Columbia

woke up this morning to this:
http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2003/02/01/national/nationalspecial/index.html

after reading an article last week on the first israeli astronaut that was on board, i had been thinking how something might happen. but never thought it actually would. and not like this.

Asia Project

on a brighter note, and although its taken me quite some time, i finally posted the first real collection of still images from my trip to asia.
http://www.paulwhkan.com/asiaproject/japan/index.html

and my latest issue of Parkett arrived yesterday as well!

Claims and Stuff

well, got the letter from small claims court yesterday. thankfully, my old photo lab didn't win their fraudulent claim of $3000 from me.

however, the arbitrator did allow them $500, which doesn't come from any specific claim of theirs. near the end of the proceeding, the arbitrator asked me if i'd be willing to meet them half-way. i told him, that (1) i had all their invoices and all my canceled checks, (2) that the previous arbitrator had already decided in my favor, and (3) that i could show that their new "claim" was fraudulent (as it obviously didn't show up on any historical invoices that i luckily had kept). but i also said that if i knew they'd pay me, i'd be willing to take a little less, like $2500, than the full $3000 amount i had already won.

so i guess that's where their $500 came from. oh well. i just hope this can be wrapped up and finished with.

Chinese Couple Found Bound and Dead in Their Apartment

Couple Found Bound and Dead in Their Apartment
By DIANE CARDWELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/nyregion/30DOUB.html

A prominent fund-raiser for the Republican Party and her husband were found strangled and smothered to death inside a Brooklyn apartment late Tuesday, the authorities said yesterday.

The body of Josephine Lin, 66, was found face-up, bound with duct tape with her hands in front of her and with a plastic bag over her head, in the kitchen of a Williamsburg apartment she sometimes used as an office. The body of Ms. Lin's husband, Shan, 70, was in the living room, with his arms bound at his sides and his head also covered in a plastic bag. They were found by their son, who called 911, officials said. Officers arrived about 10:30 p.m.

There was no sign of forced entry, and the authorities could not immediately say whether the apartment had been ransacked.

Police officials said they had not determined a motive for the killings and had no suspects last night. The 911 call from the son reported an assault in progress, but it was not clear whether he had witnessed the attack.

The medical examiner's office said both victims died of compression of the neck and by suffocation from a plastic bag. Mr. Lin's death was also caused by duct tape over his nose and mouth, the officials said.

The couple, who were described as active in Asian-American organizations in Chinatown and in Flushing, Queens, had lived for decades in Williamsburg at 29 Moore Street, part of a seven-building Mitchell Lama cooperative complex. Ms. Lin, who sold policies for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, raised tens of thousands of dollars for Republican candidates, including Gov. George E. Pataki.

She was the more outgoing member of the couple, an acquaintance said. Mr. Lin, who the authorities said was active at the Overseas Chinese Mission, a church on Hester Street in Manhattan, was quieter, but attended various political functions with his wife, a camera always at the ready, the friend said.

"They got about a billion pictures from everywhere," said Lester Mook, director of coalitions for the New York Republican State Committee. "They probably got a photograph with every politician that walked around. Her husband was there, never without a camera, always with a camera."

The news of their slaying left people shaken in Williamsburg, in Chinatown and in political circles.
"The governor is shocked and saddened by this tragedy," said a spokeswoman for Mr. Pataki, Mollie Fullington, "and all of his thoughts and prayers are with the family."

In campaigns for 2002 elections, Ms. Lin gave a total of more than $22,000 to various federal candidates, and Mr. Lin gave $3,000. Ms. Lin's other contributions included nearly $25,000 to Mr. Pataki in the six months or so leading up to the governor's most recent election. She gave $17,000 to John J. Faso, a former Republican assemblyman who made an unsuccessful bid for state comptroller in 2002. Mr. Lin contributed more than $5,000 to the Pataki campaign and $3,000 to Mr. Faso.

In campaigns for the 2000 election, Ms. Lin gave approximately $20,000 to various federal campaign committees, including Friends of Giuliani, the Pete King for Congress Committee and Lazio 2000 Inc.

Councilman John C. Liu, a Queens Democrat, said that Ms. Lin was a personal friend who had helped him in his campaign, and that she would let him "have it" when she disagreed with him.

"This is a tremendous loss for the Asian-American community and for the entire city," said Mr. Liu, the city's first Asian-American elected official. "I just saw her a couple of weeks ago. She was someone I regularly sought advice from."

He added, "The Republican-Democratic thing has nothing to do with anything here. Like a lot of Asian-Americans, she was looking to have a voice."

The couple had lived in the Williamsburg building for about 30 years, said the managing agent, Jay Silverberg. Ms. Lin had served on the board of directors for about five years until five years ago, he said. Officials said the couple had two apartments in the building and that the bodies were found in the one they used as an office.

The Police Department is offering a reward of up to $2,000 for information, and asked that people call the Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS. Mandarin speakers can call the Chinatown Project, (212) 334-0724. Last night, a Crime Stoppers vehicle circulated through Williamsburg, asking in both Mandarin and English for information.

Cambodian Police Open Fire on Looters

Cambodian Police Open Fire on Looters
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Cambodia-Thai-Embassy.html

Filed at 3:22 p.m. ET

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) -- Police fired guns Wednesday to repel rioters who looted the Thai Embassy and burned a building in the compound in a violent protest ignited by an alleged slur of a national symbol by a television actress in Thailand.

The rioting continued late into the night with mobs attacking Thai-owned establishments including hotels, restaurants, airline offices and a cellular phone company office.

Thailand planned to send a plane and a team of commandos to Phnom Penh on Thursday to evacuate an estimated 400 of its citizens. Thaksin said his government would withdraw its ambassador and seek to expel Cambodia's envoy in Bangkok.

``Any place that has a Thai language sign has been attacked,'' said Hok Lundy, Cambodia's national police chief.

In Bangkok, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra held a midnight news conference to denounce the violence and announce diplomatic sanctions against Cambodia.

Thailand planned to send a plane and a team of commandos to Phnom Penh on Thursday to evacuate an estimated 400 of its citizens. Thaksin said his government would withdraw its ambassador and seek to expel Cambodia's envoy in Bangkok.

A mob of about 1,000 briefly dispersed from around the embassy when police fired the shots. The protesters later regrouped and hurled stones at an estimated 200 police officers.

At least four officers and a woman who appeared to be a bystander were injured by stones. It was not immediately clear if the shots caused any casualties or whether police fired at the mob or into the air.

The protest was began after media reports that a Thai TV star claimed Cambodia had stolen the famous Angkor Wat temple from Thailand. She denied making the statement.

Cambodians began demonstrating outside the Thai Embassy after local newspapers and radio stations reported that actress Suwanan Kongying made the comment about Angkor Wat, the sprawling temple in northern Cambodia that is the country's national symbol.

Several hundred peaceful demonstrators began gathering outside the embassy, but were joined later by violent demonstrators who breached the gates, forced their way into the building and could be seen hurling curtains, chairs and documents from the windows.

Later, flames were seen coming out from a section of the darkened building, but the fire died down. An annex to the embassy was set on fire and burned for hours.

Fire trucks arrived but made no attempt to extinguish the fire. Deputy fire chief Sok Vannra said the mob threatened to burn the trucks if they tried to put out the fire.

The mob then set off for other targets in the capital.

Bush AIDS Plan Surprises Many, but Advisers Call It Long Planned

Bush AIDS Plan Surprises Many, but Advisers Call It Long Planned
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/politics/30AIDS.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — As one of the government's leading scientists, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci often visits the White House to talk about bioterrorism and vaccine research. But whenever he sees President Bush, Dr. Fauci said today, the president has the same question: "He says, `Tony, how's the AIDS program going?' "

That program, $15 billion over the next five years to fight global AIDS, caught many people by surprise when President Bush announced it Tuesday night. But while critics have long accused Mr. Bush of neglecting the epidemic, Dr. Fauci and other officials have been working on the initiative since June, they say, at Mr. Bush's explicit direction.

Mr. Bush's aides say the president has always been committed to the global AIDS cause, though not convinced that taxpayers' money could be well spent. But in recent months, a string of people from inside and outside the administration — including Colin L. Powell, the secretary of state; Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser; and Bono, the Irish rock star — made a passionate case to persuade Mr. Bush that the time was right.

Among those most surprised by Mr. Bush's announcement were officials in 12 countries in Africa, which along with Haiti and Guyana will receive the money.

In the United States, the president's unexpected initiative has political ramifications, as well as humanitarian ones. With Republicans still smarting from racially charged remarks of Senator Trent Lott, the former Republican leader, Mr. Bush's initiative may help mend fences with African-American leaders in Congress.

Today, they held a news conference to express what Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, called "new hope" and "some skepticism."

And as Mr. Bush prepares for possible war with Iraq, his new commitment to global AIDS suggests an emerging geopolitical reality: if the United States is going to present itself as having a moral imperative to stop terrorism, it must also take up the cause of morality in a manner that that does not involve dropping bombs.

As one senior administration official, who was involved in the AIDS effort, said today, "The president often talks about not only winning the war, but winning the peace, and making the world a better place."

But some advocates say the program may not make the world all that much better. They complain that the money will not be parceled out quickly enough and that areas of the world where the epidemic is exploding, including China and India, are being ignored.

Others say that the program will give only $1 billion to a United Nations global fund to fight AIDS.

"The fund needs $6.3 billion over the next two years," said Anil Soni, a top fund official. "The president's announcement ensures that the administration is committed to $400 million."

The seeds of Mr. Bush's initiative were planted as long as two years ago, at the start of his administration. Senator Bill Frist, the new Republican leader, who as a heart surgeon has volunteered on medical missions in Africa, said in an interview last year that he had been pressing Mr. Bush to do more to combat global AIDS since the first time the president invited him to ride on Air Force One.

"This president gets it," Dr. Frist said then.

But the president worried that the money would not be wisely spent, and did not want American tax dollars wasted. Jeffrey D. Sachs, an economist and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University who has advocated strongly for more money for global AIDS, today recalled his early meetings with administration officials, including Secretary Powell.

"There was great skepticism," Mr. Sachs said.

But over time, that skepticism began to ease, for several reasons. The price of AIDS drug cocktails dropped, as low as $300 per year for generics. The cocktails became simpler to take, easing administration concerns that poor African nations would not be able to administer them. Also, administration officials, including Secretary Powell, Dr. Fauci and Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, traveled to Africa and were deeply moved by the sight of so many people dying for lack of drugs.

Dr. Fauci, a top official with the National Institutes of Health, recalled briefing President Bush about his trip. "I told him that it was a great catastrophe. Babies were getting infected. Dying mothers were infected."

By last spring, support was also building in Congress, even in conservative circles. A critical turning point, Bono said, came when Senator Jesse Helms, the retired North Carolina Republican who frequently denounced foreign aid as "a rathole," called for more AIDS money.

Religious leaders also took up the cause. Frank Griswold, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, said he met late last year with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to discuss the global AIDS pandemic. Bishop Griswold said he told Mr. Rumsfeld that AIDS was destroying and destabilizing armies across Africa and was leaving millions of orphans as a pool from which terrorist organizations could draw recruits.

"It is in our self-interest to address H.I.V./AIDS," Bishop Griswold said.

A central question, though, was how much money the administration should spend. Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, estimated that $10 billion a year was needed, and by last spring advocates for people with AIDS were demanding that the president pledge $2.5 billion a year. Dr. Frist, of Tennessee, along with Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, introduced legislation that would have authorized roughly that amount. The bill passed the Senate but was not taken up by the House. Now, Dr. Frist is preparing to re-introduce it.

In the White House, Mr. Bush was not convinced by last spring that the United States should make such a large commitment. Last June, he announced a much smaller effort: $500 million a year for medicines that would prevent expectant mothers in Africa and the Caribbean from passing the AIDS virus on to their babies. Yet even as the president made the announcement, Dr. Fauci said, Mr. Bush made it clear to his top advisers that he wanted to do more.

"We all knew that it couldn't stop there," Dr. Fauci said. "The president had a vision and he wanted to do something that went well beyond mother-to-child transmission."

White House officials, Dr. Fauci said, asked him to devise a cost-effective plan and prove that it could work to treat the infected, and prevent new infections. He brought scientists from around the world, including Peter Mugyenyi, director of the Joint Clinical Research Center in Uganda, to the White House for a series of meetings. In Uganda, Dr. Mugyenyi is treating 5,000 people with AIDS medicines through a network of clinics that, while hardly sophisticated by American standards, is effective, Dr. Fauci said.

But Dr. Mugyenyi said today that he could treat many more people, if he had the money. "Our biggest problem is lack of funds, which has not allowed us to scale up," he said.

That argument struck a chord with the president, who cited it in his State of the Union address. While not mentioning Dr. Mugyenyi by name, Mr. Bush spoke of a doctor who told AIDS patients he could not help them. "In an age of miraculous medicines," Mr. Bush said, `no person should have to hear those words."

Clean, Modern Subway, Efficiently Built. In India?

Clean, Modern Subway, Efficiently Built. In India?
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/29/international/asia/29DELH.html

NEW DELHI, Jan. 23 — The trains arrive with a whisper, speak with a computerized voice and at times are driven by women. Passengers board quickly and quietly at stations that are clean and airy, with graceful 30-foot arched ceilings and computerized entryways.

In a city of 14 million people that otherwise tends toward controlled anarchy, it is a pride-inspiring marvel.

New Delhi's new $2 billion subway system, barely more than a month old, is altering Indians' view of themselves and their capital.

For Shashi Brabha and Sohan Sing, two beaming college students taking a ride purely for the pleasure of it, it represents all that India can be. "It was good," a grinning Ms. Brabha said after her first ride. "It was modern."

The Metro is not the first subway built in India — Calcutta's decade-old system holds that honor — and the full 62 mile, 90-station system will not be completed until 2010.

But already New Delhi's system is being hailed as a political, managerial and engineering triumph. The first five miles of the system opened on Dec. 24, on budget and on time — a rarity in Indian public works projects.

Not least, over the last four and a half years, much of the sprawling system has been built in, above and beneath some of the most densely populated square miles on earth.

The success of the project, built with Japanese aid money, has become a striking symbol of change in India. Hundreds of thousands of people take what they call joy rides, short trips to savor the efficiency, modernity and sense of progress the new system seems to generate.

Tourists add it to their itinerary. Residents of outlying communities drive in for a ride. Parents bring their children.

"You don't feel the speed," said Sugandha Salhan, a 10-year-old girl who marveled at the smooth ride.

Much of the credit for the project's success goes to a 70-year-old longtime public servant who oversaw it, Elattuvalapil Sreedharan, an engineer who has been hailed for maintaining zero tolerance for corruption and coming up with innovative solutions to problems.

His success has indirectly bolstered the stand of Indians who advocate the privatization of government-run industries criticized for waste, poor service and fraud.

Instead of creating a ponderous bureaucracy, he subcontracted most of the construction work, hiring top Indian and foreign engineering firms. Of the 20,000 workers involved in the project, only 400 are government employees. Older Delhi-ites marvel that Metro workers do an extraordinary thing for notoriously bureaucratic Indian civil servants: they quickly respond to complaints.

In a feat of engineering, construction workers are building almost seven miles of underground tunnels and nearly 32 miles of above-ground track without closing major roads. Down the center of busy avenues, precast 50-ton blocks of reinforced concrete are being fashioned into an overheard track. Cranes lift sections at night when there is little traffic. During the day, tens of thousands of cars speed underneath as workers secure the track.

In four and a half years of construction, eight people have died in accidents. The number is considered a measure of success. One of those killed was an unlucky thief who tried to steal braces holding up a concrete slab; it fell and killed him.

Much of the subway is being constructed in one of the most densely populated places on earth, Old Delhi, a packed warren of decrepit buildings and choked streets that resembles a human petri dish. Lower Manhattan, by comparison, seems like an open field.

