by tolerating orencouraging warlords like Mr. Mat-iullah. These Afghans fear the Amer-icans will leave behind an Afghangovernment too weak to do its work,and strongmen without any popularsupport.“Matiullah isan illiterateguyusing

the government for his own interest,”said Mohammed Essa, a tribal leaderin Tirin Kot, the Oruzgan provincialcapital. “Once the Americans leave,

he won’t last. And then what will wehave?”Mr.Matiullah’s army is an unusual

hybrid: a booming private businessand a government-subsidized mili-tia.His main effort — and his biggest

money maker — is securing the cha-otic highway linking Kandahar toTirin Kot for NATO convoys. One day each week, Mr. Matiullah declaresthe 160-kilometer highway open anddeploys his gunmen up and down it.The highway cuts through an areathick with Taliban insurgents.Mr. Matiullah keeps the highway

safe, and he is paid well to do it. Hiscompany charges each NATO cargotruck $1,200 for safe passage, or $800 for smaller ones, his aides say. His in-come, according to one of his aides, is $2.5 million a month, an astronomicalsum in a country as impoverished as this one.Mr. Matiullah’s militia has been

adopted by American Special Forces officers to gather intelligence andfight insurgents. Mr. Matiullah’scompound sits about 90 meters from the American Special Forces com-pound in Tirin Kot. A Special Forces

officer said his unit had an extensive relationship with Mr. Matiullah.“Matiullah is the best there is here,”the officer said.Along the highway linking Kanda-

har and Tirin Kot, many of Mr. Mat-iullah’s soldiers drive Afghan policetrucks and wear Afghan police uni-forms. Posters of Mr. Matiullah areplastered to their windshields.‘‘There is no doubt about it — the

people of Oruzgan love Matiullah!’’said Fareed Ayel, one of Mr. Matiul-lah’s officers on the route.

But there are doubts about Mr.Matiullah. Despite his relationship tothe Special Forces, Mr. Matiullah hasbeen suspected of drug smugglingand playing a double game with theTaliban. An American military offi-cer who initially confirmed this more recently said Mr. Matiullah was now regarded as a trusted ally.At a recent meeting inside the

American Special Forces compound here, Mr. Matiullah was approached by an elderly Afghan beggar. Mr.Matiullah pulled a wad of money out of his pocket.‘‘Long live Matiullah, you are the

best,’’ the old man said.

Militia Boss Holds True Power in Afghan Area

A female guerrilla writes of boredom, sex and idealism.

A Dutch Rebel in the Jungles of Colombia

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

Tanja Nijmeijer joined a rebel band in Colombia in 2002.

news analysIs

For Obama,

Perception Part

Of the Problem

Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ADAM FERGUSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Oruzgan Province in Afghanistan is effectively under the control of Matiullah Khan, an illiterate former highway patrol commander, left. Members of his militia staff highway security posts.

Repubblica NewYork

wor ld t r ends

iv MONDAY, JUNE 14, 2010

Task performance with and without distractions

Time to perform tasks In milliseconds

The Cost of Multitasking

When multiple distractions are present, the difference in performance between light and heavy multitaskers is statistically significant.

Sources: Eyal Ophir and Clifford Nass, Stanford University THE NEW YORK TIMES

Number of distractions

0 Repeating thesame task

Switching to anew task

2.00 units 1,500

Heavy multitaskers don’t perform as well as light multitaskers when faced with distractions.

Heavy multitaskers are also signifi-cantly slower than light multitaskers when switching between tasks.

1.75

1.50

1.25

1.00

1,200

900

600

300

0

LIGHT

MULTITASKERS

HEAVY

MULTITASKERS

HEAVY

MULTITASKERS

LIGHT

2 4 6

Task performance with and without distractions

Time to perform tasks In milliseconds

The Cost of Multitasking

When multiple distractions are present, the difference in performance between light and heavy multitaskers is statistically significant.

Sources: Eyal Ophir and Clifford Nass, Stanford University THE NEW YORK TIMES

Number of distractions

0 Repeating thesame task

Switching to anew task

2.00 units 1,500

Heavy multitaskers don’t perform as well as light multitaskers when faced with distractions.

Heavy multitaskers are also signifi-cantly slower than light multitaskers when switching between tasks.

1.75

1.50

1.25

1.00

1,200

900

600

300

0

LIGHT

MULTITASKERS

HEAVY

MULTITASKERS

HEAVY

MULTITASKERS

LIGHT

2 4 6

think and behave. They say our abilityto focus is being undermined by burstsof information.These play to a primitive impulse to

respond to immediate opportunitiesand threats. The stimulation provokesexcitement — a dopamine squirt —that researchers say can be addictive. In its absence, people feel bored.The resulting distractions can

have deadly consequences, as whencellphone-wielding drivers and trainengineers cause wrecks. And for mil-lions of people like Mr. Campbell, theseurgescan inflict nicks andcuts on cre-ativity and deep thought, interruptingwork and family life.While many people say multitask-

ing makes them more productive, re-search shows otherwise. Heavy mul-titaskers actually have more troublefocusing and shutting out irrelevantinformation, scientists say, and theyexperiencemore stress.And scientists are discovering that

even after the multitasking ends, frac-tured thinking and lack of focus per-sist. In other words, this is also yourbrain off computers.“The technology is rewiring our

brains,” said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuseand one of the world’s leading brainscientists. She and other researcherscompare the lure of digital stimulationless to that of drugs and alcohol than tofood and sex, which are essential butcounterproductive in excess.Technology use can benefit the

brain in some ways, researchers say.Imaging studies show the brains ofInternet users become more efficientat finding information. And players of some video games develop better vi-sual acuity.More broadly, cellphones and com-

puters have transformed life. They let people escape their cubicles and work anywhere. They shrink distancesand handle countless mundane tasks, freeing up time for more exciting pur-suits.For better or worse, the consump-

tion of media, as varied as e-mail and TV, has exploded. In 2008, people con-sumed three times as much informa-tion each day as they did in 1960. Andthey are constantly shifting theirattention. Computer users at workchange windows or check e-mail orother programs nearly 37 times anhour, new research shows.The nonstop interactivity is one of