Near Hauz Quazi Circle, where five roads meet and hundreds of small stores sell every imaginable type of building supply, one large building has been knocked down for the construction of a subway station underground. Surrounding the site on all sides, shops and apartment still teem with life.

Ninety feet below ground, a German-built boring machine is carving out two-and-a-half-mile dual tunnels for the trains. In other areas of the city, contractors closed down one lane of a road, dug a trench up to 90 feet deep and then covered it so the road could quickly reopen.

Owners of 38 shops demolished to make way for the station complained that they were not being fairly compensated, but more than a dozen businessman interviewed around the construction all praised the project.

Shopkeepers pointed out steel girders erected to steady the walls of nearby buildings and monitors that measure vibrations. They said dump trunks haul dirt only at night and crews wash down the streets before morning.

"How can you build something in an area like this?" marveled Bharat Bhushan, whose hardware store sits on a narrow lane in Old Delhi choked by wave after wave of humanity. "It is exemplary."

Manoj Kumar, 21, a cigarette vendor whose kiosk is a few feet from an overhead track, uttered not a word of complaint about the dust, danger and inconvenience of the sprawling project. Supporting it, he suggested, is a civic duty. "This is good work," he said. "This is development. This will be the pride of Delhi."

On Film and in Print, 'The Quiet American' Still Fascinates

On Film and in Print, 'The Quiet American' Still Fascinates
By MARTIN F. NOLAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/books/30GREE.html

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 29 — On the frontispiece of "The Quiet American," Graham Greene quotes another well-traveled skeptic, Lord Byron: "This is the patent age of new inventions/ For killing bodies, and for saving souls,/ All propagated with the best intentions."

In novels, screenplays and short stories, Greene chronicled the end of empire. Scorning those who stood in history's way, he did not spare heroes, patriots or the naïve. "God save us always from the innocent and the good," Fowler, the jaded correspondent who narrates "The Quiet American," says to the French inspector, Vigot. After critics called Greene anti-American, Hollywood distorted "The Quiet American" in 1958 with a heroically happy ending. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Miramax postponed the second film version until Sir Michael Caine, who portrays Fowler, became persuasively unquiet. (It opened last November.)

The book endures, having served as a journalistic guidebook, a prophecy and even a tourist icon. Banned in Vietnam in the 1950's, "The Quiet American " is now sold at kiosks in Ho Chi Minh City as a symbol of local color, like "Moby Dick" on Nantucket or "Cannery Row" in Monterey. The book heavily influenced correspondents who covered the American war in the 1960's. "Many passages some of us can quote to this day," said David Halberstam, who received a Pulitzer Prize in international reporting while a correspondent for The New York Times in 1964. "It was our bible."

Fowler, following a besieged French patrol, outlines a modus operandi for intrepid reporters: "No journalists were allowed, no cables could be sent, for the papers must carry only victories. The authorities would have stopped me in Hanoi if they had known of my purpose, but the farther you get from headquarters, the looser becomes the control, until, when you come within range of the enemy's fire, you are a welcome guest."

By the 1960's, the book had become "the equivalent of what Napoleon suggested: a marshal's baton in every corporal's knapsack," recalls David Greenway, who covered the Vietnam War for Time and The Washington Post. "Every reporter had one. Many carried 'The Quiet American' and 'Scoop' by Evelyn Waugh."

The British press bracketed Greene and Waugh as "Catholic novelists" because both wrote morality-play novels, but while Waugh celebrated military exploits, Greene, who served in British intelligence during World War II, did not. In 1956, American critics failed to salute "The Quiet American" when it was published in the United States.

"His caricatures of American types are often as crude and trite as those of Jean-Paul Sartre," wrote Robert Gorham Davis in The New York Times. In The New Yorker, A. J. Liebling called the book a "nasty little plastic bomb."

In 1952, the year Greene writes about, some 300 Americans were in Vietnam. Fowler mocks policies that would later send hundreds of thousands of G.I.'s into the jungles and protesters onto American streets. "If Indochina goes ——" argues the American, an undercover government agent named Alden Pyle.

Fowler interrupts him: "I know that record. Siam goes. Malaya goes. Indonesia goes. What does `go' mean? If I believed in your God and another life, I'd bet my future harp against your golden crown that in 500 years there may be no New York or London, but they'll be growing paddy in these fields, they'll be carrying their produce to market on long poles, wearing their pointed hats."

Fowler and Pyle, the quiet American of the title, compete for the attentions of Phuong, a young Vietnamese woman. Love and war in an exotic locale is a cinematic staple, but in Greene's novels and screenplays the dominant triangle is God, guilt and Greene. Like "Casablanca" (1942) in World War II, "The Third Man" (1949), written by Greene, blends love and danger, but is set in cold war Vienna. Even an early Indochina movie, "Red Dust" (1932), finds Clark Gable running a rubber plantation while in a romantic triangle with Mary Astor and Jean Harlow.

Today, some filmgoers would argue that Michael Caine was born for the role of Fowler; others that he was born 20 years too soon. The power of his performance is in his face, a road map of the paths to glory he followed in earlier roles: his stand as Lieutenant Bromhead with Stanley Baker in "Zulu" (1962), and, as Peachy Carnehan, his trek to Kafiristan with Sean Connery's Danny Dravot in "The Man Who Would Be King" (1975). With no more dominion over palm and pine, Sir Michael's performance in this film is ripe with an antiheroic vulnerability imposed by age and dissolution, often punctuated with Lear-like rage. As Phuong tells Fowler, he is "not so old, not so fragile." Brendan Fraser's Pyle is a study in cagy befuddlement. In one scene, he wears a Red Sox cap, a symbol of lethal innocence that had not occurred to Greene.

Greene, who died at 86 in 1991, has been translated onto the screen more than any 20th-century writer. His closest rival is Rudyard Kipling. In the New Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson calls Greene a "cinematic novelist" for ample reason. In "The Quiet American," for example, the plot unfolds in flashback. A film critic in the 1930's (when he admired the "Shakespearean lunacy" of the Marx Brothers), Greene did not follow Faulkner and Fitzgerald to California poolsides.

"Long Hollywood contracts — sheet after closely printed sheet as long as the first treatment of the novel which is for sale — ensure you have no `author's rights,' " he wrote in 1958. "You rake the money, you go on writing for another year or two, you have no just ground for complaint. And the smile in the long run will be on your face. For the book has the longer life.

The most extreme changes I have seen in any book of mine were in `The Quiet American'; one could almost believe that the film was made deliberately to attack the book and the author. . . . I am vain enough to believe that the book will survive a few years longer than Mr. Mankiewicz's incoherent picture."

Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who directed and wrote the screenplay for the 1958 movie of the novel, later called it "the very bad film I made during a very unhappy time in my life." But Jean-Luc Godard called it the best movie of 1958. (That year's Oscar went to "Gigi.") Mankiewicz wanted Laurence Olivier to play Fowler and Montgomery Clift to play Pyle, but ended up with Michael Redgrave and Audie Murphy, a World War II hero. Claude Dauphin, the French actor, swipes scenes as Vigot. Bruce Cabot, in films a second banana to King Kong and John Wayne, sparkles as the bumptious and boozy American reporter, Granger.

The current version is not anti-American, Sir Michael insists, but "anti the 300 to 400 people who started America's entry into the Vietnam War." Sir Michael describes himself as "the most pro-American foreigner there is." The same could not be said for Fowler who, in the book, recalls explaining to Vigot the sarcastic title used to describe Pyle: "He's a good chap in his way. Serious. Not one of those noisy bastards at the Continental," he remembers saying, mentioning the hotel where the United States correspondents gathered. " `A quiet American.' I summed him precisely up as I might have said, `a blue lizard,' `a white elephant.' "

Greene's characters, in their staggering search for redemption, often stockpile sin. While Fowler wallows in opium, booze and brothels, he is uninterested in nationalism, imperialism or Communism. For Greene, God and guilt always trump politics and its affectations.

"Be disloyal," a troll-like guru rants at a boy in "Under the Garden," an autobiographical Greene short story of 1963. "It's your duty to the human race. The human race needs to survive and it's the loyal man who dies first from anxiety or a bullet or overwork. If you have to earn a living, boy, and the price they make you pay is loyalty, be a double agent — and never let either of the two sides know your real name. The same applies to women and God. They both respect a man they don't own, and they'll go on raising the price they are willing to offer. Didn't Christ say that very thing? Was the prodigal son loyal or the lost shilling or the strayed sheep?"

Fowler tells Pyle, "I wish sometimes you had a few bad motives, you might understand a little more about human beings." Greene occasionally wandered toward good intentions himself. In 1953, he told Waugh that he wanted to "write about politics and not always about God." Waugh waspishly replied: "I wouldn't give up writing about God at this stage if I was you. It would be like P. G. Wodehouse dropping Jeeves halfway through the Wooster series."

Martin F. Nolan, a former reporter and editor for The Boston Globe, lives in San Francisco.

The Slide-Rule Set, Nameless No More

The Slide-Rule Set, Nameless No More
By JULIE V. IOVINE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/garden/30NERD.html

WERNER SOBEK says he plans to design three houses in his life. Each will require 10 years of research. His first, completed two years ago, was built for his family in Stuttgart, Germany, and was made from 12 tons of steel and 20 tons of glass. It took just 11 weeks to build and has already become a Saturday morning destination for design pilgrims.

His second house will be shaped like a teardrop and made of carbon fiber, so light and sturdy that it can rest on sand instead of a foundation. A model of it was shown last year at the Venice Biennale for architecture. "We must reinvent everything, even the way we live," Mr. Sobek said.

His peers may think it is odd that he cares so much about houses; after all, Mr. Sobek is an engineer. Not content to calculate weight loads for bridges and skyscrapers, Mr. Sobek is part of a new breed of engineers shedding their nerdy image and inching into the limelight.

For decades, engineers, especially in the United States, have stood silent and loyal behind their drafting boards, their pencils sheathed in pocket protectors, while architects wowed clients with expansive eloquence. Like can-do Scotty relegated to the bowels of the Starship Enterprise, engineers stood by while dashing Captain Kirk lorded the helm. Today, a Mylar mutiny is under way in the design world as engineers like Mr. Sobek face off with architects in a power struggle for higher recognition.

Just as thousands came to London in 1851 to marvel at the Crystal Palace, there is a swelling excitement about the tilting towers and broad swaths of unencumbered space made possible by new technology and the poetic visions of engineers. From Santiago Calatrava's spread-winged brise soleil at the Milwaukee Art Museum to Mr. Sobek's own snap-together house, engineers are tired of playing second fiddle.

Engineering pyrotechnics — grand subterranean spaces and sky gardens — outlined in the the World Trade Center proposals have generated an unexpectedly broad audience,

Last February, at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, a design by an engineer stood at the center of the sports-watching world. The Unfolding Arch, where winning athletes received their medals, was designed by Chuck Hoberman, already well known for his elastic sphere toy.

Today, homeowners are meeting with engineers on elaborate staircases and glass walls — the sculptural centerpieces of state-of-the-art homes — that would be impossible for architects to pull off on their own.

Last fall, Cecil Balmond, a London-based engineer with the firm Arup, collaborated with the British artist Anish Kapoor on a tensile sculpture that was described by an awed press as part monstrous orchid, part scarlet black hole and that now fills the entire Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern in London through April.

"It's silly to think of architecture in the traditional sense of the architect in charge of everything," Mr. Balmond said on the eve of a sold-out lecture for Urban Center Books in Manhattan. "The age of single authorship is over. The team is more fundamental to how things actually get designed."

While Mr. Balmond is still smarting from the Tate's omission of his name from the museum's wall credits, he did get equal billing with Toyo Ito, the Japanese architect, for a tea pavilion installed for two months last summer in Hyde Park. The elaborate roof looked like dappled light cast in glass and steel and was based on an algorithm formula Mr. Balmond devised.

Last month, Mr. Balmond published a Koolhaas-slick monograph, "Informal" (Prestel), with his own manifesto-style meditations on everything from fractal geometry to Victorian tiles. Mr. Koolhaas wrote, "Engineering can now enter more experimental and emotional territory."

Prof. David P. Billington, the curator of an exhibition on engineers that will open in March at the Princeton University Art Museum, said: "Engineers are revolutionizing the field of design. They're creating new forms that technically and aesthetically extend the boundaries of architecture."

Engineers are now in demand as more than just problem solvers. "Most people think engineering isn't sexy," said Mr. Balmond, dressed far from the Prada-clad cool of architects; he wore a black corduroy blazer. "I think it's hugely sexy. And I see my job as showing people that engineering can be quite lyrical, even a joy."

In a case of sibling rivalry, engineers, especially in the United States, both admire their showboating colleagues, the architects, and resent their own role as the fix-it guys. Architects may grab the headlines when a new building goes up, but, Mr. Balmond said, "In the end, I'm the one who has to make it work."

As buildings become more like complex organisms and Europe's reverence for technology takes hold here, it is the younger architects who are grabbing the lead in teaming up with engineers. "Engineers aren't tucked away behind the architectural brief like they used to be," said Cristobal Correa, an engineer with Buro Happold Engineers, a firm working on projects ranging from the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., with Tadao Ando to a bamboo house in Connecticut with Shigeru Ban. The younger the architect, Mr. Correa said, the more likely "the engineer actually gets to sit at the table with the client."

Engineers owe a lot to computers. In the age of slide rules, it took days to calculate a structural scheme. Now it takes hours. "Engineers have become much more substantial players," said Terence Riley, chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art. "Before, they had to stay within known territory. Now it's more like, `Yeah, we can do whatever you want.' "

Mr. Calatrava, who works out of Zurich, Paris and Manhattan, is the paragon of the empowered engineer. Demonstrating the polymathic tendencies of many engineers, Mr. Calatrava is also trained as an architect, but he describes himself as a sculptor. In projects like the Milwaukee Art Museum, his first United States building, and the Stadelhofen train station in Zurich, Mr. Calatrava developed what could be called a poetics of structure.

Dispensing with the tried and true, he said he favors more exotic support systems derived from the wings of birds and the batting lid of an eye. "A building is a sculpture you walk into," Mr. Calatrava said. "I have never drawn a distinction between the architecture, the engineering and the art."

On the way to name recognition, Mr. Calatrava has attracted some unwanted notice. When completion of the $100 million Milwaukee Art Museum expansion was delayed nearly six months in 2001, the press twittered about the soaring brise soleil's complexity and its potentially ungainly flap in high winds. "It was kind of an embarrassment," said Donald Baumgartner, president of the museum's board, noting that three consecutive gusts of wind shut the brise soleil down. "But when it opens like a bird unfolding its wings over the lake," he added, "it takes your breath away."

Not all engineers are eager to fly solo. Guy Nordenson of Manhattan is fast emerging as a talented engineer who favors collaboration rather than star turns. He likens his team spirit to the role played by an auteur cinematographer on a movie by Woody Allen or Ingmar Bergman. For a loft in TriBeCa, Mr. Nordenson collaborated with Adam Yarinsky and Stephen Cassell of the Architecture Research Office on a staircase made of steel inserted in glass, which became the loft's centerpiece. "We told the client that because the stair had to be in a pivotal location, why not make it a sculptural work of art?" Mr. Yarinsky said.

Only a few engineers have attained name-brand status, most of them Europeans, but Mr. Nordenson is approaching their ranks. His growing roster of high-profile assignments includes a collaboration with Yoshio Taniguchi on the expansion of the Museum of Modern Art. Last week, when Rafael Viñoly was named as the architect for the expansion of the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, Mr. Nordenson got nearly equal billing.