the most significant shifts ever in thehuman environment, said Adam Gaz-zaley, a neuroscientist at the Univer-sity of California, San Francisco.“We are exposing our brains to an

environment and asking them to dothings we weren’t necessarily evolvedto do,” he said. “We know alreadythereare consequences.”Mr. Campbell, 43, came of age with

the personal computer, and he is aheavier user of technology than most. But researchers say the habits andstruggles of Mr. Campbell and hisfamily typify what many experience— and what many more will, if trends continue.For him, the tensions feel increas-

ingly acute, and the effects harder toget rid of.The Campbells recently moved to

California from Oklahoma to start asoftware venture. Mr. Campbell’s life revolves aroundcomputers.He goes to sleep with a laptop or iP-

hone on his chest, and when he wakes, he goes online. He and Mrs. Campbell,39, head to the tidy kitchen in theirfour-bedroom hillside rental in Orin-da, an affluent suburb of San Fran-cisco, where she makes breakfast and watches a TV news feed in the corner of the computer screen while he usesthe rest of the monitor to check his e-mail.Major spats have arisen because Mr.

Campbell escapes into video gamesduring tough emotional stretches.On family vacations, he has troubleputting down his devices. When herides the subway to San Francisco, he knows he will be offline 221 seconds as the train goes through a tunnel.Their 16-year-old son, Connor, tall

and polite like his father, recently re-ceived his first C’s, which his familyblames on distraction by his gadgets.Their 8-year-old daughter, Lily, likeher mother, playfully tells her fatherthat he favors technology over family.“I would love for him to totally un-

plug, to be totally engaged,” says Mrs. Campbell, who adds that he becomes“crotchety until he gets his fix.” Butshe would not try to force a change.“He loves it. Technology is part of

the fabric of who he is,” she says. “IfI hated technology, I’d be hating him, and a part of who my son is too.”

A$)ay' o%

At home, people consume 12 hours ofmedia a day on average, when an hour spent with, say, the Internet and TVsimultaneously counts as two hours.That compares with five hours in 1960,say researchers at the University ofCalifornia, San Diego. Computer usersvisit an average of 40 Web sites a day, according toresearchbyRescueTime,which offers time-management tools.As computers have changed, so

has the understanding of the humanbrain. Until 15 years ago, scientiststhought the brain stopped developing

after childhood. Now they understandthat its neural networks continue todevelop.So not long after Eyal Ophir arrived

at Stanford University in California in 2004, he wondered whether heavy mul-titasking might be leading to changes in a characteristic of the brain longthought immutable: that humans can process only a single stream of infor-mation at a time.Going back a half-century, tests

had shown that the brain could barely process two streams, and could notsimultaneously make decisions about them. But Mr. Ophir, thought multi-taskers might be rewiring themselvesto handle the load.His passion was personal. He had

spent seven years in Israeli intelli-gence after being weeded out of the airforce — partly, he felt, because he was not a good multitasker. Could his brainbe retrained?Mr. Ophir, like others studying how

technology bent the brain, was star-tled by what he discovered.

th" My(h &f Mu$(#(a'k#%g

The test subjects were divided intotwo groups: those classified as heavy multitaskers based on their answersto questions about how they used tech-nology, and those who were not.In a test created by Mr. Ophir and

his colleagues, subjects at a computer were briefly shown an image of redrectangles. Then they saw a similarimage and were asked whether anyof the rectangles had moved. It wasa simple task until the addition of atwist: blue rectangles were added, andthe subjects were told to ignore them.The multitaskers then did a signifi-

cantly worse job than the non-multi-taskers at recognizing whether redrectangles had changed position. Inother words, they had trouble filter-ing out the blue ones — the irrelevantinformation.So, too, the multitaskers took lon-

ger than non-multitaskers to switchamong tasks, likedifferentiatingvow-els from consonants. The multitaskerswere shown to be less efficient at jug-gling problems. Other tests at Stanford, an impor-

tant center for research in this fast-

growing field, showed multitaskerstended to search for new informationrather than accept a reward for put-ting older, more valuable information to work.Researchers say these findings

point to an interesting dynamic: mul-titaskers seem more sensitive thannon-multitaskers to incoming infor-mation.The results also illustrate an age-old

conflict in the brain, one that technolo-gy may be intensifying. Aportionof thebrain acts as a control tower, helping a person focus and set priorities. Moreprimitive parts of the brain, like those that process sight and sound, demand that it pay attention to new informa-tion, bombarding the control towerwhen theyare stimulated.Researchers say there is an evo-

lutionary rationale for the pressurethis barrage puts on the brain. Thelower-brain functions alert humansto danger, like a nearby lion, overrid-ing goals like building a hut. In themodern world, the chime of incoming e-mail can override the goal of writinga business plan or playing catch withthe children.“Throughout evolutionary history,

a big surprise would get everyone’sbrain thinking,” said Clifford Nass,a communications professor at Stan-ford. “But we’ve got a large and grow-ing group of people who think theslightest hint that something interest-ing might be going on is like catnip.They can’t ignore it.”Mr. Ophir is loath to call the cogni-

tive changes bad or good, though theimpact on analysis and creativity wor-ries him.And he is not just worried about

other people. Recently he began using an iPhone and noticed a change; hefelt its pull, even when playing with hisdaughter.“The media is changing me,” he

said. “I hear this internal ping thatsays: check e-mail and voice mail.“I have to work to suppress it.”Mr. Nass at Stanford thinks the ul-

timate risk of heavy technology use is that it diminishes empathy.“The way we become more human is

by paying attention to each other,” he said. “It shows how much you care.”