Mr. Nordenson exemplifies that particular type of engineer, the Renaissance nerd. While architects often describe design as a calling pledged practically at birth ("Mother taught me to draw"), engineers seem at pains to prove their versatility. Before career demands took over, Mr. Balmond played flamenco guitar; Mr. Calatrava raced bicycles. Mr. Nordenson quotes Rainer Maria Rilke and Ezra Pound. Many engineers still resist the heroic mantle: cardigans, not capes, remain the sartorial preference. With his bolo tie and turquoise clip, Mr. Nordenson is not comfortable with the notion of the celebrity engineer. "I shy away from the kind of self promotion that I see in a lot of architects," he said. "It can get complicated for an engineer drawn to wanting the same kind of attention architects get. It's a slippery slope."

Mr. Sobek, in Stuttgart, has no such qualms. He is determined to recast the image of the engineer in the more exciting role of inventor. Mr. Sobek, who spent his youth painting murals of Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, made his home a laboratory for new ideas in engineering. "Engineering means to create new things," Mr. Sobek said. He urges engineers to look farther afield for inspiration, to textile technology, bionics and haute couture.

Mounted on a hillside overlooking Stuttgart, Mr. Sobek's family house was snapped together on site. Flexibility rules: the tiles on the bathroom walls are magnets. In place of knobs, cabinets operate via electronic sensors. No humble act is too small for reconsideration: no-touch faucets keep fingers and spigots dirt free. "It doesn't make any sense to wash your hands only to dirty them again on a muddy spigot," Mr. Sobek said. "It must be a contact-free procedure."

Mr. Sobek has thought it all through, even how to let out the dogs without going downstairs. The furniture is all on wheels, including the bathtub. "We have so little, we want to be able to move it all around," Mr. Sobek said. The plumbing for the tub can be unhooked and replugged at other locations, so bathers can choose their view, mountain or city. Has he ever moved the tub? No, Mr. Sobek admitted. "It's still a work in progress," he said. The next house will have a bathtub that disappears into the floor completely when not in use.

Such luxuries born of technology are a thrill, Mr. Sobek said, but what pleases him as much is that "it really annoys all the local architects that the most famous house in town was built by an engineer."

Light Particles Are Duplicated More Than a Mile Away Along Fiber

Light Particles Are Duplicated More Than a Mile Away Along Fiber
By KENNETH CHANG
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/science/30TELE.html

Employing a facet of quantum mechanics that Albert Einstein called "spooky action at a distance," scientists have taken particles of light, destroyed them and then resurrected copies more than a mile away.

Previous experiments in so-called quantum teleportation moved particles of light about a yard. The findings could aid the sending of unbreakable coded messages, which is limited to a few tens of miles.

The new experiment used longer wavelengths of light than earlier ones, letting the scientists copy the light through standard glass fiber found in fiber optic cables.

"The central issue is to move to telecom fibers and telecom wavelengths and telecom technology," said Dr. Nicolas Gisin, a physics professor at the University of Geneva and the senior author of an article today in the journal Nature. "This then allows us to go the long distance."

The experiments are a primitive realization of the transporter in the "Star Trek" television series that beams people from starship to planet. In coming years, it may be possible to use teleportation to imprint the exact quantum configuration of one atom to another. But teleporting something from the everyday world like a person that contains more than a trillion trillion atoms is highly unlikely, if not impossible.

Even with the light particles, photons, about one in a thousand were received at the other side.

"You're not very sure to arrive," a researcher, Dr. Hugo Zbinden, said about human teleportation.

Still, the experiments show that scientists can overcome a seemingly insurmountable conceptual barrier, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The principle states that the location and velocity of a particle cannot both be precisely measured at the same time. That would seem to make it impossible to teleport anything, even single particles, because without knowing their exact specifications they cannot be copied somewhere else.

Devised in 1993 by scientists led by Dr. Charles H. Bennett of the I.B.M. Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., quantum teleportation produces pairs of "entangled" light particles that can be thought of as a pair of encoding and decoding rings. A message is combined with the encoding light particle. That combination goes to the recipient, who uses the decoding photon to decipher the message. Because no one else has the decoding photon, no one else can decipher the message.

Other encoding techniques using quantum cryptography are simpler, and a more immediate use for teleportation would be as a repeater. Photons almost all peter out after traveling about 50 miles through optical fiber. Teleportation would enable the creation of copies every 50 miles or so, letting the message be sent across an unlimited distance.

More Court

well its a long story, but i had yet another stressful day last evening in court.

previously, i had brought the photo lab that i have been using for over 7 years to small claims court when i realized (on adding up their confusing statements), that they had not credited me for about $3000 worth of payments i had made over a period of about three years -- i had paid, they took the money, and then billed me for more the next month without crediting my payment to me. unbelievable!

well, after trying to approach them repeatedly over several months, and even going to the NY BBB, i finally took them to small claims court and won in arbitration.

at the hearing they did not file a counterclaim, however a week later, and after they had lost, they filed a "new" claim; which was really just a disguised counterclaim (which is not allowed). i wasn't sure what to expect yesterday when i went to court. but i didn't think they would sink to fraud to try and prevent me from getting my money back from them.

so i was in shock as they brought forth a phony invoice for $3000 worth of film i had bought from them. unbelievable as everyone knows that (1) the cheapest film is at B&H, (2) they don't have the capacity to sell that much film, and (3) i wouldn't be buying that much film especially from them! luckily, i had their complete invoice history from 1996 from them that i had saved, as well as all my canceled checks. but it seemed to become a case of their word against mine, as things can often get in arbitration.

i know its not that much money. but hey, $3000 is $3000. so i'm just hoping and praying that the truth will prevail.

Democrats Turn to Governor for Their State of the Union Response

Democrats Turn to Governor for Their State of the Union Response
By TIMOTHY EGAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/27/politics/27LOCK.html

SEATTLE, Jan. 26 — When President Bush finishes the State of the Union address Tuesday, the Democrats will nudge to center stage a relatively obscure governor from the West to say that the drums of war should not drown out the worst economic crisis in a half-century for state governments.

The governor, Gary Locke of Washington, already has a small niche in history as the first Chinese-American to hold a state's highest office. Now he will become one of few governors chosen to give the nationally televised response to the president's message to Congress.

Governor Locke, the son of Chinese immigrants, grew up in public housing in Seattle and went to Yale, in part, on affirmative action scholarships. So his biography may be more powerful than the message he plans to deliver in a bit more than 10 minutes Tuesday night.

Mr. Locke said in an interview that he planned to contrast President Bush's proposal to cut dividend taxes with Democratic plans to "help out everyday people who are struggling."

He noted that 1.5 million jobs had been lost since the recession began two years ago and that many states were awash in red ink. The president's plan to eliminate taxes on stock dividends will only make the problem in the statehouses worse, Mr. Locke said.

On foreign policy, the Democrats are unlikely to depart much from president's chosen path, people who are helping to draft Governor Locke's speech say, except to urge more backing from traditional allies before going to war.

Mr. Locke said, "We think there are clear distinctions between the Democratic approach and the president's."

Usually, party leaders in Congress give the opposition response. But the governors, who provided Democrats with one of the few bright spots in the last election by picking up 4 seats for a total of 24, have been pressing for more say in the national political message.

Mr. Locke noted that 53 percent of Americans lived in states governed by Democratic executives. Last fall, the Democrats won governor's races in big states like Pennsylvania, Illinois and Michigan and also in Republican strongholds like Kansas and Wyoming. But they lost in two big states, Florida and Texas, where they thought they had a real chance.

Governors have also been a productive bench for both parties — producing four of the last five presidents.

Last month, Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader in the Senate, agreed to let the governors pick someone to give the response speech from among their ranks. They chose Governor Locke, 53, who was elected to two terms by wide margins and is chairman of the Democratic Governors' Association.

Republicans in this state say Governor Locke has been a failure, overseeing the collapse of a dynamic economy while not delivering on promises to improve transportation.

"Locke is a really an odd choice for the Democrats," said Chris Vance, chairman of the state Republican Party. "Normally, you want to highlight somebody who's been a success. By any measurement, Gary Locke has been a failure as governor."

Certainly, the state is struggling. Washington is facing a $2.5 billion deficit on a two-year budget of $25 billion and has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, 6.8 percent. The state has been hammered by the dot-com collapse and huge layoffs by the Boeing Company, which has moved its corporate base to Chicago but still builds most of its airplanes in the Puget Sound area.

Nationwide, the states are projecting budget deficits of $60 billion to $80 billion over the next two years, with California's shortfall alone making up half of that. The Democratic governors have requested direct aid from the federal government to help with the deficits, arguing that much of the red ink was caused by new federal burdens for domestic security and medical aid for the elderly.

Despite the problems in Washington State, Governor Locke was popular until recently, but now some polls show his approval rating declining. He won election twice by nearly 20 percentage points, campaigning as a business-friendly centrist and focusing on education.

This month, the governor surprised many in his own party by pledging not to raise taxes to make up the deficit and by asking for deferral of two voter-approved measures to raise teachers salaries and reduce class sizes.

Mr. Locke said he had not decided whether to run for a third term next year. But he has already drawn a Democratic challenger, Phil Talmadge, a former state Supreme Court justice.

The governor rarely appears on national television talk shows, and prefers to spend his weekends with his wife, Mona Lee, a television documentary producer, and their two small children, Emily and Dylan, in their house in Seattle. He has said he may one day leave politics to become a "soccer dad" for his children.

Mr. Locke is not known as a dynamic speaker. When asked how he felt approaching Tuesday's speech, the biggest political moment of his life, he said, "Yikes!"

Service Academies Defend Use of Race in Their Admissions Policies

Service Academies Defend Use of Race in Their Admissions Policies
By ADAM CLYMER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/28/education/28RECR.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 — Even as the Bush administration sides with opponents of affirmative action at the University of Michigan, officials of the nation's service academies say their own minority admissions programs are necessary to maintain both integrated student bodies and officer corps.

By defending policies that are not "race neutral," the admissions officers appear to contradict their commander in chief. On Jan. 15, President Bush criticized Michigan's polices, which he said gave preference to some applicants "not because of any academic achievement or life experience, but solely because they are African-American, Hispanic or Native American."

"We like to represent the society we come from in terms of the student body's undergraduate experiences. So having a diverse student body allows personal growth in areas where people may not have gotten it otherwise. We want people to understand the society they will defend."

The military argument is that with racial minorities making up from 28 percent of the enlisted personnel in the Air Force to 44 percent in the Army, almost all-white ranks of officers would hurt morale.

While the academy officials would not discuss the Michigan case, several outside legal experts argue that the administration's legal theories in briefs it filed with the Supreme Court in the case raise serious questions about the procedures at the elite training grounds for future military leaders at West Point, Annapolis and Colorado Springs.

Expressing similar concerns, a group of retired senior officers is planning to file a friend-of-the-court brief next month warning against any Supreme Court ruling that could imperil the academies' contribution to the integrated officer corps.

The Army, Navy and Air Force academies make strenuous efforts to achieve freshman classes with significant minority representation, though only West Point says it has specific percentage goals. Each recruits extensively, gives minorities an edge on admissions and bolsters their ranks by sending promising candidates who fall just short of their standards to one-year preparatory schools. Some enlisted personnel and athletes also attend those schools.

At each academy, which the federal government operates, admissions officers cited two main reasons for racial diversity in admissions, one singular to the military and one widely heard in higher education.

The familiar argument, as expressed by Col. Michael L. Jones, dean of admissions at West Point, is: "We like to represent the society we come from in terms of the student body's undergraduate experiences. So having a diverse student body allows personal growth in areas where people may not have gotten it otherwise. We want people to understand the society they will defend."

The military argument is that with racial minorities making up from 28 percent of the enlisted personnel in the Air Force to 44 percent in the Army, almost all-white ranks of officers would hurt morale.

"We want to build an officer corps," said Dave Vetter, the Naval Academy dean of admissions, that "reflects the military services of which we are a part." Colonel Jones said, "Officers of color are important as role models in the Army."

The Bush administration briefs in the Michigan case argued this month that the extra points given to minority undergraduate applicants and the less specific preferences given to minority law school applicants violated the constitutional guarantees of equal protection of the law. While the briefs said diversity in higher education was important, they suggested only one specific "race-neutral" way to achieve it, a system of admitting a specific percentage of students from every high school in a state that would not be applicable to national institutions like the academies.

Eric Schnapper, a law professor at the University of Washington, called the administration's insistence on race-neutral methods "a dagger in the heart of what the service academies are doing."

According to the administration's theory, said Walter E. Dellinger, a former acting solicitor general, "a program that is designed to increase minority enrollment is itself race based."

"What the academies apparently do would not withstand the application of the standards in these briefs," Mr. Dellinger said.

Asked to comment on these concerns, the Justice Department neither agreed nor disagreed. Monica Goodling, a spokeswoman for the department, said: "The administration believes that racial diversity can and should be encouraged in higher education, without falling back on unconstitutional quotas. However, the only admission system the Justice Department has reviewed is the one at issue in Michigan, and the conclusions in our briefs were written to address their specific admissions systems. Absent litigation, the department would not comment on other systems, other than to note that the president has committed this administration to actively promote diversity and opportunity in every way that the law permits."

One particular argument that might be made for the service academies' efforts is that the national defense need for an integrated officer corps would outweigh equal protection concerns. Lee C. Bollinger, the legal scholar who is president of Columbia University (and the named defendant in the Michigan case, because he was president of that university when the suits were filed) said: "You could argue national defense is different from education. I find it difficult to believe it would succeed. There is no question that it would be a very hard case to make."

The retired officers who intend to file a brief have not settled on their arguments in the 30 pages permitted by the Supreme Court, but they began their efforts well before the administration took a stand.

While the administration briefs do not demand overruling the Supreme Court's 1978 Bakke decision, which barred fixed quotas but allowed race to be a consideration, the private plaintiffs in the case do want that ruling reversed. The military plaintiffs will call for affirming Bakke.

The generals and admirals would not agree to have their names made public now. But James M. Cannon, former chairman of the Naval Academy Board of Visitors under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, said many of their names would be familiar. Mr. Cannon has worked to recruit signers.

Race matters, openly, in the admissions process at all three service academies. At West Point, Colonel Jones said: "Race might be a small edge. It's one of the considerations. We have goals for soldiers, for females, for recruited athletes, for minorities, for scholars and for leaders. We never hit our African-American goal of 10 to 12 percent. We normally hit 7 to 9 percent."

Critics of affirmative action consider "goals" equivalent to "quotas." And the administration's brief denounces the Michigan law school's slightly different term of a "target" of minority representation. It said, "The fact that the law school's target may be a range, rather than a fixed percentage, does not make it any less a quota."

Mr. Bollinger of Columbia said that meant clearly that it was impermissible "for the military to say they have a goal of reaching 10, 12 percent."

At the Air Force Academy, Rollie Stoneman, associate dean of admissions, said the academy did not have percentage goals, except for a minimum of applicants medically qualified for pilot training. On race, Mr. Stoneman said, "we don't give any specific points in the process, but certainly it's one of any number of factors we consider."

At the Naval Academy, Mr. Vetter acknowledged that race was a factor, though without particular goals. "Everybody that receives an offer to the academy has to be fully qualified," he said. "But beyond that, we want a brigade that reflects our country, geographically diverse, we want it to be diverse in other regards, too." Of 299 minority students in the current first-year class, he said, only 78 are African-American, and "that probably is our greatest challenge."

The academies acknowledge that most of the minority students they seek could usually win full scholarships at private institutions that did not wake them up before dawn or expect them to serve five years of active duty after graduation.

So they all rely on recent or current minority undergraduates, recent graduates assigned to the academies and other alumni to make the case that a service academy education is worth the sacrifices and to coach applicants through the complicated admissions process that requires Congressional nominations and intense physicals that civilian institutions do not demand.

And all three send some candidates to their prep schools, in Newport, R.I., for the Navy; in Fort Monmouth, N.J., for the Army; and at Colorado Springs, on the Air Force Academy campus. At Annapolis, Mr. Vetter said, the purpose was "to give them a little extra strength in the academic areas that we emphasize in the academy."

J. Crew Hopes Ex-Chief of Gap Can Bring Success

J. Crew Hopes Ex-Chief of Gap Can Bring Success
By TRACIE ROZHON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/28/business/28CREW.html

Millard S. Drexler, the charismatic retail executive who made Gap famous, will now lead J. Crew, the floundering merchant of preppy clothing, which has had four chief executives in the last five years.

The new job gives Mr. Drexler a chance to duplicate his success at Gap and reclaim the title of best retailer in America.

Mr. Drexler, who will also become chairman, is investing $10 million of his own money in J. Crew, which is not publicly traded. Analysts hailed his arrival yesterday as a coup for the company — whether he brought his checkbook or not. He will succeed the current chief executive, Ken Pilot, who once worked under Mr. Drexler at Gap and was considered to be doing a good job in turning around J. Crew for Texas Pacific, which bought 60 percent of the company in 1997. "It was just this unusual circumstance to be able to get someone of Mickey's caliber," said Owen Blicksilver, a spokesman for J. Crew, sidestepping the issue of who approached whom. "It grew out of a mutual interest," he said.

Yesterday, Mr. Drexler called a meeting of all employees — from deputies to secretaries — at J. Crew's headquarters in Manhattan and told them that when he arrived at Gap in 1983, the company was almost as small as J. Crew is now. One of the attractions for Mr. Drexler was that the J. Crew brand name is bigger than the relatively small company, giving it, in his mind, plenty of room to grow.

But growth at J. Crew carries great risk — and no one knows that better than Mr. Drexler. As Gap began to lose both fashion pizazz and market share two years ago, Mr. Drexler bore most of the criticism, not only for losing the fashion edge but for overexpanding into more than 4,000 Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic stores. He was forced out, and was succeeded four months ago by Paul Pressler, who ran global theme parks for Disney.

The hiring of Mr. Drexler, which was reported yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, sets up a retailing duel that has the industry buzzing. Mr. Drexler will be taking on the company he made famous while working to differentiate J. Crew from Gap in a retail environment where customers tell pollsters they are bored with merchandise that all looks alike. Mr. Blicksilver said yesterday that Mr. Drexler, besides meeting with his employees, was studying "the product."

At Gap, Mr. Drexler was credited with a retailing revolution: creating a store that sold only its own private- label merchandise. There were no other brands, just Gap khakis, Gap T-shirts and other Gap-branded merchandise.

"He made the store a brand, and the brand a store," said Kirk Palmer, chief executive of the search firm that bears his name, summing up the comments of analysts.

Mr. Drexler wants to turn J. Crew around with the same success he had at Gap. Last week, even before his current move was announced, analysts were crediting him, not Mr. Pressler, with the current Gap turnaround, and said that, like many other misunderstood leaders of the past, Mr. Drexler had received undeserved blame.

Richard Jaffe, a retail analyst for UBS Warburg, said last week that the success of Gap over the holidays — it was one of the few merchants to thrive in a dismal retail season — actually belonged to Mr. Drexler. This fall, Gap reversed two years of bad sales figures. The company credited restyled merchandise, especially the store's "Crazy Stripe" scarves and hats.

"But those were chosen way back in the spring, when Mickey was still there," said Hal Reiter, chief executive of Herbert Mines Associates, a search firm that recruited Mr. Drexler's successor. Nevertheless, Mr. Reiter was blunt about J. Crew's future: "This has to be the last C.E.O. — no more revolving doors, no more shoes to drop. There is a feeling that if Mickey Drexler cannot fix J. Crew, it can't get fixed."

Yesterday, Mr. Blicksilver, speaking for J. Crew, Texas Pacific and Mr. Drexler, who declined to comment, said that the growth projected by Mr. Drexler did not have to come — at least initially — from more stores.

In fact, J. Crew recently cut back on the number of store openings for 2003, to 5 from a projected 30, and there are no immediate plans to change that.

"One of the things Mr. Drexler is looking at is store productivity: sales per square foot," Mr. Blicksilver said. "At this point, J. Crew could grow the business 40 percent just by improving sales per square foot." He declined to disclose the current figures.

Nevertheless, he did not rule out significantly expanding the number of stores later. Although there may already be too many stores in the khakis-and-crewneck-sweater category, Mr. Blicksilver said that if J. Crew could differentiate itself from competitors like Gap, Eddie Bauer, Abercrombie & Fitch and others, there might be room for more.

"J. Crew could potentially be in all the `A' malls in the country; right now, they're only in half of them," he said.

After several years in the retail wilderness, with declining same-store sales and bad publicity, J. Crew suddenly faced an embarrassment of riches: Mr. Blicksilver emphasized that the company had grown more pleased with the current chief executive but could not pass up hiring Mr. Drexler.

In only four months, Mr. Pilot had met an ambitious sales plan drafted by the board. He had begun to reverse its sales decline: for the first six months of 2002, same-store sales were down 12 percent, compared with a year earlier. By the last three months of the year, same-store sales were down 7 percent — not great, but not as bad.

Mr. Pilot also reduced the amount of unsold goods shipped to outlet stores by 70 percent and reduced overall inventories by 15 percent. And he hired Michael Dadario as head of stores; Mr. Dadario is well respected and is expected to stay.

J. Crew, which began as a catalog merchant, now has 195 stores, including 43 factory outlets. The stores account for 64 percent of the business, with catalog and Internet sales making up the rest.

Total sales for its fiscal 2002 year, which will end on Saturday, are estimated at $750 million — down from $768 million the year before.

Over the last five years, J. Crew had gone from a family-run business begun by Arthur Cinander — his daughter, Emily Woods, will resign as chairwoman to make way for Mr. Drexler but will continue as a director — through a series of chief executives.

The last three were known as operations people, Mr. Blicksilver said, not people involved in creating merchandise. "What we didn't have was a world-class merchant."

For Immigrant Family, No Easy Journeys

For Immigrant Family, No Easy Journeys
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/04/nyregion/04FUJI.html

Yan Hua Zheng was worried about the crabs: they might not survive a 20-hour bus ride. She knew that her two daughters, who moved to the mountains of north Georgia two months earlier, missed fresh crab, a Fujianese favorite, but the crabs are no good unless they go into the pot alive.

So Ms. Zheng instead bought Chinese groceries that could endure her own journey to rural Georgia. She was moving from New York to reunite with her family. She rode the subway back home to Herald Square from Chinatown with orange and red shopping bags teeming with pickled radishes, dried mushrooms, shredded pork and soy milk.

Packing to leave a city after a decade is hard. Leaving via Greyhound is even harder: life has to be collapsed into bags that do not exceed 70 pounds. And a lifetime of experiences must be collapsed into the space of a single bus seat, to be expanded again only when the door opens and lets in the strangeness of a new environment, a new climate, a new stage of life.

Ms. Zheng, 39, moved to Manhattan a decade ago from her hometown in Fujian, a coastal province in southeastern China. At Thanksgiving time, she was making the second leg of her life journey, to Hiawassee, a small town in the northeast corner of Georgia.

In the last decade, waves of rural immigrants from Fujian have come to New York City. Tens of thousands arrived illegally, paying $30,000, $50,000 and even more to organized gangs of smugglers — known as snakeheads — to buy their chance at the American dream. In New York, they crowded each other out, out of homes, out of jobs.

Now the Fujianese are fanning out from New York City: north to Boston, south to Virginia, west to Tennessee. Some, like Ms. Zheng's family, are landing in small towns in the rural South like Hiawassee. "Every state has a Chinese restaurant," she said, explaining the feasibility of such moves. "Americans depend on us to eat."

She was leaving the only place in the country that had an identity to the Fujianese: New York City. Other parts of the United States are not called Indiana or Virginia or Georgia. Instead they are collectively known as waizhou — Mandarin Chinese for "out of state."

For the Fujianese, waizhou is more than a geographic description. It is the white space left over where there is no New York, no Chinatown, no East Broadway. Waizhou is where fathers and sons go away for weeks and months at a time to work 12-hour days in Chinese restaurants. Waizhou is crisscrossed by Greyhound bus routes and dotted with little towns, all of which either already have or could use a Chinese restaurant. Waizhou schools are better. In waizhou, supermarkets sell crab meat prepackaged in boxes.

Ms. Zheng was reluctant to leave, but her husband had insisted on buying a Chinese restaurant in Hiawassee, a town of 850 people that prides itself for being two hours away from everywhere, including Atlanta. He argued that the restaurant could give them the financial and family stability that eluded them in New York. Her husband and two daughters left months before; now she was going with her young son in her lap to join them.

A Second Migration

Ms. Zheng came to New York after paying $30,000 to snakeheads for a fake passport and a plane ticket. She left her husband, John Ni, behind with their 4-year-old daughter, Jolin. Three years later, Mr. Ni left Jolin, too. He was given asylum in the United States on religious grounds, and that allowed his wife to become a legal resident as well.

He had no idea of how hard it would be to earn American money with poor English skills. In Fujian, he had graduated from college and held a low-stress job as an accountant. But in the United States, he worked as a waiter, slowly learning the restaurant business. Ms. Zheng worked in garment factories. Sometimes she even slept there, her head by the sewing machine.

They lived at 31st and Broadway, in a building filled with Fujianese crowded four or five to a room. The building is a study in the art of vertical living: bunk beds, wooden lofts, shelves that reach to the ceiling, boards strung across pipes to create storage space. It is a building full of takeout deliverymen. At night, the doorway is surrounded by dozens of chained bicycles.

In 1998, they had another daughter, Nancy, whom they sent back to China to be raised by her grandparents. A year later, they had a son. They named him Jeffrey but called him Momo, from their local Chinese dialect for "no hair." Ms. Zheng decided to keep him at her side.

A year and a half ago, Jolin got a visa and moved here, joining parents she had not seen in 10 years, in a one-room apartment. Nancy was brought by her grandparents three months later.

John Ni was from the countryside, and had never really felt comfortable with life in Manhattan, the crowds, the clutter, the smells. He was tired of their family living in a single room where they cooked in a makeshift kitchen in the bathroom.

In July, the couple heard from a friend about a modest Chinese restaurant called China Grill for sale in Hiawassee, a town whose name Ms. Zheng could barely pronounce. Mr. Ni went down to see the place. It was in a strip mall, sandwiched between a Dairy Queen and a Subway sandwich shop. The eight tables were set with A.1. steak sauce and Chinese zodiac place mats. The letters out front were in faux Chinese calligraphy.

Mr. Ni liked Hiawassee: it was small and the landscape reminded him of home. For the same rent as they paid for their 250-square-foot room in New York City, the family could get a 1,250-square-foot apartment with two bedrooms, seven closets and a washer and dryer. On the phone, he told Jolin that she could go fishing in the nearby lake.

Hiawassee seemed safer than a big city, where stories of men being beaten or killed while delivering food was a common currency among the Fujianese. A relative of Ms. Zheng's was shot and killed in a restaurant holdup a few years ago in Philadelphia. She hated the idea of living in the middle of nowhere, but she relented.

In September, after borrowing money from friends and family, they bought the restaurant, for $60,000. Mr. Ni went first, buying a 1992 Cutlass Cierra for $1,300. Then he learned to drive.

Nancy and Jolin took the Greyhound down to Hiawassee in October; Ms. Zheng stayed behind with Momo to deal with a crisis. Their apartment had been robbed in August, and someone stole a safe with $10,000 in cash, jewelry and many legal papers — including birth certificates and passports. Ms. Zheng was stuck here a little while longer untangling the mess.

In Georgia, business was slow — the tourist season in the Appalachians was over — but the customers were friendly. One man gave Mr. Ni a fishing rod. A local artist took the girls to register at school. On the first day of classes, one of Jolin's classmates asked her if she was in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. She couldn't understand what the other child said. Then a boy went up to the board and drew two buildings and a plane.

Jolin found waizhou boring, but she also found beauty. On her first trip to Atlanta, she gazed out at 14 lanes of densely packed car lights — one river of red, one white — that flowed to and from the night horizon on Interstate 85. "They look like ants moving up a mountain," she said. "It's prettier than New York."

There was a wonderful place called "Wama," which was huge, and sold everything from milk to underwear to televisions, at good prices. The man at the door gave out yellow smiley stickers that said "WAL-MART."

But she was surprised by the Chinatowns in waizhou. The ones on Atlanta's Buford Highway were U-shaped strip malls. And instead of densely packed streets, the "Chinatowns" had huge parking lots that overflowed on weekends.

Atlanta Has Fresh Crabs

Greyhound doesn't stop in Hiawassee, so when she finally straightened out everything in New York, Ms. Zheng bought a ticket for Gainesville, Ga. — an hour of winding mountain roads away.

She left on Nov. 26. On the way to the Port Authority bus terminal, she passed bands practicing for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in Herald Square. At the terminal, Ms. Zheng looked for her gate with seven bags and a toddler in tow. A woman with a polka dot scarf waiting at the gate tried to be helpful. "Donde va?" she asked. Ms. Zheng stared back.

Ms. Zheng sat near the front, next to the lady in the polka dot scarf, because the back of buses made her carsick. When the Lincoln Tunnel spit out the bus into New Jersey, Ms. Zheng held her son and looked back at the Manhattan skyline. She had paid $30,000 to move to New York; she had paid $59 to Greyhound to leave.

Momo, quickly tiring of his confined space, exasperated some other passengers with his thorough exploration of the bus.

"Who has cold medicine to knock him out?" piped up one man.

"What he needs is a shot of rum — straight up," called out another passenger.

Ms. Zheng did not understand what they were saying, but she could read the tone of their voices.

The industrial landscape of Interstate 95 melted into the hollow stretches of Interstate 85. Baltimore. Richmond, Va., where there was a delay. Charlotte, N.C., where she had to change buses. Spartanburg, N.C., Greenville, S.C. The hills and trees along Interstate 85 reminded Ms. Zheng of her village and her father's farm. The temperature rose, and there were leaves on the trees.

In the Charlotte bus depot, she met a Fujianese man on his way back to Tennessee after a New York City vacation. He gave Ms. Zheng almost $100 worth of seafood that he was afraid would spoil because his bus was delayed.

The clams and abalone were still fresh, but the crabs had died between Richmond and Charlotte. They were big ones, the kind that cost $7 a pound.

After 24 hours, Ms. Zheng arrived at her final bus depot. She waited and waited for her husband. A voice pierced through the crowd. "Hello! Hello!"

Mr. Ni rushed up, scooped up his son and hugged him. Husband and wife looked at each other. They had not seen each other for two months. There was no embrace.

It was 3 a.m. by the time they reached their home in Hiawassee, where there was still some clean white mountain snow on the ground. Mr. Ni turned on the bedroom light and shook his daughters. Jolin woke up, bleary-eyed. She looked around and her face brightened when she realized who was there. She immediately hugged her little brother. "He smells," she said.

Nancy continued to sleep on the mattress on the floor. "She's gotten chubbier," Ms. Zheng observed, looking at her younger daughter. She'd been eating snacks from the restaurant, Jolin explained.

Jolin dragged the bags in from the car. She jumped on 14 videotapes her mother had brought of a popular Chinese serial opera. Mr. Ni swung Momo around, laughing.

Ms. Zheng watched the two of them. For the first time in their lives, the pieces of the family puzzle were complete. It was a family that barely knew each other, but now had only each other to depend on.

After the restaurant closed the next night, the family had their first dinner together in months. Ms. Zheng brought out the chilled clams from Charlotte to go along with the stir-fried broccoli and sesame chicken. The clam was good when dipped in wasabi mixed with soy sauce. But it wasn't crab.

So at her first opportunity, Ms. Zheng endured a two-hour journey of winding roads to Atlanta. (She threw up twice; New York subways are not adequate preparation for winding roads.) She brought back two bags of crabs and steamed them for dinner. "They are not much more expensive than in New York," she said.

The family sat around the table. They had no need for crab crackers, breaking the warm red shells with fingers and teeth. It was a lot of effort for thin slivers of white crab meat and spoonsful of orange roe. But they thought it was worth it. "Fujianese are not afraid of hard work," Jolin said.