By TARA PARKER-POPE

Are your Facebook friends more in-teresting than those you have in reallife?Has high-speed Internet made you

impatient with slow-speed children? Do you sometimes reach for the fast-

forward button, only to realize that lifedoes not come with a remote control?If you answered yes to any of those

questions,exposuretotechnologymaybe slowly reshaping your personality. Some experts believe excessive useof the Internet, cellphones and othertechnologies can cause us to becomemore impatient, impulsive, forgetfuland even more narcissistic.“More and more, life is resembling

the chat room,” says Dr. Elias Abou-jaoude, director of the Impulse Control

Disorders Clinic at Stanford Universi-ty in California. “We’re paying a price in terms of our cognitive life becauseof this virtual lifestyle.”Some studies have suggested that

excessive dependence on cellphonesand the Internet is akin to an addiction.Web sites like NetAddiction.com offer self-assessment tests to determine iftechnology has become a drug. Do youneglect housework to spend more timeonline? Are you frequently checkingyour e-mail? If you answered “often”or “always,” technology may be takinga toll on you.Typically, the concern about our de-

pendence on technology is that it de-tracts from our time with family andfriends in the real world. But psycholo-gistshavebecome intriguedby a more

subtle and insidious effect of our onlineinteractions. It may be that the imme-diacy of the Internet, the efficiency of the iPhone and the anonymity of thechat room change the core of who weare, issues that Dr. Aboujaoude ex-plores in a book, “Virtually You: TheInternet and the Fracturing of theSelf,” to be released next year. Dr. Aboujaoude also asks whether

the vast storage available in e-mailand on the Internet is causing us to re-tain many old and unnecessary mem-ories at the expense of making newones. Everything is saved these days, he notes, from the meaningless e-mailsent after a work lunch to the angryonline exchange with a spouse. “If you can’t forget because all this

stuff is staring at you, what does that

do to your ability to lay down newmemories and remember things thatyou should be remembering?” Dr.Aboujaoude said. “When you have 500 pictures from your vacation in yourFlickr account, as opposed to five pic-tures that are really meaningful, does that change your ability to recall themoments you really want to recall?”Nicholas Carr, author of the book

“The Shallows: What the Internet IsDoing to Our Brains,” says that social and family responsibilities, work and other pressures influence our use oftechnology. “Thedeeper a technologyis woven into the patterns of every-day life, the less choice we have about whether and how we use that technol-ogy,” he wrote in a recent blog post.Some experts suggest simply try-

ing to curtail the amount of time youspendonline.The International Center for Media

and the Public Agenda at the Univer-sity of Maryland asked 200 studentsto refrain from using electronic media for a day. The reports from studentsafter the study suggest that giving up technology suddenly and completelychanges our ability to connect withothers.“Texting and I.M.’ing my friends

gives me a constant feeling of com-fort,” wrote one student. “When I didnot have those two luxuries, I felt quitealone and secluded from my life. Al-though I go to a school with thousands of students, the fact that I was not able to communicate with anyone via tech-nology was almost unbearable.”

From Page I

As Gadgets Take Over,Users’ Focus Falters

CHANG W. LEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Technology’s Ugly Toll: Impatience, Forgetfulness and Near-Addiction

KordCampbell with his children, Lily, 8, and Connor, 16. Screens big and small are central to the family’s leisure time.

Repubblica NewYork

money & b u s i n e s s

MONDAY, JUNE 14, 2010 V

By MICHELINE MAYNARD

Business travel has often beendepicted with a dash of style and ad-venture. Think of Eva Marie Saint in“North by Northwest,” the variousJames Bond movies, or George Cloo-ney in “Up in the Air.”Boarding a railcar, ocean liner or jet

seemed to be a reward in itself.Tell that to today’s typical traveler,

who takes a bus to the airport, pays ex-travagantly for a sack of takeout food before boarding the plane and toteseverything from laptop to a change of socks in a single bag.This is the state of business travel in

the middle of 2010. The good news for the industry, analysts say, is that com-panies are finally spending on travelagain after a tough year and a half. Butfor now, the emphasis is on putting off the Ritz.When and if the comforts of the past

return depends mostly on how muchbusinesses are willing to spend andwhat concessions they can wring outof airlines, whose profits now depend on charging for amenities as basic as pillows.Despite technologythatallowstrav-

elers to book a ticket online, check in ata kiosk and even slide a bag through a screening machine without removing their computer, delays, added costsand crowds are now a normal part ofthe experience.“Companies are not saying, ‘It’s O.K.

to stay at the Ritz.’ They are keeping a very keen eye on expenses because of

any unforeseen circumstance,” saidHenry H. Harteveldt, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Re-search.On her most recent trip to London,

Meredith E. Rutledge, an assistantcurator at the Rock and Roll Hall ofFame in Cleveland who often sets out in search of valuable memorabilia,combined three activities that in thepast might have called for individualvisits.She hunted for new artifacts for the

hall’s sprawling displays; collectedcostumes worn by the Supremes from a museum in Newcastle, England, for shipment back to Cleveland, and metwith members of the Hollies and AB-BA to prepare for the bands’ inductionin March.Instead of booking a hotel, however,

Ms. Rutledge stayed with family, and instead of cabs she used the subway to get around town.A new study by Forrester found that

about 10 percent fewer business travel-ers booking online are expected to hit the road in 2010 compared with 2008.That’s a significant improvement from2009, when business travel slumped by25 percent from 2008 in the throes oftherecession.Butbudgetsarestaying tight, the review of more than 4,000business travelers showed.More than half of those who re-

sponded said they expected theircompanies to spend the same amount in 2010 as they did last year, and an ad-ditional one-fourth of those companies

are continuing to scrutinize spendingfor ways to cut back.The scare caused by a terrorism inci-

dent on a plane trying to land in Detroitat Christmas and the ash cloud fromthe Icelandic volcano that snarled Eu-ropean travel in April “couldn’t havecome at a worse time, because we are finally seeing meaningful businesstravelers return to the skies,” Mr.Harteveldt said.

Those uncertainties are part of thereason companies are waiting as long as they can to approve travel and why business travelers are booking muchcloser to their travel dates than in the past.According to research by the Trav-

el Leaders Group, a national travelagency, almost all domestic trips arebooked within two weeks or less, and about three-quarters of international

travel is booked within three weeks or less.In an earlier time, those travelers

might have expected to pay higherprices than if they had booked sooner.

But travel Web sites have made itpossible to hunt for last-minute bar-gains, while corporate travel depart-ments are learning to bargain hardwith airlines, not just on fares but onperks.