Chinese Are Tempting Taiwan by Dangling Economic Fruit

Chinese Are Tempting Taiwan by Dangling Economic Fruit
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/28/international/asia/28TAIW.html

BEIJING, Jan. 27 — Chinese officials have stepped up their charm offensive against Taiwan in recent days, dangling the fruits of closer economic ties and muffling their threat to bring Taiwan back to the motherland by force.

On Sunday, in a step described here as encouraging but minor, a charter plane from Taiwan landed in China for the first time in 53 years, to ferry Taiwanese businessmen home for the Chinese New Year holidays. But in accordance with Taiwan's restrictions on direct links, the plane had to detour and touch down in Hong Kong en route, wasting several hours of flying time.

In a special briefing for reporters today, a Chinese official said that China's recent stance toward Taiwan was "extremely moderate" and that "stabilizing the situation in the Taiwan Strait" was vital to China's broader goals of improved ties with the United States and economic progress.

China's friendlier tone reflects an emerging view among scholars here that so long as Taiwan can be dissuaded from declaring independence, which could mean war, time may be on Beijing's side. Taiwan's once robust economy has faltered in the last few years, and its growth appears to be increasingly linked to the mainland. Chinese officials hope that closer economic and personal links will gradually lead to a political accommodation similar to the "one country, two systems" formula applied to Hong Kong when it rejoined China but kept a separate form of local government.

The Chinese official briefing foreign reporters called for new talks, by nongovernmental or business groups, to work out direct trade and communications links between Taiwan and the mainland.

Leaders in Taiwan claim to favor such ties, which are increasingly demanded by Taiwanese companies as their investments in China surge. But the officials have been reluctant, concerned for the military security of Taiwan and worried that its de facto independence could be engulfed by the growing mainland economy.

The Chinese officials said the greatest threat to peace and to progress in Chinese-American relations was the "creeping independence" being pursued by Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, and pro-independence "fundamentalists" on his flank.

Stressing the potential windfall to Taiwan if it relaxes its commercial restrictions, the official noted that cross-strait trade had ballooned to more than $40 billion a year, with a huge surplus for Taiwan.

More than 60 percent of Taiwan's overseas investment is now on the mainland, the official said, adding that Taiwanese now make more than 3 million trips to the mainland each year and that at least 300,000 Taiwanese, mainly business managers, now live there.

"It really is unfair to the business community that they can't travel back and forth directly," the official said, adding that "China wants to have the earliest possible breakthrough" with transport links and has repeatedly offered to put aside political questions and treat this as an economic and technical issue.

Chinese officials now realize that a more conciliatory stance toward Taiwan plays better in the United States, where a significant group in the Republican Party still favors a hawkish, anti-Beijing policy on Taiwan.

Beijing officials warn that large American arms sales to Taiwan and cooperation in training and communications between the American and Taiwanese militaries could sour Chinese-American relations as well as increase tensions with Taiwan.

China will not forswear the right to use force to prevent Taiwan's formal independence. But for now, Beijing's main strategy is the all-out pursuit of economic ties, the official said today, describing it as a "win win" policy that will enrich Taiwan as it furthers the cause of reunification.

China's Coal Miners Risk Danger for a Better Wage

China's Coal Miners Risk Danger for a Better Wage
By JOSEPH KAHN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/28/international/asia/28CHIN.html

ZHONGYANG, China — Liu Fengtong does not need reminding that it is perilous to dig for coal in Chinese mines. He broke his foot and his shoulder when a tunnel collapsed on him six years ago, and he lost his front teeth when a rock fell on his face a few years later.

When he leaves home he walks past the village walnut tree, once the daily meeting place of his two brothers, Liu Fengwu and Liu Fengmin. They worked the same shift at a nearby mine until Oct. 23, when an underground methane gas explosion reduced the family mining fraternity from five men to three.

Then there is Mr. Liu's 77-year-old mother, frail and prone to tears, who tells her sons that they must never again go down into the mine shafts.

"I lie to her and tell her I work in a factory now," Mr. Liu said on a recent frigid morning, slipping on his inky canvas overalls and attaching his headlamp. "She could never take it if we told her the truth. But I can't survive without going down."

Becoming a coal miner in China is less a career choice than an act of desperation. It is a job for the poor who calculate that the income, however modest, outweighs the likelihood of injury and the constant specter of death.

China began shaft mining at least 1,800 years ago and now produces more coal than any other country, about 1.3 billion metric tons a year. The Chinese coal industry also has few rivals in the number of miners killed and maimed on the job.

According to China's official statistics, 6,121 people died in mines last year, 8 percent more than in 2001. There were an average of 10 fatal accidents a day last year.

Mining is dangerous everywhere, but a Chinese miner is more likely to die on the job than miners in almost any other country. Last year 4.7 Chinese miners were killed for every million metric tons of coal produced. The only higher reported rate was in Ukraine, at 6 miners per million metric tons. A Chinese miner is 117 times more likely to be killed at work than an American miner.

Many more miners perish uncounted in prosaic tunnel collapses, explosions, fires, floods and elevator failures that mine owners never report, Chinese coal experts say. Many mine owners keep their records secret. They do not want anyone to scrutinize operations that use manual labor in conditions not much better than those at the dawn of the industrial age in the 19th century.

The miners' days are filled with degradations. They share soiled sheets and hard beds in dormitory rooms. They work without union representation for bosses they never meet. Yet theirs is also a culture of dependency. Though they rarely make more than $150 a month, they do better than peasants who work the surface of the land. If mining kills or injures a family member, the healthy need extra income to pay medical bills and support dependents.

Fang Chunsheng moved to this coal region in Shanxi Province hoping to earn enough to start a business in his native Sichuan. He now uses his savings to help pay medical fees for Fang Jianjun, his little brother and a fellow miner. In November, a loaded coal cart spun out of control and punctured the younger Mr. Fang's body. He broke three ribs and doctors removed his pancreas.

In a place like Zhongyang, nestled in the dun-colored Luliang mountains of western Shanxi Province, coal is by far the most important industry, and the most pressing problem. Dense clouds of smog drift over the arid landscape, the exhaust of coking plants. Smokestacks and elevator towers above mine shafts seem to outnumber trees.

Everyone here depends more or less on coal, and nearly everyone knows someone whose life it destroyed.

All six brothers in the Jiang family, ages 32 to 56, work in the same mine, called Hou Wa, in a valley beneath their hilltop village. None had suffered major injuries for years, but that changed last Dec. 30.

On that day Jiang Wuchu, 33, was crawling through a 3-foot-high tunnel in a coal seam 400 feet underground when he heard a rumble. He regained consciousness as workers dragged him toward the shaft opening. He had no sensation in his legs.

The manager would not let workers use the company car to take Mr. Jiang to the hospital. "They were afraid I would die and cause them problems," Mr. Jiang said.

So they bundled him into the back of a taxi. The company agreed to pay for surgery to repair displaced vertebrae in Mr. Jiang's back, but only if it were performed in Zhongyang, where the local clinic resembles a two-story motel, with concrete floors and black curtains in the doorways to keep out the winter chill.

At least one of Mr. Jiang's brothers skips work each day to help feed, clean and administer therapy to him at the clinic. The mine has so far offered no compensation beyond the initial surgery, and the family has shouldered hospital fees and provided for his wife and three children.

Mr. Jiang still cannot move his legs. He often grimaces and complains of intense pains in his back.

"We would never tell him this, but our fear is that he is paralyzed," said Jiang Qihu, 56, the senior brother. "I don't want to think about it. We cannot afford even a pack of cigarettes."

The elder Jiang says he has debated whether to press the boss at Hou Wa, a private businessman he has never met, to help his family. But he has heard that the boss tends to retaliate against workers who want compensation.

"I'm afraid if we make a big issue he will fire the rest of us," Mr. Jiang says. "The boss has connections with powerful people. We are powerless."

China's government no longer controls mine production as it once did. Local officials supervise the biggest mines and often hire private businessmen to manage them. Tiny mines operating without permits account for a substantial share of production. Many do not follow the most rudimentary safety guidelines, like providing adequate ventilation in mine shafts.

Regulators often express outrage over the industry's atrocious safety record, especially after an undiminished spate of accidents in the last several years. Beijing has ordered small, shoddy mines to shut down, and it vows to punish irresponsible mine owners and the local officials who protect them.

But China's richest sedimentary rock basins lie beneath its poorest places — its northeast, central and northwestern regions. The incentive to exploit coal has tended to outweigh the penalty for unsafe production.

The government also seems inclined to tolerate a high death rate to keep coal, which still supplies about 75 percent of China's energy needs, abundant and inexpensive.

The situation persists because the people who have the most at stake, the miners, are too uneducated, disorganized or scared to do much about it. "Nobody is going to stick his neck out," said Liu Fengtong. "You open your mouth for nothing."

He has been mining for 18 of his 36 years. Although he takes daily detergent baths, the coal clings like a light beard to his face and snuggles into the folds of his skin near his deeply lined eyes.

Mr. Liu skipped work for a week in October to arrange the funeral of his two brothers, who died with 44 other people in a gas explosion at the Zhujiadian mine, just half a mile from his family village. The sprawling mine, one of the few in the area that is state-owned, is visible from his home, as are the tombs of some victims and the walnut tree where his brothers used to meet each day.

Now he does his best to forget. He lives and works at a mine in the hills, sharing a dormitory room with miners on his shift. They warm themselves by a coal fire in the early morning before strapping on their equipment. The conversation steers away from safety, as if addressing the topic might invite bad luck.

Mr. Liu's older brother, Liu Fengtai, did give up mining after the accident. He said he could no longer think straight when he was underground. In other words, he is scared. He thinks his little brother should be, too. "I want him to quit," Liu Fengtai said. "I would rather give him what money I have than to see him go down."

But Liu Fengtong says mining is his destiny. With two children in school, he depends more than ever on the income.

When his shift began, he squeezed onto a capsule-shaped shaft elevator and smiled at a visitor. The sun flashed off his silver front teeth before the elevator was swallowed by darkness.

A Stolen Buddha Head Finds Its Way Back Home

A Stolen Buddha Head Finds Its Way Back Home
By CELESTINE BOHLEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/09/arts/design/09BUDD.html

For 1,300 years the Akshobhya Buddha, one of four large statues of Buddha at the Four Gate Pagoda in China's Shandong Province, sat solemnly looking eastward, face locked in a beatific expression.

In 1997, the Buddha lost its head. A gang of thieves, staging the second of two robbery attempts, swaddled the head in blankets and cut its throat with a diamond saw. Next, wielding a sledgehammer, they literally knocked it off its torso.

The thieves were caught soon afterward and the ringleader was sentenced to life in prison, but the trail of the 159-pound head itself went cold. The Four Gate Pagoda, built in 611 during the Sui dynasty as part of the Shentong Monastery, was closed to the public as the Chinese government dealt with this embarrassing blow to its efforts to protect a site that had long been a top priority for historic preservation.

That might have been the end of yet another dispiriting tale of cultural vandalism, a plague that has struck China just as it has many other countries. But then, in February 2002, the head of the Akshobhya Buddha turned up in Taiwan, the gift of loyal disciples to the Buddhist master Sheng-yen, the 73-year-old founder of the Dharma Drum Mountain Buddhist Association, based in Taiwan, and also of the Chan Meditation Center in Elmhurst, Queens.

Alarmed by the gash in the Buddha's neck, Master Sheng-yen started an investigation. "If there is a head, there must be a torso," was his first thought, as he later described it.

He summoned Lin Bao Yao, a scholar at the Taipei National University of Arts, who studied the piece and traced it to Shandong Province in eastern China, and to the Sui dynasty, a precursor to the illustrious Tang dynasty. Experts from Shandong Province were able to confirm that this was the Akshobhya Buddha from the Four Gate Pagoda.

Apparently the discovery was something of a shock for inhabitants of the region, who were never told back in 1997 that one of their Buddhas was missing its head.

The scholarly police work was a stroke of luck for the Akshobhya Buddha, whose name in Sanskrit means "imperturbable." For Master Sheng-yen, whose worldwide movement of a reported one million disciples is dedicated to the protection of the spiritual environment, it was, as he said later, like "winning the lottery."

"I was so happy," said Master Sheng-yen, who was born in China but since 1978 has lived mostly in New York and has opened a retreat in Pine Bush, upstate. "If it had not been presented to us as a gift, maybe it would have been another 200 years before it went back to its place of origins."

On Dec. 17, in a ceremony that cast a faint but warm glow on the otherwise frosty relations between Taiwan and the People's Republic, the Akshobhya Buddha was solemnly returned to its torso — this time affixed to the shoulders by a steel rod, in part to prevent future thefts. The event was front-page news on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Experts say that antiquities theft in China surfaced as a widespread problem only in the last 20 years, as local inhabitants learned of the value of ancient objects, some excavated illegally and some taken from their own homes. He Shuzhong of the National Administration on Cultural Heritage in Beijing said in a recent article that the route for smuggled antiquities passes through most large Chinese cities, with Hong Kong considered the main staging area.

"It is an issue of concern," Master Sheng-yen said. "The main problem is poverty, of course, but another problem is attitude, which is why it is so important to educate people."

Master Sheng-yen, who was awarded an honorary certificate by the Four Gate Pagoda Scenery Spot Preservation Committee for his act, made a point of traveling with the head on the plane and then the bus that returned it home, turning down an offer of his own limousine.

On the same trip, Master Sheng-yen visited the National Religion Bureau in Beijing, where he suggested that the Four Gate Pagoda — which under China's Communist government has largely been a tourist site — should again become a religious shrine, as was intended when it was built by the monks who helped bring Buddhism to China from India, via central Asia.

The return of the Buddha, he said, was not just a cultural event but part of a dialogue that is the core of Buddhist faith and belief.

"As a religious leader, I believe I have played a role as a bridge between the two sides, in helping the interaction in a civilian way," he said, speaking through a translator. Both governments were supportive of the transfer, he added.

Restoring the integrity of the original statue, with its distinctly Oriental features — representative of a short, transitional period in Chinese Buddhist art — was more important than keeping it in Taiwan at his center for the teaching of Buddhism, he said.

The head had originally been bought by a group of Taiwanese businessmen, who wanted to donate it to Dharma Drum Mountain for its future Museum of Buddhist History and Culture. No one has yet figured out where the head was in the years after it was stolen, although Master Sheng-yen said several local officials lost their jobs after the theft was discovered.

He said some experts had suggested that the head went from China to Japan and from there to art markets in Europe and then to Taiwan, where it was handled by a local antiquities dealer. It is not known whether the dealer has been questioned by the authorities.

The dealer said he knew nothing about the head's origins, Master Sheng-yen said. Apparently, the head of the Akshobhya Buddha was singled out because the other Buddhas in the pagoda had been damaged. "This one was the best preserved," Master Sheng-yen said.

So far, Master Sheng-yen said, he has not been able to find out from his disciples how much they paid for the head, but he said he had heard estimates as high as $1.5 million. Experts on Buddhist art said that sculpture from the Sui (pronounced sway) dynasty was rare, since it lasted only from 581 to 618, but that prices could vary considerably.

Huge Demonstration in China, but Subject Is Traffic Safety

Huge Demonstration in China, but Subject Is Traffic Safety
By JOSEPH KAHN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/09/international/09CND_SHAN.html

SHANGHAI, Jan. 9 — Some 10,000 people took the streets in the eastern city of Hefei this week in what appears to have been the largest student demonstration since the Tiananmen Square human rights protests of 1989.

But the students had a much narrower agenda: traffic safety.

They were protesting the government's failure to provide a safe way to cross a busy thoroughfare near Hefei Industrial University. The protests developed after three students were knocked down by a truck that ran a red light, killing two and putting one in a coma, students involved in the protest said.

"There is no background to this other than telling the government that traffic safety must be a priority," Li Pan, a student at the college, said in a telephone interview. "Some of our friends have died and this should be taken seriously."

Although the government ended the 1989 protests by shooting hundreds of unarmed demonstrators in Beijing, the latest protests in Hefei show that the Tiananmen crackdown has not deterred a new generation of students from taking to the streets. These protests present a potential cause of concern for a government that fears any social unrest as a threat to its legitimacy.

Some participants in the Hefei protests asserted that responsibility for the students' deaths extends up China's hierarchy.

"This is not only the driver's fault, but also mistakes by people in power," one student wrote on the university's open Internet bulletin board. "Every year students die under wheels at the school gate, but Hefei hasn't taken the necessary initiatives." Students said that the university had proposed constructing a pedestrian bridge over the intersection, but that city authorities had rejected the request for lack of money.

Some students also said they were also enraged when, just after the accident, a local newspaper published a short account that blamed the victims for the accident.

Demonstrations of any kinds in China's one-party state are risky. Leaders are often arrested, while ordinary participants can get black marks on their official records. But they also get attention.

Wen Wei Po, a Hong Kong-based Chinese language newspaper that has ties to authorities in Beijing, reported today that Hu Jintao, the new chief of the Communist Party, had personally intervened to address the students' concerns. That report could not be confirmed.

Students participating in the online discussion said authorities in the provincial government of Anhui had acted to mediate the dispute.

As a result of the unrest, students said, the driver of the truck was arrested and the city agreed to build the pedestrian bridge.

"We got results," one student said in a telephone interview. "People are satisfied."

Finding Martian Landscapes, Here on Earth

Finding Martian Landscapes, Here on Earth
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/28/science/space/28MARS.html

BEACON VALLEY, Antarctica — Scientists who study Mars have been coming here for 30 years to learn how an ultracold, bone dry climate shapes the terrestrial, and perhaps Martian, landscape. But they never, until now, thought about monster glaciers that vanish like phantoms in the night.

"My mind was blown," said Dr. James Head of Brown University, a leading expert on the geology of Mars, referring to the idea that vast glaciers can ride over the land and leave only tiny traces. But he is reading these traces in the rocks and boulders of Antarctica's Dry Valleys, he said, and now that his eyes have been opened, he plans to look for similar marks on the plains of Mars as well.

Dr. Head learned of phantomlike glaciers from Dr. David Marchant, an associate professor of earth sciences at Boston University, who has been studying the landforms of Antarctica's ice-free regions for 16 years.

Aided by the National Science Foundation, the two scientists spent six weeks together at a remote Antarctic field camp in November and December, living in a tent, walking over rocky terrain and comparing what they saw there with unexplained features on Mars.

Their journey led them into a frozen vault of Earth's history. They stood on rocks that blanket the oldest ice on the planet — the remnant of a glacier that could be anywhere from one million to eight million years old. They examined freeze-dried algae, possibly 10 million years old and possibly still alive. In the process, they hashed out some longstanding mysteries about climate change here and on Mars.

The three major Dry Valleys and the mile-high mountains that separate them occupy a region about the size of Delaware and embrace some of the most unusual environments on Earth. At lower reaches, near the Ross Sea, frozen lakes partially thaw in the Antarctic summer and microscopic worms and algae come alive.

Farther inland, the valleys run into mountain barriers that block ice flow from interior East Antarctica — an ice sheet up to two miles thick that covers more than 3.8 million square miles. Here the average temperature is 35 below zero. Except for tiny skiffs of snow that blow in from the ice sheet, there is no water. It has not rained for 15 million years.

"This is the best preserved landscape on Earth," Dr. Marchant said.

About 20 years ago, geologists realized that because of cold climate change and Antarctica's isolation, a great ice sheet had to have built up about 15 million years ago. Larger than any ice sheet before or since, it buried the Dry Valleys and nearby mountain ranges under an even deeper tomb of ice. Yet there was very little sign of it. Most of the Dry Valleys' soil seemed undisturbed.

Eventually, Dr. Marchant said, the Dry Valleys helped geologists figure out that glaciers had been there but not the kind of glaciers they knew from work in the Northern Hemisphere. At the base of most glaciers is a very thin, discontinuous layer of meltwater that forms under changing pressure and temperature.

Glaciers advance as temperatures fall, picking up rocks and abrading the ground in a characteristic fashion. As temperatures rise, wet-based glaciers retreat, leaving scour marks, thick sheets of debris called till and sinuous ridges called eskers. The signature is unambiguous: a glacier once passed through here.

"Dave is showing me all these things and I'm thinking Mars: could something like this have happened on Mars," Dr. Head said. Mars is colder and drier than Antarctica but many of its features are similar. Spacecraft now orbiting Mars show gullies, layers of sediment that suggest ancient lake beds, ripples, polygons and hummocks.

It can be misleading to apply familiar patterns on Earth to patterns on Mars, Dr. Head said. But the notion of cold-based glaciers suggests a physical process that explains certain features on the two planets.

For example, a region on the western flank of a giant volcano, Arsia Mons, has large lobes of material extending down its slopes. The deposit is grooved near its edges like a phonograph record. Moreover, the ridges and grooves lie over a large impact crater. Could this have been produced by cold-based glaciers?

After tramping the Dry Valleys with Dr. Marchant, Dr. Head said the answer might be yes. "I was just dumbfounded," he said. "I'd been looking at things for years and never knew what they were." Fields of polygon-shaped rocks that appear all over Mars and in the Dry Valleys are cases in point. In the Dry Valleys, "you walk around fields of polygons and you can't see anything but debris," Dr. Head said. "Then you dig down three feet and find ice, nothing but ice." Perhaps water flowed on Mars' surface and now lies frozen under its polygons.

In Antarctica, Dr. Head saw puzzle rocks — broken, scattered shards that Dr. Marchant could reassemble into a single boulder. The Viking 2 lander set down among such pieces, and it looks as if they fit together, too.

Another Martian mystery is the presence of pitted rocks. In the Dry Valleys, pits are formed when tiny amounts of snow melt on sun-warmed rocks and salts in the water erode tiny depressions. On Mars, people thought rock pits were caused by gases in lava, Dr. Head said, but frost landing on Martian rocks could also do the job.

Fortunately for Dr. Head, he is an adviser to NASA on Mars exploration and will be able to put his theories to the test when two rovers land on the planet a year from now. The rovers "will be traversing Mars, looking behind rocks, turning them over and looking underneath, drilling holes in them and digging trenches," Dr. Head said.

"We will be exploring Mars just as we do on Earth," he said, to see if the analogies make sense.

"You don't see too many classic glacial deposits in the Dry Valleys," Dr. Marchant said. "Some people thought they must have eroded away," Dr. Marchant said, but that was unlikely. The Dry Valleys are too cold and dry to undergo erosion. Instead, he said, geologists now theorize that glaciers must have been so cold they would have stuck to the ground without melting. Instead of advancing and retreating, they would simply vaporize or sublimate, going from solid to gas like phantoms, leaving only extremely subtle traces.

Instead of eroding the landscape, they preserve it for millions of years.

Cold-based glaciers leave three calling cards: drop moraines, sublimation till and rock glacier deposits. Drop moraines are strips of rocks and boulders that resemble the ripples in a pond. Often they are only a foot high, a hundred feet long and very easy to step over without noticing. Sublimation till is debris that lies over buried ice. It often assumes the shape of irregular, interlocking polygons. Rock glaciers are larger piles of debris that form into ridges and hummocks left over when a cold-based glacier evaporates.

Judging from these signs, there is little doubt that a monster cold glacier overrode the Dry Valleys 12 million to 15 million years ago, burying them, Dr. Marchant said. Then it vaporized, he said, leaving its signature all over the upper Dry Valleys — rock ripples, polygons and hummocks perched on an older landscape.

The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is the active descendant of this monster. It acts like a gigantic freezer hovering over the Dry Valleys with the thermostat stuck at 40 below zero. Dr. Marchant and other experts believe the ice sheet has been in place for more than 10 million years, so big and cold it controls its own weather. When the rest of Earth warms up, it will not.

But other experts disagree. After finding marine fossils in some high mountain ranges toward the South Pole, they say that half to two-thirds of Antarctica's ice sheets must have melted three million to four million years ago, setting off a tremendous rise in sea level that carried marine organisms to these mountains. If these scientists are correct, global warming could eventually release enough water to flood low-lying regions all over the planet.

While discussing the fate of Earth, the two geologists were thrilled to learn that one of Dr. Marchant's graduate students, Adam Lewis, had found a deposit of freeze-dried algae and insect body parts in the upper Dry Valleys. Based on ash deposits and other clues, the organic life could be more than 10 million years old, Mr. Lewis said, from a time before the monster glacier moved through the area.

Because the algae are freeze-dried, not fossilized, it may be possible to bring them back to life. "We'll put it in water and see what happens," he said, after efforts to date the material are completed by the end of February.

Matisse, Picasso and Concerns About the Crowds

Matisse, Picasso and Concerns About the Crowds
By ROBIN POGREBIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/27/arts/design/27MUSE.html

A certified blockbuster of an art show bearing a high-end ticket price is to open at the Museum of Modern Art in less than three weeks, with questions to be answered. Will those who want to see it make the trip to the Modern's temporary home in Queens? And if they do in anything like the numbers the show has drawn elsewhere, will the smaller space be able to handle them?

Glenn D. Lowry, the director of the Modern, said the museum had prepared for what he expected to be 4,000 visitors a day to "Matisse Picasso," which opens on Feb. 13 and drew huge crowds in London and Paris. The museum is issuing timed $20 tickets that will admit people every half-hour. It has hired extra coat checkers and guards and plans for additional food in the cafe.

Nevertheless a comparison of the Modern's 85,000-square-foot home, now under renovation, on West 53rd Street, with its temporary 25,000 square feet in Long Island City suggests potential pandemonium. MOMA QNS, as it is called, has only 40 seats in the cafe; the museum had 470 in Manhattan between its garden cafe and Sette Moma restaurant. And the Manhattan building is in the middle of Midtown, surrounded by hotels, shopping and tourists. Long Island City is not.

Although the Queens space had some 3,500-visitor days around the holidays, the crowds for "Matisse Picasso" promise to be larger than anything the site has yet encountered, raising inevitable questions about how visitors will move through the building without clogging it and whether they will have room to appreciate the nearly 140 works by two of the 20th century's masters.

John Richardson, the Picasso biographer, said it was important for the paintings and sculpture to have room to breathe and for visitors to be able to move easily among the pieces. "Especially for this subject, you want to go from one to the other and back again," he said. "It's not a linear thing."

Some fellow aficionados are "worried that it's going to be a bit cramped," he said. "If it's a one-man show, you can cram things together a bit. But if they're making these big, major points about what these artists are getting from each other or sharing with each other, you want space between them."

John Elderfield, the Modern's chief curator at large and one of six curators of the exhibition, said the show was indeed meant to juxtapose the works of the two artists to point up how they played off each other as both rivals and friends.

"We are making very, very specific comparisons and presenting groups of works which demonstrate the mutual influence and reciprocal relationship between them," Mr. Elderfield said. "It was at times an uneasy relationship, at times close."

Mr. Elderfield said the space in Queens would work to the advantage of the exhibition, which runs through May 19. "The real interest of MOMA QNS is it's a big, open factory space, so we have more flexibility than London or Paris did," he said. "To see classic Modernist works like this in a raw space is actually quite amazing for the contrast."

"The advantage of big rooms is there is more cross-reference between the paintings," he added. "The disadvantage is, if you don't get the hang right, it could look too crowded."

The greatest challenge, Mr. Lowry said, is logistical. "The actual installation is less problematic than moving people in and out of the building," he said, "making sure it's not too crowded, that people can leave their coats and get their coats."

The Modern estimates, for example, that people generally spend one to two hours in this type of exhibition and more time per picture at the beginning of an exhibition than at the end. "Museums have been dealing with major blockbusters for decades," Mr. Lowry said, "so there is a whole range of strategies that kick in."

The museum's last Matisse show, in 1992, brought in 900,000 people, and the entire museum was used for the exhibition. Its Picasso and portraiture exhibition in 1996 drew 500,000.

Nearly 500,000 people visited "Matisse Picasso" last May at the Tate Modern in London, which collaborated on the exhibition with the Picasso Museum and the Pompidou Center in Paris. Because of the demand, the Tate had to stay open 24 hours a day toward the end of the run. "People were there in the middle of the night to see it," Mr. Elderfield said. The show traveled afterward to the Grand Palais in Paris, where it was also a major success.

Visitors will be admitted every 30 minutes from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Mondays, Thursdays and Sundays and until 7:30 on Fridays and Saturdays. The museum is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Tickets are available through Ticketmaster or in person at MOMA QNS, the MOMA design store on 53rd Street or the MOMA design store in SoHo. People can also call a toll-free number: (866) 879-6662.

Stephen E. Weil, a scholar emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Education and Museum Studies, said the timed ticket had emerged as an effective approach to large crowds. "You can't control how long people are going to stay in an exhibition," he said. "But it's a reasonable attempt to try to regulate the flow."

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art charged $20 for its van Gogh exhibition in 1999, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts charged $17.50 for its Monet show in 1998. The "Matisse Picasso" ticket amounts to an $8 surcharge over the museum's regular admission of $12.

"I think it's an appropriate ticket for the scale and the quality of this exhibition," Mr. Lowry said. "It helps us keep the cost of the show under control but by no means will cover the cost of the show."

The Philadelphia Museum of Art, which drew 770,000 people to its Cézanne exhibition in 1996, is charging $20 for its show on Degas and dance, which opens Feb. 12. "Getting several hundred thousand people through a gallery space is not unusual," said Gail Herrity, the Philadelphia museum's chief operating officer. "It's a wonderful challenge to have."

At the Modern, 800 to 1,000 tickets a day will be set aside on a first-come basis, Mr. Lowry said, adding that he expected the exhibition to accommodate a maximum of 400 to 500 people per hour.

Scalping, Mr. Lowry said, is to be expected. For its 1992 Matisse show, scalpers were selling the $12 ticket for $50; for the Art Institute of Chicago's Monet retrospective in 1995, scalpers reportedly got $200 for a $12.50 weekend ticket.

"There is nothing we can do about it," Mr. Lowry said. Members get free tickets and will be admitted through a special entrance, Mr. Lowry said.

The exhibition will take up about two-thirds of the museum: 11,000 to 14,000 square feet, roughly the same space it had at the Tate and would have had in Manhattan, Mr. Lowry said. "It's the same amount of gallery space we would have given it at 53rd Street," he said. "It's even more generous because we can put walls where we want them."

That does not, however, address the problem of the ancillary spaces like the lobby, which is 1,500 square feet including the cafe and bookstore. That compares with 30,000 square feet at 53rd Street, raising the possibility that people will have to wait in line in the cold.

"When we've done major shows, we've often had lines outside the building," Mr. Lowry said. "The reality is, it's no colder in Long Island City than it is in Midtown."

Although the Modern decided to do the show before it knew it was going to be in Queens, Mr. Lowry said he never considered abandoning it. "It is an exhibition we were committed to and couldn't consider not doing," he said. "And people in New York are curious and will come to see anything that merits attention."

There is still the question of whether people will make the trip. The Modern has been advertising the exhibition heavily. As of Friday, the museum had sold 50,000 tickets.

Laurie Beckelman, director of the new building program for the Museum of Arts and Design in Midtown, said "Matisse Picasso" was a smart marketing move for a museum that needed to get people to Queens.

"It's clever to do a blockbuster out there," she said. "More people get on a plane to go see art in London or Paris than go to see art in other boroughs."