By TANYA MOHN

Training to communicate across cultures has long been part of the preparation for executives moving overseas to work. But now, the training isincreasingly for employees who may never leavethe country, yet will work closely with companiesand people around the world.“Whether a multinational or a start-up busi-

ness out of a garage, everybody is global thesedays,” said Dean Foster, president of Dean Fos-ter Associates, an intercultural consultancy inNew York. “In today’s economy, there is no room for failure. Companies have to understand theculture they are working in from Day 1.”Mr. Foster recounted how an American busi-

nessman recently gave four antique clocks wrapped in white paper to a prospective client

in China. What the man did not realize, he said,was that the words in Mandarin for clock and thenumber four are similar to the word for death, andwhite is a funeral color in many Asian countries.“The symbolism was so powerful,” Mr. Fostersaid, that the man lost the deal.The military and foreign service have a tradi-

tion of preparing personnel and their families,but corporations “are really the newcomers,”said Anne P. Copeland, executive director of the Interchange Institute, a research and consultingorganization inBrookline,Massachusetts.Jill Kristal, a psychologist in Larchmont, New

York, began incorporating cross-cultural train-ing into her practice when she was an expatri-ate in London in the 1990s. She also started acompany, Transitional Learning Curves, which creates products — interactive books, calendars and card games — to help families communicate abroad. “Very often stuff goes unspoken. That’s when problems begin,” Dr. Kristal said. On a recent afternoon, a group of American

employees of Hollister Inc., a medical devicecompany, prepared for a business trip to Japan.In a five-hour session that included a traditionalJapanese meal, a trainer from Dean Foster Asso-ciates briefed them on cultural dining etiquette,business customs, socializing and developing a“global mind-set” when working with colleaguesabroad and after returning home.Mary Lucas, who oversees global human re-

sources for the health benefits company Aetna,said teams at service centers in Ireland andDubai had similar training that helped identifymajor differences, like a sense of urgency, thatwere impeding cooperation. Supervisors in Ire-land would ask staff members in Dubai to payclaims, but unless directions were explicitly pri-oritized, claims were not necessarily paid rightaway, Ms. Lucas said. Training “immediatelyraised awareness, which helped the teams bemuch more successful,” she said. Mr. Fosterrecently introduced a series of online tools foremployees who might not have time for formalcross-cultural training. “Culture Guides-to-Go” offer strategies for running successful meetings,conductingnegotiationsor brushing up on diningprotocol in more than 120 countries. Andrew P. Walker, vice president of global mo-

bility for Thomson Reuters, said online training was easier, quicker and cheaper than in-persontraining. Thomson Reuters uses CultureWizard, a Web-

based tool created by the company RW 3, for its employees in 93 countries for what he said was “afraction of the cost” of formal training.

On the Road Again,

But on a Tighter Budget

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREW SPEAR FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Meredith Rutledge of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame stays with family to save money on hotels.

SALLY RYAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A consultant instructs employees in Japanese dining etiquette.

Cross-Cultural Lessons for Travel

Repubblica NewYork

s c i e nc e & t ec hno logy

Vi MONDAY, JUNE 14, 2010

Three years ago, when Oxford University Press published Aniruddh D. Patel’s “Music, Language, and theBrain,’’ Oliver Sacks described it as“a major synthesis that will be indis-pensable toneuroscientists.’’Patel, a 44-year-old senior fellow at theNeurosciences Institute in San Diego,California, recently talked with usabout his work.

Q.You describe yourself as a neurosci-entist of music. This has to be a newprofession. How did you come to it?A. I’ve been passionate about twothings since childhood — science andmusic. In 1990, I found myself in Aus-tralia doing field work on ants. Andthere, I had this epiphany: the onlything I really wanted to do was studythe biology of how humans make and

process music. The neurobiology ofmusic wasn’t yet a recognized field.

Q.When did it go mainstream?A. Not too long after that. By the late1990s, all of neuroscience was beingtransformed by the widespread use ofimaging technologies.Because it became possible to learnhow the brain was affected whenpeople engaged in certain activities,it becameacceptable to study things previously considered fringy.

Q.Recently, you’ve been working with asulfur-crestedcockatoonamedSnow-ball. What prompted the collaboration?A. Before I encountered Snowball, Iwondered whether human music hadbeen shaped for our brains by evolu-tion — meaning, it helped us survive

at some point.Well, in 2008, a colleague asked me toview a YouTube video of a cockatoowho appeared to be dancing to thebeat of “Everybody” by the Back-streetBoys!If you saw a video of a dog reading

a newspaper, you’d be pretty im-pressed, right? A cockatoo dancingto a beat was like that. If this was real,it meant that the bird might have cir-cuits in its brain for processing beatsimilar to ours.

Q.What did you do with this insight?A. I phoned up the bird shelter in Indi-ana where Snowball lived and talkedto the director, who told me his story.A man had dropped him off with a CDand the comment, “Snowball likes todance to this.” One day, Irena Schulz,the proprietor, played “Everybody” toamuse the abandoned creature. AndSnowball began to move. Irena thenmade the YouTube video.We took the Backstreet Boys song,

sped it up and slowed it down at 11

different tempos, thenvideoedwhatSnowball did to each. For 9 out of the 11variations, the bird moved to the beat.So now we had the first documented

case of a nonhuman animal who, with-out training, could sense a beat out ofmusic and move to it.

Q.You say that Snowball changed yourthinking.How?A.Since working with Snowball, I’vecome to think we could learn moremusic neuroscience by studying thebehaviors of not just parrots, but per-haps dolphins, seals, songbirds — alsovocal learners.What do humans have in common

with parrots? Both species are vocallearners, with the ability to imitatesounds. In that one respect, our brainsare more like those of parrots thanchimpanzees. Since vocal learning creates links between the hearing and movement centers of the brain, I hypothesized that this is what you need to be able to move to the beat of music. CLAUDIA DREIFUS

By BENEDICT CAREY

Decades ago modern medicine allbut stamped out the nervous break-down. The phrase was overused andnear meaningless, a term from an eraunwilling to talk about mental distressopenly.But like a stubbornvirus, the phrase

hasmutated.In recent years, psychiatrists in Eu-

rope have been diagnosing what theycall “burnout syndrome,” the signs ofwhich include “vital exhaustion.” A pa-per published last year defined threetypes: “frenetic,” “underchallenged” and “worn out.”This is the latest term for the kind of

emotional collapses that have plaguedhumanity for ages, stemming at timesfrom severe mental difficulties andmore often from mild ones. In the ear-ly decades of the 20th century, manypeople simply referred to a crackup, including “The Crack-Up,” F. ScottFitzgerald’s 1936 collection of essays de-scribing his own. And before that therewas neurasthenia, a widely diagnosed

and undefined nerve affliction causingjust about any symptom people caredtoadd.Yet medical historians say that, for

versatility and descriptive power, itmay be hard to improve upon “nervousbreakdown.” Coined around 1900, thephrase peaked in usage during themiddle of the 20th century and echoes still. One recent study found that 26percent of respondents to a nationalsurvey in 1996 reported that they hadexperienced an “impending nervousbreakdown,”comparedwith19percentfrom the same survey in 1957.“‘Nervous breakdown’ is one of those

sturdy old terms, like ‘melancholia’ and‘nervous illness,’ that haven’t reallybeen surpassed, although they soundantiquated,”historianEdwardShortersaid in an e-mail message.The phrase always struck most doc-

tors as inexact, pseudoscientific andoften misleading. But those were pre-cisely the qualities that gave it such alasting place in the popular culture,some scholars say. “It had just enoughmedical sanction to be useful, but didnot depend on medical sanction to be

used,” said Peter N. Stearns, a histo-rian at George Mason University nearWashington,D.C.A nervous breakdown was no small

thing in the 1950s or ’60s. Psychiatriststoday say that, most often, it was codeforseveredepressionorpsychosis.“I don’t remember people who got

that label ever using it as their owncomplaint — it was very much stig-matized,” said Dr. Nada L. Stotland, aformer president of the American Psy-chiatric Association and a professor atRush Medical College in Chicago.The vagueness of the phrase made

it impossible to survey the prevalenceof any specific problem: it could meananything from depression to mania ordrunkenness. And minimizing thosedetails left people wondering if theywere alone in their misery.But that same imprecision allowed

the speaker to control its meaning.Dr. Shorter said that the term “ner-

vous” has implied that the cause wassomething physical beyond the per-son’s control — damaged nerves, notthemind.“People accepted the notion of ner-

vous breakdown often because it wasconstrued as a category that could behandled without professional help,”concluded a 2000 analysis by Dr.Stearns, Megan Barke and RebeccaFribush. The popularity of the phrase,they wrote, revealed “a longstand-ing need to keep some distance from purely professional diagnoses andtreatments.” Many did just that, andreturned to work and family. Othersneeded a more specific diagnosis, andsought treatment.By the 1970s, more psychiatric drugs

were available, and doctors attacked the idea that people could managebreakdowns on their own.Psychiatrists proceeded to slice prob-

lems like depression and anxiety intodozens of categories, andpublic percep-tions shifted, too. And “nervous break-down” began to fade from use.The same fate may or may not await

“burnout syndrome.” But it has anoth-er 30 years to outlast the classic “break-down.”

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

Ever since their discovery in 1909, the spectacular Burgess Shale out-crops in the Canadian Rockies havepresented scientists with a cornuco-pia of evidence for the “explosion” of complex, multicellular life beginningsome 550 million years ago.The fossils were at first seen as

little more than amazing curiositiesfrom a time when life, except for bac-teria and algae, was confined to thesea — and what is now Canada wasjust south of the Equator.In the last half century, however,

paleontologists recognized that theBurgess Shale exemplified the ra-diation of diverse life forms unlikeanything in earlier times. Here wasevolution in action, organisms overtime responding to changing for-tunes through natural experimenta-tion in new body forms and different ecological niches.But the fossil record then goes dark:

the Cambrian-period innovations in life appeared to have few clear de-scendants. Many scientists thoughtthat the likely explanation for this mysterious disappearance was that amajor extinction had wiped out muchof the distinctive Cambrian life.Not everyone was convinced, how-

ever, and now a trove of 480-million-year-old fossils in Morocco appearsto strike a blow to the idea of a major extinction.The team reports in the journal Na-

ture that the large number of “excep-tionally preserved” Moroccan speciesexhibits apparently strong links toCambrian species known from fossilbeds in China, Greenland and, mostnotably, the Burgess Shale. The scien-tists think this solves the mystery. TheMoroccan fossils, they said, establishthat Burgess Shale-type species “con-tinuedtohave animportant role in thediversity and ecological structure ofdeeper marine communities well af-ter the Middle Cambrian.”The Moroccan fossils include

sponges, worms and mollusks likeclams, snails and relatives of theliving nautilus. Another fossil wassimilar to today’s horseshoe crab.Now, the scientists said, its antiquity appears to be even greater — some30 million years earlier than thought,possibly in the late Cambrian.The discovery team’s principal sci-

entist and lead author of the journalarticle was Peter Van Roy, a Belgian paleontologist who is a postdoctoralfellow at Yale University. Scientistsfrom Britain, France, Ireland, Mo-rocco and the United States partici-pated in the research. A local fossilcollector, Mohammed Ou Said BenMoulal, directed Dr. Van Roy to therock outcrops he had scouted.Soon it became clear, Dr. Van Roy

said, that the team had “really dis-covered the whole gamut of theseBurgess animals, the majority ofwhich had never been found after the