Does the whole enterprise give Mr. Lowry agita? With $80 million to raise for the Modern's renovation project in Manhattan, he said, it's par for the course. "I wake up in the morning with agita," he said, "with or without `Matisse Picasso.' "

Outsider Art, in From the Edge and Under the Gavel

Outsider Art, in From the Edge and Under the Gavel
By WILLIAM L. HAMILTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/23/garden/23BERG.html

ROBERT M. GREENBERG doesn't exactly look like Diane Keaton in Woody Allen's "Annie Hall," but stepping into an elevator in Hell's Kitchen last week, dressed in a maxicoat with a beret pulled tight to his wire-rimmed glasses, a long bob of hair hanging out the bottom, he shared some of the same oddball charm.

Mr. Greenberg, 54, founder and chief creative officer of R/GA, an interactive advertising agency, and a specialist in digital imagery, worked with Mr. Allen on "Zelig," constructing the archival film sequences that pasted Mr. Allen's Leonard Zelig into the past.

Oddball charm also characterizes Mr. Greenberg's collection of outsider and self-taught art, a significant portion of which is to be auctioned on Monday at Christie's in New York, in the first stand-alone sale by either Christie's or Sotheby's devoted to the category of outsider art.

Outsider and self-taught art, defined by Christie's as art created by insane, institutionalized, unschooled and other "culturally isolated" individuals, can be as dark as it is naïve.

But charm is problematic, as Woody Allen's Alvy Singer discovered.

Outsider and self-taught art, defined by Christie's as art created by insane, institutionalized, unschooled and other "culturally isolated" individuals, can be as dark as it is naïve. And its marketplace — the dealers, collectors and venues like the Outsider Art Fair, opening today at the Puck Building in New York — can be as subject to visions as its artists.

"There's nothing sweet about it," Mr. Greenberg said, at home in his loft on West 38th Street, where he lives with Corvova Lee, his companion of 17 years, in a troubling crowd of carnylike works of art.

Mr. Greenberg's day at Christie's is problematic too. The outsider art world has drawn its sword, both in defense and attack, amid fear over whether a well-invested champion is attempting to legitimize it as fine art or abandon it. And there is worry that the small enclave of outsider art, living largely by its own rules and its own assigned value, will not play well on the big stage, failing to deliver the big prices and celebrity that Christie's and Mr. Greenberg are expecting. "The galleries are nervous," Mr. Greenberg acknowledged.

Christie's could find itself in a cold sweat too if, as dealers are saying, collectors have purchased pieces from Mr. Greenberg's collection through galleries during the last year.

In addition to raising money for further collecting and for architectural projects like his houses on Fire Island and St. Bart's and a new house in upstate New York, Mr. Greenberg said he hopes to help outsider art's acceptance within the contemporary art world. An auction by a major house could ensure attendance by important institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, which has exhibited outsider art but rarely collected it. It could also attract important contemporary art collectors, with deeper pockets, breaking the ceiling on prices in the provincial realm of outsider art and setting self-aggrandizing records. In the current economic climate, expensive outsider art might look like a bargain.

Betting that the time was ripe, Christie's complied with Mr. Greenberg's thinking with an extensive mailing of 15,000 catalogs and announcements to buyers and bidders on its contemporary art, folk art, Americana, tribal art, antiquities, 20th-century decorative arts and American Indian lists. Its presale estimate, $1.5 million to $2.2 million for the 121 lots, 15 of them not from Mr. Greenberg's collection, have raised eyebrows if not yet prices.

Nancy Druckman, director of the American folk art department at Sotheby's, who handles outsider art for that house, described the $400,000 to $600,000 estimate for the lot on the catalog cover, "Noah's Ark," a limestone block by William Edmondson, a stone carver working in Tennessee in the early 20th century, as "pretty aggressive."

Robert Manley, the specialist in postwar and contemporary art at Christie's who, with Margo Rosenberg in the American folk art department, worked with Mr. Greenberg on selecting the lots and pricing them, said that typically it was Mr. Greenberg who pushed the estimates high, something Mr. Manley thought unconservative for a category that was simultaneously trying to establish itself with a new general audience.

John Ollman, the owner of Fleisher/Ollman Gallery in Philadelphia, through whose hands the ark passed before, described it as "outrageously overestimated." Mr. Ollman explained: "I've sold more Edmondsons than any dealer in the United States, and I sold the ark. It's an important piece but not the most important piece. It's never been a piece that sold for more than $305,000."

Asked if contemporary art collectors might be prepared to pay what outsider art collectors never have, a central gamble of the Greenberg sale, Mr. Ollman replied, "That's myth — do you know anybody that's spending $500,000 that doesn't do their homework and find out what something's worth?"

Mr. Ollman has been proved wrong at least once. Sotheby's 1977 sale of a collection of 21 drawings by Bill Traylor, an artist from Alabama and an outsider art market star, took in $777,700, roughly three times its presale estimate. Traylor, who died in 1947, is now considered blue-chip enough to be regularly included in contemporary art sales.

There has also been talk that the material in the Greenberg auction is uneven in quality — a reflection of outsider art generally — and that the maturing field is undergoing a critical shakeout that will pull sterling like Traylor, Edmondson, Henry Darger and Martin Ramirez into the vault of collectible contemporary art and leave others at the door, as devalued as slag by the publicity of an auction.

"It's the next major issue of the field — quality," said Randall Morris of the Cavin-Morris gallery in New York. "Just a piece of wood with eyes on it isn't any good anymore."

Of equal concern is speculation that the Greenberg auction might not do well because works in the group were already on the market, available through various dealers and only too familiar to key collectors, who have either purchased from it or passed on it.

Mr. Greenberg has been actively selling during the last four years, in addition to collecting. He took a booth with Robert Berman, a fine art dealer in Santa Monica, Calif., at last year's Outsider Art Fair in New York, and the year before. Mr. Berman said that he had also sold pieces with Mr. Greenberg from the collection this year and that Mr. Greenberg was "de-accessing" through Frank Maresca of the Ricco/Maresca gallery in New York, a statement confirmed by Mr. Greenberg. Mr. Ollman said he understood, from clients of his who had bought or been offered pieces, that substitutions had been made in the Christie's sale, as pieces sold privately.

Mr. Maresca denied on Monday that he had offered or sold items from Mr. Greenberg's collection in the last year.

"He's not a dealer in disguise, as many collectors are," Mr. Maresca said, characterizing Mr. Greenberg as a friend as well as a longstanding client. The Greenberg Center at the Ricco/Maresca gallery, intended as a "study center" when it was announced in 1996, is now largely storage that the gallery was providing Mr. Greenberg, not a sales salon, Mr. Maresca added.

At Christie's, Mr. Manley said he was unaware that pieces taken from the sale were removed because they had been sold.

"There were two or three things that we initially had planned on, which we're no longer selling," he said. "Bob changed his mind."

Mr. Berman said he thought that the obvious reason for the sale on Monday was the once unobtainable cachet of an auction at Christie's for outsider art.

"It's a way to stimulate the market," he said, adding, "It could be the start of a collecting frenzy, or an interesting lesson in what kind of auctions not to do."

Lyle Rexer, author of "Jonathan Lerman: Drawings by an Artist With Autism" (Braziller, 2002), called the exclusion of outsider art from mainstream art appreciation and pricing, a "grass ceiling" that the field itself was in part responsible for.

"Except for blue-chip artists like Traylor and Ramirez and Edmondson, and a few others," he said, "the prices are really iffy — every single piece, every artist. It's never been tested with the big boys. Outsider art people can profess to want to exist in the nexis of contemporary art, but the value wouldn't hold up. Lots of dealers are happy to make money at a lower level. Making outsider art visible and making it meaningful may not be the same thing."

Though the sale has unquestioned rarities, like the Edmondson ark, other material is available through dealers. "We have comparable material," Mr. Maresca said, adding that he thought the estimates were realistic.

"An isolated auction means very little to me," he said. "I think Christie's views it as an experiment, but the field has been established since the 1940's."

Though it accepted the Greenberg pieces as the focus of an auction, Christie's declined to exercise its clout to dismiss the specialist labels "outsider art" and "self-taught art" and introduce the pieces at its important contemporary art sales in May.

"They don't believe in the material," Mr. Ollman said in Philadelphia. "Sotheby's throws it in with Americana."

In his loft, settled into a leather chair, Mr. Greenberg talked of the future. He said he wants to collect six artists in depth, including George Orr, the "Mad Potter of Biloxi." He wants to build a house, much like the minimal Mies van der Rohe country retreat designed for Dr. Edith Farnsworth, outside New York. He thinks of Tadao Ando, the Japanese architect, as someone who could realize it.

"Tadao fits the bill," Mr. Greenberg said. "He's totally self-taught. He was a prizefighter originally."

Asked about why he collected outsider art and what he had learned from living with it, Mr. Greenberg referred unexpectedly to his expertise with digital imagery.

"Let's say I want to generate this right here," he said, pointing to a glass vase designed by Tapio Wirkkala on a glass coffee table. "I could tell you every algorithm that you'll need to use to do this, and there's probably 20. But the main ones are the imperfections. To generate the imperfections is really what makes this real — the smudges, the dust, the imperfections in the glass." Mr. Greenberg recalled: "When we made `Zelig,' we had every different type of imperfection that we put back into the film — the weave and shake and streaks. That's what makes it look archival and true."

Mr. Greenberg looked out at his collection of beautifully stubborn art, as though in the light of Christie's sale he might have to ask its forgiveness.

"It's changed my way of seeing," he said.

Super Buildup, but Unfulfilled Expectations

Super Buildup, but Unfulfilled Expectations
By STUART ELLIOTT
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/28/business/media/28ADCO.html

The Advertising Bowl inside this year's Super Bowl was perhaps the most cinematic ever. So why then did the evening seem more like "Plan 9 From Outer Space" than "Citizen Kane"?

One reason may be that Madison Avenue, despite plentiful salutes to familiar films and the liberal use of Hollywood-caliber special effects, seemed to fall short compared with memorable pitches from past Super Sundays. As entertaining and effective as some of the spots were — FedEx, Budweiser and Pepsi Twist, for example — it is unlikely any of them will ever be deemed worthy of enshrinement in a Super Bowl Ad Hall of Fame, where the Budweiser lizards and frogs and Nike's "Air Jordan-Hare Jordan" spots reside.

Even the upbeat commercials from the Pepsi-Cola Company division of PepsiCo seemed less effervescent than their energetic predecessors like the Britney Spears nostalgia-fest of 2002 or the disco-dancing bears of 1997.

The pregame hoopla for both the football and the ad match-ups — raised this year to record levels of intrusiveness — may have contributed to Super Bowl XXXVII's near-record viewership, as 138 million people watched all or part of Sunday's game. But the hyperbole ahead of the commercials generated expectations that were almost impossible to meet.

Another reason ad watchers felt unsatisfied was the absence of many commercials already being praised or attacked as if they were Super Bowl spots. They include the Nike soccer game streaker; the mud-wrestling women for the Miller Lite beer brand sold by SABMiller; and the salutes to football, friends and twins for the Coors Light beer brand sold by the Adolph Coors Company.

The repetitiveness of many of the ads did not help matters, either. Three spots, for Cadillac, Pepsi Twist and Subway restaurants, were centered on dreams. Two commercials, for Cadillac and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, were set on subway trains. Another two, for AT&T Wireless and FedEx, were about people stranded on desert islands. And four ads, in the Farrelly brothers genre, celebrated the insertion of objects into — and their expulsion from — the body. Bud Light beer had the dubious distinction of two such spots, while Dodge Ram trucks, sold by DaimlerChrysler, and the ESPN cable network, owned by the Walt Disney Company, had one each.

Added to that echo effect was the inevitable surfeit of commercials featuring animals. There were eight this time, for products as disparate as Levi Strauss & Company's Type 1 jeans, Sierra Mist soft drinks from PepsiCo and Trident gum from Pfizer.

What follows is an assessment of some of the best and worst of the 55 national spots, for which advertisers paid ABC, part of Disney, an estimated average of $2.1 million for each 30 seconds of commercial time.

ANHEUSER-BUSCH The biggest advertiser in the game as usual was Anheuser-Busch, with a record 11 spots, which varied wildly in quality, also as usual.

The best of the batch by far was the first spot, in which a zebra, refereeing a football game between the Budweiser Clydesdales, turns to instant replay to resolve a disputed call. The effectiveness of the spot was amplified immeasurably by the coincidental occurrence of two such moments (with a human referee, that is) during the actual game. This spot finished first in several surveys released yesterday, among them the USA Today Ad Meter and a poll by the One Club for Art and Copy. Agency: Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies.

A spot in the "True" series for Budweiser, depicting how men pretend to listen to the women in their lives, stood out for its low-key, observational humor. Agency: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, part of the Omnicom Group.

The worst commercials were for the Bud Light brand, which has seemingly adopted a philosophy that boorish vulgarity is the route to popularity with male beer drinkers ages 21 to 27. The most tasteless of the lot was a spot with a parade clown trying to drink a beer and eat a hot dog upside down. Agency: Downtown Partners DDB, part of the DDB Worldwide unit of Omnicom.

H&R BLOCK A commercial using a celebrity endorser to spoof celebrity endorsers seldom succeeds, but H&R Block achieved that rare feat with a spot featuring Willie Nelson. The commercial, in which the bearded singer plays a reluctant pitchman for a make-believe shaving cream named Smoothie, worked whether or not viewers recalled his real-life tax troubles. Agency: Campbell Mithun, part of Interpublic.

CADILLAC A 90-second commercial for the Cadillac division of the General Motors Corporation cleverly used the device of a dreamy subway ride, depicted with the visual lushness of "Far From Heaven," to link the brand's classic models of the 1950's with the Escalades and CTS's of today. Agency: D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, part of the Publicis Groupe.

DAIMLERCHRYSLER A commercial for the Chrysler Crossfire, featuring the singer Celine Dion, sped by too quickly to make much of an impression. What was the theme, "My car will go on"? Also, the artful black-and-white film appeared as out of place in the brassy Super Sunday environment as "The Magnificent Ambersons" would at an Ashton Kutcher film festival. Agencies: The Arnell Group and the BBDO Detroit unit of BBDO Worldwide, divisions of Omnicom.

There was also a terrible spot for Dodge Ram trucks, which showed a driver racing to find help for a choking passenger. When the truck comes to a sudden stop, the passenger spits out a piece of beef jerky onto the windshield. Imagine the effect that had on millions of viewers snacking at Super Bowl parties. Agency: BBDO Detroit.

FEDEX This commercial celebrated the dedication of FedEx employees with a dead-on parody of the 2000 film "Cast Away," showing a worker rescued from a desert island delivering a package that would have changed his life had he bothered to open it. The jest was made more delectable by memories of the prominent role FedEx played in the movie. The only quibble was that the spot ought to have run I or II Super Bowls ago. This spot ranked No. 1 in the Adbowl poll by McKee Wallwork Henderson Advertising. Agency: the BBDO New York unit of BBDO Worldwide.

HOTJOBS Employees stuck in dreary, dead-end jobs sweetly sing "The Rainbow Connection" from "The Muppet Movie" in a juxtaposition likely to send many dissatisfied workers to the HotJobs Web site operated by Yahoo. The spot could have worked better if the final scene, showing a happy worker who had presumably found her job there, had lasted a moment longer to underline the point. Agency: Brand Architecture International, part of the TBWA Worldwide division of Omnicom.

MONSTER A runaway truck, wreaking havoc as it careers out of control, is offered as a metaphor for the Monster job-search Web site operated by TMP Worldwide. Just as a truck needs a driver, the spot seeks to demonstrate, a driver needs a truck. But the images of destruction, delivered in the style of cartoons or video games, were troubling, particularly to anyone who recalled the recent deaths of four students from Yale University in an accident involving an out-of-control truck. Agency: Arnold Worldwide, part of the Arnold Worldwide Partners division of Havas.

PEPSICO The Ozzy Osbourne dream sequence for Pepsi Twist, in which his children turn into the wholesome duo of Donny and Marie Osmond, was hilarious. The surprise ending, showing Sharon Osbourne replaced by Florence Henderson of "The Brady Bunch," smartly reinforced the brand name, even though it was borrowed from the finale of another sitcom, "Newhart." The spot finished first in a poll of subscribers to America Online, part of AOL Time Warner.