MiddleCambrian.”A leading member of the team, Der-

ek E.G. Briggs, director of the Pea-body Museum of Natural History atYale, said that scientists for some timehave suspected that “we were just notfinding the right deposits and onlyseeing a small piece of the picture ofwhat was going on in life back then.”The fossil record may be spotty,

but has not vanished. The Moroccanfossils not only reveal the continu-ation of many Cambrian life forms,he said, but show “the high potentialthat there are other places for findingthese Cambrian-like organisms per-sisting in time.”The Moroccan sediments, the team

wrote, offer promising links betweenthe Cambrian Explosion of multicel-lular life, exemplified in the Burgess Shale, and the early stages of what is known as the Great Ordovician Bio-diversification Event, considered“one of the most dramatic episodesin the history of marine life.”This led to the emergence of fish

about 400 million years ago and themigration of four-limbed vertebratesfrom water onto land 360 millionyears ago. After the catastrophicmass extinction at the end of thePermian period, about 250 millionyears ago, the dinosaurs came to the fore in a reptilian world, and aftertheir extinction 65 million years ago, mammals came into their own.That any of these early remains

endured verges on the miraculous.The Moroccan fossil beds, Dr. Briggsnoted, were once the muddy bottomof an ocean. Storms stirred up theseabed, burying doomed creatureswith little or no oxygen to promotedecomposition. The sediment chem-istry transformed iron and sulfideinto pyrite, which coated and pre-served the shapes of the animals.“The exquisite preservation of the

soft anatomy,” Dr. Van Roy said, “al-lows more complete, accurate recon-structions of their genetic affinitiesand ecology than has hitherto beenpossible.”

Fossils Clear Up Cambrian Mystery

PR NEWSFOTO

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Mental ailments afflicted both Sir Isaac Newton, top, andauthor F. Scott Fitzgerald.

PETER VAN ROY

Fossils with strong links to the Cambrian era have been found in Morocco, undermining a theory of extinction. A member of the anthropod family, from about 480 million years ago.

Aniruddh D. Patel studies how birds and humanshear music.

The classic mental crackup is now ‘burnout syndrome.’

A Nervous Breakdown,By Any Other Name

A Dancing Cockatoo Helps

Neuroscientist’s Study of Music

ROBERT BENSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Repubblica NewYork

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

MONDAY, JUNE 14, 2010 VII

By PAM BELLUCK

YARUMAL, Colombia — In thisrough-hewn mountain town, an oldwoman found herself diapering hermiddle-age children.At frighteningly young ages, in

their 40s, four of Laura Cuartas’schildren began forgetting and falling apart, assaulted by what people here have long called La Bobera, the fool-ishness. It is a condition attributed, inhushed rumors, to everything fromtouching a mysterious tree to the re-venge of a wronged priest.It is Alzheimer’s disease, and at

82, Mrs. Cuartas, her gray raisin of a face grave, takes care of three of her afflicted children.Oneson,Darío, 55, babbles incoher-

ently, shreds his socks and diapers,and squirms so vigorously he is some-times tied to a chair with blue shorts.A daughter, María Elsy, 61, a nurse

who at 48 started forgetting patients’ medications, and whose rages made her attack a sister who bathed her, is ahuman shell, mute, fed by nose tube.Another son, Oderis, 50, denies that

his memory is dying, that he remem-bers to buy only one thing at a time:milk, not milk and plantains. If hegets Alzheimer’s, he says, he will poi-sonhimself.“To see your children like this ... ,”

Mrs. Cuartas said. “It’s horrible, hor-

rible. I wouldn’t wish this on a rabiddog. It is the most terrifying illness onthe face of the earth.”For generations, the illness has

tormented these and thousands ofothers among a sprawling group ofrelatives: the world’s largest familyto experience Alzheimer’s disease. Now, the Colombian clan is center

stage in a potentially groundbreak-ing assault on Alzheimer’s, a planto see if giving treatment before de-mentia starts can lead to preventing it altogether.Most family members come from

one Andes region, Antioquia. Geog-raphy, and Basque ancestry, haveisolated people here. Over threecenturies, many in this clan of 5,000peoplehave inheriteda single geneticmutation guaranteeing that they will developAlzheimer’s.Large families, and intermarriage,

have accelerated the spread. Mrs.Cuartas’s fourth debilitated child, in Medellín, Carlos Alberto Villegas, aformer livestock trader and guitarserenader now often fed by babybottle, married a distant cousin. Hismother-in-law is an addled ghost;three of his wife’s 11 siblings, so far,aredevelopingdementia.With Alzheimer’s in both parents’

families, Mr. Villegas’s three childrencould face extraordinary risk. One,Natalia, 22, asks: “How long have Igot, till I’m 35? There’s no way out.”Memories begin failing in one’s

40s, occasionally as early as 32. By 47,on average, full-blown Alzheimer’sdevelops.This form of Alzheimer’s, early-on-

set, was once considered too differentto provide clues about far more com-mon late-onset Alzheimer’s, whichhas unknown causes and primarilyaffects people over 65.But it turns out that both forms pro-

duce nearly identical brain changesand symptoms. Now, scientists willtest as-yet-unproven treatments onColombians genetically destinedfor Alzheimer’s but not yet showingsymptoms. They will give a to-be-determined drug or vaccine and seeif it prevents memory loss or brain at-rophy. If their disease can be halted, that could generate treatments toprotectmillionsworldwide fromcom-monAlzheimer’s.Alzheimer’s has repeatedly resist-

ed attempts to treat it. Current drugs,

for people who are already impaired, show little benefit. Now scientistswant to attack earlier. New findingsshow “the brain is badly damaged by the time they have dementia,” saidDr. John C. Morris, an Alzheimer’sresearcher at Washington Univer-sity in St. Louis. “Perhaps the reason our therapies have been ineffectiveor mostly ineffective is that we’re ad-ministering them too late.”With Alzheimer’s afflicting 530 mil-

lion people worldwide, numbers that some predict will double or triple by2050, “we can’t wait to try to do pre-vention until we are absolutely cer-tain what causes” the disease, saidNeil Buckholtz, chief of dementias of aging at the National Institute on Ag-ing. “This public health emergency,’’

he said, is “just going to get out of con-trol if we don’t do something.”Scientists are recruiting partici-

pants in Colombia, hoping to starttesting next year. Family memberswithout symptoms, roughly 38 to 45years old, will be gene-tested, giventreatmentorplacebos,andmonitoredwith memory tests, brain scans andothermeasures.The treatment will attack a protein,

beta-amyloid, considered a culprit bymany scientists because it createsplaques, deposits between nervecells. The treatment could be a drugthat destroys or prevents plaques, or a vaccine that contains or encouragesproduction of anti-amyloid antibod-ies.Scientists are recruiting drug-in-

dustry sponsors for the $50 milliontrial They currently have $8 millionfrom donors. Some companies envi-sion testing new treatments; othersenvision recovering investment intherapies that failed with already-demented people. “Prevent even one early-onset patient from getting thedisease, that’s a major victory,” said Dale Schenk, chief scientific officerfor the Elan Corporation. “It’s noteven debatable whether this shouldbe done. It has to be done.”Researchers will also explore

when Alzheimer’s begins, and why,examining which brain changes, orbiomarkers, precede symptoms. Ifbrain shrinkage, brain activity or be-ta-amyloid levels are identified as de-finitive biomarkers, doctors may beable to treat those, the way they treat cholesterol to prevent heart disease.Scientists recently rode into An-

gostura, ancestral home of manyfamily members. “First time I’veseen gringos come to town,” a vil-lager remarked.Villages like Angostura had often

been too dangerous. Once, a nurse,Lucía Madrigal, was kidnapped byguerrillas while collecting blood forgene testing. “I do not care how long you retain

me,” she said, but “take care of thesamples.”She was released eight days later

(guerrillas chilled the blood in ariver), but the team she belonged tostopped visiting some villages foryears. During that time, Ms. Mad-rigal visited Angostura only whenasked by a guerrilla boss. His mother had Alzheimer’s.

A Memory Thief Stalks a Colombian Family

JENNIFER MAY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Marinades with rosemary help eliminate carcinogens.

f i n d i n g s

Rosemary Helps Remove ToxinsCooking meat at high temperatures

is known to create toxins called het-erocyclic amines, which have been linked to some cancers. Marinating lowers the risk by preventing the formation of the toxins. But one ingre-dient that makes a big difference is rosemary. Studies show that adding it to ground beef and other types of muscle meat before grilling, frying, broiling or barbecuing significantly reduces heterocyclic amines.In a study published in The Journal

of Food Science in March, scientists tested extracts of rosemary on ground beef patties that were cooked at temperatures from 190 degrees to 204 degrees Celsius. The extract was added to both sides of the meat before cooking. The higher the concentra-tion, the greater the reduction in het-erocyclic amines (in some cases by over 90percent).Scientists attribute this to specific

antioxidants in rosemary: rosmarin-ic acid, carnosol and carnosic acid. Another study two years ago com-pared several marinades and found that the one that was most protective was a Caribbean mixture, which, theywrote, “contained considerableamounts” of the same three antioxi-dants.If you do not like rosemary, or you

have an allergy, try marinades with garlic, onion and lemon juice. They have also been shown in studies to be effective (garlic and onion much more so than lemon juice).

ANAHADO’CONNOR

The Hazards of Indoor TanningIndoor tanning almost doubles the

risk of dangerous melanoma skin cancer, and the more hours spent tan-ning, the greater the risk, according to a new study.Those who used indoor tanning

devices were 1.74 times as likely to de-velopmelanomaas thosewhodidnot.Frequent users — who had more than 100 sessions or 50 hours of indoor tan-ning over 10 years — were at 2.5 times the risk of non-users, the study found.That correlation, called a dose re-

sponse, “is very important for helping to support that this is a causal influ-ence,” said DeAnn Lazovich, a Uni-versity ofMinnesota epidemiologist.Last year, the International Agency

for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, classified tanning beds as carcinogenic to hu-mans, and the United States Food and Drug Administration is considering revising requirements for tanning beds and strengthening warning la-bels about the risks. The study compared 1,167 Minneso-

tanswhohadan invasivemelanomadiagnosis from 2004 to 2007 with 1,101 healthy individuals. Some 62.9 percent of melanoma patients had tanned indoors, compared with 51.1 percent of the comparison group.

RONI CARYN RABIN

ONLINE: THE VANISHINg mINd

Video of a family that is grappling with early-onset Alzheimer’s:nyti"es.co"/health

Oderis Villegas, center, shows signs of Alzheimer’s disease at 50. Asister, María Elsy, far left, has a more advanced case.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Gloria Villegas cares for her sister María Elsy, 61, who showed signs of Alzheimer’s in her 40s. Left, Natalia, 22, fears for her future. She holds the hand of her father, Carlos Alberto Villegas, who also has Alzheimer’s.

MICHELLE V. AGINS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Tanning is linked to skin cancer.

Repubblica NewYork

ar t s & s t y l e s

VIII MONDAY, JUNE 14, 2010

By GIA KOURLAS

Alicia Alonso, the longtime director of theNational Ballet of Cuba, no longer danceswith her feet, which, on a recent afternoon ata hotel near Lincoln Center in New York, were daintily crossed at the ankle in a pair of lady-like high heels. She is also virtually blind. Butwhen she talks about ballet, her hands, copperyand weathered, flutter near her face as slender fingers spin and leap through delicate choreo-graphic feats.“I dance with the hands,” she agreed, quietly

smiling. “I do. I dance with my heart actuallymore. So it comes through my body. I can’t help it.”On June 3, Ms. Alonso

celebrated her 90th birth-day in a special programperformed by AmericanBallet Theater, for whichshe was an instrumentaldancer in its early days.(Her actual birthday isnot until December 21.) Ms. Alonso is at once

reviled and adored. Some see her as a political toolof Fidel Castro as wellas someone who has re-mained too long in her job and who prevents certain dancers from workingabroad.But Ms. Alonso is also

adored by balletomaneswho cherish memories ofher Giselle and her lon-gevity onstage. She gave her final performance in1995 when she danced “The Butterfly,” a piece she choreographed. Shewas 75.“A young lady,” she said before surrendering

to girlish giggles. “That’s fantastic, no? Twoyears before, I danced ‘Giselle.’ ”Ms. Alonso is either a sly fox of the highest de-

gree or an endearing old lady. In all likelihood she’s both; her demeanor can change suddenly.She firmly refused to answer any questions re-lated to politics.“I came here because they are giving me a

wonderful reception, a wonderful feeling ofcoming back,” Ms. Alonso said. “I will talk to youabout memories and things like that, and I thinkwe should keep it like that. Don’t you think so?”Ms. Alonso’s return to Ballet Theater evokes

emotions that she said were difficult to put into

words. “It reminds me of all the years of myworking here, my friends, the times we toured during the war and of performing. It’s a whole life. We were creating the future of the ballet in the United States. It was such a dream.”Ms. Alonso joined Ballet Theater in 1940, but

an eye operation sent her back to Cuba, and she rejoined the company in 1943. She was in theoriginal casts of Antony Tudor’s “Undertow”(1945), Agnes de Mille’s “Fall River Legend”(1948) and George Balanchine’s “Theme andVariations” (1947).For that devilishly difficult ballet, in which

Igor Youskevitch was her partner, Balanchinetook advantage of Ms.Alonso’s technical prow-ess, challenging her ev-ery move. “I rememberMr. B., he looked at me,”she began, before imitat-ing his famous sniff, “and said, ‘Can you do thisstep?’ I say, ‘I try, Mr. Bal-anchine.’Boom.”Then he asked her to try

an entrechat six, a leapstraight in the air withrapid leg crossings. “ ‘Are you scared?’ ’’ Ms. Alonsosniffed again. “ ‘No, no. Itry, Mr. Balanchine.’ ’’Throughout the years,

as her eyesight worsened,Ms. Alonso continuedto dance. While othersran offstage quickly, Ms.Alonso, so as not to crashinto the scenery, opted for a slower exit. “They put

very strong lights so I could see where is cen-ter,” she said. She recalled her partner AntonDolin telling her: ’’My baby, it’s O.K. It looksvery well. You just go and float away.’’As helpless as some might imagine her to be,

Ms. Alonso is sharp with what seems to be a se-lective understanding of English depending on thequestion.It took three attempts, for instance, to find out

whether she was grooming a successor for her company. After sensing that the line “I don’t un-derstand” wasn’t going to get her off the hook, she finallyblurted:“No. I think they’regoodallby themselves.” They are very capable people, I’m sure. I hope. As for her legacy, she said: “I don’t want to be

remembered. I just don’twant to be forgotten.”

ISTANBUL — Everything here seems to shimmer with unsteadiness. You can see all the layers at once. And right now, the forces of secularism and Islam are in contention.

In some cases, like the sixth century Hagia Sophia, a muse-um that was a mosque that was a church (for a millennium after its construction, itwasthe world’s largest ca-

thedral), these forces overlap. In oth-er areas — like right now in Turkish politics, they clash. For an outsider,the threads intertwinewith almostbyzantine complexity.Until the early 20th century, so

intimatewas the connectionbetweenpolitical and religious power in Tur-key that when Ataturk founded the re-public in 1923, he imposed secularism almost as a religious doctrine. At the same time, the secularism of

the modern republic had to embrace the Islamic history of that empire.You can see the nature of the

problem in the museums of Topkapi Palace where the sultans once lived. In onegallery thereare sacred relicsonce viewed only by the royal family and its guests. The labels tell us we are looking at hairs from Muham-mad’s beard, King David’s sword and a turban worn by Joseph. Secularism has to be more powerful than it is here to contend with such objects.And secularism here was a form of

militarism: the veil was prohibited in schools and in the government. Religious services and sermonswerecontrolled. And the military became the arm of secular authority. The most powerful, double-edged

tribute to Turkish secularism may not be the commerce of Istiklal, or the nearby art galleries, but the enor-mous Military Museum. More than a thousand years of Turkish history are told in the form of military history, and thenarrativewindsaroundanimposingbuilding thatwas themili-

tary academy where Ataturk himself studied. The exhibitions begin with an inspirational quotation fromAtat-urk: For more than 7,000 years, it por-tentously declares, “have these lands been the Turkish cradle’’; now, out of “thunder and lightning and the sun’’ emerges, triumphant, “the Turk.’’The museum is nothing less than an

attempt to shape a modern mytholo-gy in which Turkish history becomes part of a single coherent tradition cul-minating in the modern secular state.This effort to shape a tradition ac-

counting for the triumph of the Turk may also be the reason for the way the 1915 massacres of Armenians are treatedhere.We read that there was an era when

Armenians demonstrated the princi-ples of “Tolerance, Affection, and Jus-tice,’’ the basics of “traditional’’ Turk-ish rule. But then, in the 19th century,an“Armenian terrorist organization’’killed “thousands of innocent Turks.’’The gallery is full of photographsmeant to provide evidence not of theTurkish massacres of Armenians, but

of the Armenian massacres of Turks.There was undoubtedly a tradition

of tolerance of minorities in IslamicIstanbul under the sultans. But whyis it so difficult to recognize this? TheJewish Museum of Turkey here seemsdeliberately to ignorequalifications;it opened in 2001 under the auspices ofa foundation established to celebrate500 years of tolerance and harmonybetween Turks and Jews. Many of theJews in Istanbul (once one of the larg-est urban Jewish population centersin the world) were exiles from the 1492expulsion fromSpainandPortugal.The displays in this small museum

repeatedly stress the religious free-dom Jews found here, “provided by both the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic.’’ But this is wildly out of sync with the empire’s bloody history and its sultanic power.The very presence of the museum

inspires some skepticism on thispoint. It is housed in an old synagogue,not because of any imposed idea ofsecularism,butbecausewhateverremains of the Jewish communityhere has dwindled. In recent yearsIslamist terror has struck: attacksagainst other city synagogues havekilled dozens and wounded hundreds.And the museum is almost impossibleto find. At the end of a small alley, there is a

little sign that says “Museum,’’ with an arrow. The sign is mounted on a white booth housing an armed guard.

EDWARD

ROTHSTEIN

essay

For the Hagia Sophia, the Military Museum and Topkapi Palace, go to http://english.istanbul.gov.tr; for the Jewish Museum, www.muze500.com.

Cuban Ballerina’s Tangled Legacy

In Turkey, a Byzantine Blend of the Sacred and the Secular

SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES

In 1990, Alicia Alonso was still dancing and appeared in New York.

NICHOLE SOBECKI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul, originally a monument to Byzantine Christianity, became a mosque and is now a museum.

Repubblica NewYork