Spots with wacky animals for Pepsi's new Sierra Mist soda were appropriately madcap, but a like-son-like-father tale for Diet Pepsi fell flat. Agency: BBDO New York.

REEBOK A 60-second commercial for Reebok International introduced a character named Terry Tate, a football fanatic who serves as the "office linebacker," enforcing discipline, for the vengeful managers of a fictitious corporation. Because a little bit of Terry's comically violent shtick goes a long way, this is one commercial that would seemingly have benefited from less exposure. It was, however, the most-watched spot in households with TiVo personal video recorders, according to a survey released by TiVo Inc. Agency: Arnell.

TRIDENT At last, an explanation for that riddle of the ages: Why do only four out of five dentists surveyed recommend Trident gum for their patients who chew gum? The fifth, bitten by a squirrel when it is his turn to vote, screams "No!" Fifteen seconds of fun. Agency: J. Walter Thompson, part of the WPP Group.

VISA The basketball player Yao Ming scores his third big endorsement with a rollicking spot for the Visa Check Card from Visa USA that makes light of cross-cultural miscommunication. Like Pepsi Twist, there is a surprise ending here, too, as Yogi Berra offers his two cents' worth of obfuscation. Agency: BBDO New York.

WHITE HOUSE OFFICE One commercial, set on a subway, borrows liberally from the films "Ghost" and "Sixth Sense" to assert that anyone who buys drugs can fuel the terror wreaked worldwide by drug dealers. If that is not clear enough, the theme pounds in the message: "Drug money supports terrible things." As does antidrug money, apparently. Agency: Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, part of WPP.

In a second spot, co-sponsored with the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, a teenage girl's pregnancy is attributed to her smoking marijuana. Don't hold your breath waiting for the Super Bowl ad that blames beer binges for such pregnancies. Agency: McCann-Erickson Worldwide Advertising, part of Interpublic.

Reagan's Son

Reagan's Son
By BILL KELLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/magazine/26BUSH.html

In December, George W. Bush had one of those turbulent spells that can cause a president nightmares about tumbling over the falls in a barrel. First he purged his economic team, the kind of housecleaning that tends to be taken as an admission of failed policies. He ordered a North Korean freighter arrested at sea, on the way to Yemen with a suspicious cargo of missiles, then sheepishly let it go on its way -- an amateurish misstep in his war on terror. The man he proudly put forth to head an investigation of America's vulnerability to terrorists abruptly declined the job because it would interfere with his consulting business. The party's leader in the newly recaptured Senate blundered into a career-ending display of insensitivity that peeled open the party's history of race-baiting.

And the impact of these seeming embarrassments on President George W. Bush was? Scarcely a nick. No outbreak of articles postulating a White House in disarray. No mutters of discord in his ranks. On the contrary, he (or at least his political judo master, Karl Rove) was hailed for his genius in helping maneuver a presidential favorite into the Senate leadership. Bush's approval ratings held firm and high. Nothing stuck. Any more than a year of corporate scandals, some involving White House friends, had stuck. Any more than the recurring reminders of Al Qaeda's unimpeded reach -- in Bali, in Kenya -- had stuck.

Bush's seeming invincibility to bad news may be exasperating to Democrats, but it was no surprise to Michael Deaver, the shrewd public relations man who played Karl Rove to an earlier president, Ronald Reagan. When Deaver was handling spin for Reagan, one frustrated Democrat described the scandal-proof chief executive as the Teflon President. This time around, Deaver watched the White House twirl and sidestep through the serial crises of December with deep professional admiration. To Deaver there was nothing mysterious about it, no Teflon. It was just the relentless discipline of a president who consistently defies the expectations of people who think they are smarter than he is.

Like a lot of Republicans who have watched both Reagan and Bush at close hand, Deaver sees uncanny similarities between them. The presidents are alike in their outlooks and career paths, in their agendas of tax-cutting and confrontational deployment of American power, in the ideological mix of their advisers. (Whatever you read about the president's inheritance from his father and Gerald Ford, the Reagan DNA is dominant in the staffing, training and planning of the Bush administration.) More than that, there are important similarities of character and temperament. And both are simple men who have made a political virtue of being -- in Bush's word -- ''misunderestimated'' by the political elite.

That Bush is Reaganesque is a conceit that some conservatives have wishfully, tentatively embraced since he emerged as a candidate, and one that Bush himself has encouraged. The party faithful have been pining for a new Reagan since Reagan, and for Bush the analogy has the added virtue of providing an alternative political lineage; he's not Daddy's Boy, he's Reagan Jr. The comparison has only gained currency since Bush entered the White House. Some Republicans speak of the current era, with the culmination of Reagan's ballistic missile defense and the continuing assault on marginal tax rates and, especially, the standing tall against global evil as the recommencing of the Reagan ''revolution.''

''I think he's the most Reagan-like politician we have seen, certainly in the White House,'' Deaver said. ''I mean, his father was supposed to be the third term of the Reagan presidency -- but then he wasn't. This guy is.''

Reagan's devout do not all buy this analogy. Some wonder about the depth of Bush's commitment to their causes. Others fear the comparison might diminish their hero, now living out his days in an Alzheimer's oblivion. Peggy Noonan, Reagan's gifted speechwriter and a torchbearer for his memory, has portrayed Bush in one of her books as eager to be likened to Reagan, but she insists that the two men are incomparable. Bush, she says, represents ''the triumph of the average American man.'' He is, she told me, ''like a successful local businessman in the boring local business who becomes a school board president.'' (She meant that in a good way.) Reagan, on the other hand, was ''hardly your basic man on the street.''

Many students of the presidency would argue that a basic-man-on-the-street quality -- a plain-spoken, unassuming genuineness -- is central to the appeal of both men, but Noonan's wariness is understandable. Let's concede that this kind of comparison can be reductionist. At its silliest, it can lapse into a parlor game of the Lincoln-had-a-secretary-named-Kennedy variety. Times change. Presidents reflect their times.

But midway into Bush's first term, measuring the emerging president against Reagan is an instructive way of looking at Bush's qualities and of explaining his popularity. It is even, with a larger margin of error, a basis for hazarding some guesses about the course he will follow, particularly now that his hand is strengthened by a Congress of his own party, by the unlikelihood of internal opposition in 2004 and for that matter by the lack of coherent opposition from the Democrats.

I began this exercise inclined to think of Bush as Reagan Lite -- that is, a president with shallower, unschooled instincts in place of the older man's studied, lifelong convictions, and without the mastery of language that served Reagan so well. Perhaps, I'd have said, he is a bit of a Reagan poseur -- the White House being such a studio of contrivance and calculation. I ended my research more inclined to think that Bush is in a sense the fruition of Reagan, and that -- far from being the lightweight opportunist of liberal caricature or the centrist he sometimes played during his own election campaign -- he stands a good chance of advancing a radical agenda that Reagan himself could only carry so far. Bush is not, as Reagan was, an original, but he has adapted Reagan's ideas to new times, and found some new language in which to market them. We seem not only to be witnessing the third term of the Reagan presidency; at this rate we may well see the fourth.

They are westerners (Midland, Tex., is truly the West, not the South), with a fondness for the region's open spaces and don't-fence-me-in rhetoric. Karl Rove contends that this is one reason that Reagan and Bush have been underrated by the media elite, whose prejudices are still manufactured mainly in the East. As president, Reagan was happiest clearing brush on his mountaintop ranch in California, and Bush loves chain-sawing cedar on his expanse of Texas prairie. Bush is a latecomer to this lifestyle, having acquired his ranch while a presidential candidate, and he is more self-conscious about it. (Reagan disappeared to his ranch and called it vacation; Bush calls his the Western White House and makes it a showcase of his authenticity.) Like Reagan, Bush takes great pains to run his ranch on ecologically sound principles, even as he dismantles environmental regulation. In the West, that is not considered hypocrisy but virtuous self-interest.

Defying the advice of the experts, they launched seemingly hopeless campaigns against popular incumbent governors and astonished their own party by winning. Each went on to win a second term by large margins. Reagan's executive experience was more meaningful. (California has a strong-governor system, while in Texas the governor defers to rambunctious, independently appointed agency heads.) Both managed to work with Democratic legislatures, which often entailed ruthlessness in California but in Texas required mainly charm.

They are the least introspective of presidents, but unashamedly spiritual, professing a personal faith that goes well beyond churchgoing. Bush bonded with Vladimir Putin over the Russian's story of a lost crucifix and opens cabinet meetings with a prayer. Reagan would sometimes astonish visitors by talking about Armageddon in a way that did not seem to be merely allegorical. Both attracted evangelical voters with their born-again vernacular. More than other presidents of recent times, they imbued their civil rhetoric with evangelical themes and suggested that America has a divine assignment in the world to spread what Reagan called ''the sacred fire of human liberty.''

Bush, like Reagan, is a man of self-discipline, punctual, diet-conscious, religious about his gym time and a good night's sleep, devoted to simple, mind-clearing outdoor exertion, impatient when meetings dawdle. Perhaps Bush, a reformed binge drinker, and Reagan, the son of an alcoholic, each learned to view rigorous routine as a safeguard against chaos.

Reagan and Bush are known as devoted homebodies. Laura Bush is not the assertive, hyperprotective West Wing enforcer Nancy Reagan was, although Karen Hughes played something close to that role for Bush. Bush is more gregarious than Reagan, but they are loners, in the sense that they are perfectly at ease without company. Both men are often described as comfortable in their own skins.

Ideologically they are to the right of the popular median strip. Reagan's principles were developed over decades and fortified by a selective but extensive reading of history. Bush's seem more instinctive. This makes him less predictable. Where Reagan's creed was a catechism of ideas reinforced by anecdotes, Bush's is a more earthbound compound of experience and politics. His relevant schooling includes a dozen years studying the campaigns and presidencies of Reagan and his father, and a largely unsuccessful but self-defining career in oil development, a big-bets industry that mythologizes risk.

''Bush's views are honed more by experience than by information,'' said a Republican strategist. ''For Bush, cutting taxes is not a philosophy. It's the result of spending much of his life immersed in a milieu with people who groused that taxes stifle investment and innovation.''

Reagan, who became president just before his 70th birthday, arrived at the Oval Office pretty much a finished product. Bush is still more of a work in progress. But they seem to share a palate of beliefs that mix Christian moralism, American nationalism, laissez-faire economics laced with a heavy dose of supply-side theory and a general mistrust of federal government as inefficient and unaccountable.

Each spent his first wad of political capital pushing a large tax cut -- even as oceans of red ink rose around him. Reagan's first tax bill was more sweeping, but as the details of Bush's next budget make clear, he's nowhere near finished. Each man talked about tax cuts as a way to unleash private energy and, secondarily, as a way to starve oppressive government.

Martin Anderson, who was Reagan's domestic policy chief, helped organize policy tutorials for Bush during the campaign, and says he often felt he was watching a new incarnation of Reagan. ''On taxes, on education, it was the same. On Social Security, Bush's position was exactly what Reagan always wanted and talked about in the 70's,'' he said. ''I just can't think of any major policy issue on which Bush was different.''

Bush talks, as Reagan did, about a world of black and white, and tends to measure his counterparts in politics and world affairs by a moral standard. Diplomacy was personal for Reagan; once he recognized Mikhail Gorbachev as a genuine reformer, he left behind his most doctrinaire anti-Communist advisers in his willingness to do business with the Soviet Union. Bush is like that, too.

Each man had a trauma early in his presidency, a violent epiphany, that won him an outpouring of popular support and confirmed in him a sense of destiny. For Reagan, it was being shot, almost fatally, outside the Washington Hilton just two months after his inauguration. For Bush, of course, it was Sept. 11.

Both men are optimists -- an appealing quality in politicians, since a prerequisite for setting out to make things better is a faith that they can become better. The optimism is more guarded in Bush than it was in Reagan, who was our sunniest modern president.

And perhaps the most important similarity of all: each man will be remembered as a risk-taker. They each have an impulse for the audacious. Bush has consistently pressed for more aggressive options in the war on terror -- not sending a cruise missile at an empty tent, but declaring war on all terrorist groups with global reach and states that harbor them, authorizing a war in Afghanistan based on untested new tactics and technology. Now he seems bent on a war with Iraq and a game of diplomatic chicken with North Korea.

''Reagan and this Bush both have that presidential temperament,'' said Lou Cannon, who has written four Reagan biographies and is at work on his fifth. ''They don't commit themselves quickly, but when they do they don't second-guess themselves. They're willing to take the main chance.''

here is a classic ''Saturday Night Live'' Reagan skit in which, as soon as the cameras are gone and the Oval Office door is closed, the amiable chucklehead becomes a slightly sinister strategic mastermind. It was hilarious precisely because we all believed in the genial dimwit. Even now, even after he has taken the country to war, it is possible to imagine the same skit featuring George W. Bush. Both of these presidents inspired, and to some extent still inspire, a frisson of disbelief: how did this guy get to be president of the mightiest nation on earth?

Standing Bush and Reagan side by side is interesting not least because of the way both men have been taken so lightly by the pundits and scholars and political savants and late-night humorists who so often set the tone of political discourse. Their presidential gaffes have been compiled in amusing paperbacks sold at bookstore checkout counters. They have been mocked for their inability to master detail, for their devotion to facts that are not facts, for their seeming lack of intellectual heft. In the European press especially, both started off as cowboys and buffoons.

Reagan was dreamy, prone to confuse movies with real life, capable of forgetting the names of his cabinet members; Bush is inarticulate, likely to lose his place midthought and inclined to lowbrow bluster. The conservative columnist Robert Novak has said that Bush has ''the smallest vocabulary of any president I've ever seen.'' David Frum, a conservative who worked as a Bush speechwriter, has written that ''conspicuous intelligence seemed actively unwelcome in the Bush White House.''

Both presidents, schooled in the discipline of message, can sound to those who listen for a living as if they have been programmed by some attending Svengali.

''This business of saying the same thing over and over and over again -- which to a lot of Washington insiders and pundits is boring -- works,'' Deaver said. ''That was sort of what we figured out in the Reagan White House. And I think these people do it very, very well.''

It is not just highbrow condescension. Although Reagan won handily in 1980, many voters were uneasy about his bellicose rhetoric and his novelty economics, along with his Hollywood credentials. Twenty years later the exit polls found that 42 percent of voters felt Bush was incapable of handling a world crisis and that 44 percent felt he did not ''know enough'' to handle the presidency. Of those who voted for Bush, 51 percent said they had reservations about their vote.

These numbers have pretty much been erased since Sept. 11, but some conservatives still worry that Bush, like Reagan, will be diminished in the first draft of history because he is held to be a lightweight by the kind of people who write those first drafts.

David Frum has just published an admiring insider book about the Bush presidency -- jumping in early, he told me, because he feared that Bush's legacy would be hijacked by liberal critics if conservatives did not stake their claim early.

As it happens, Reagan has been enjoying an intellectual rehabilitation. The publication in 2001 of Reagan's original, handwritten scripts for the radio homilies he delivered caused many skeptics to concede that he was a better writer and thinker than most had generally imagined. Martin Anderson, who edited the volume and who presides over something of a Reagan industry at the Hoover Institution, is at work on a follow-up volume of Reagan's private letters. Noonan's book exalting the Reagan presidency as the triumph of character was a best seller last year. The History Channel ran a gauzy tribute in November.

Not all of the Reagan revisionism has been so kind, though. Frances FitzGerald, focusing on the Reagan ballistic missile defense scheme in her absorbing 2000 book, ''Way Out There in the Blue,'' detected a large measure of political opportunism behind the idealistic visionary. (She also deflated the myth that Star Wars did in Soviet Communism.) But interest in Reagan runs high, and the trend in appraisals is favorable.

Notwithstanding occasional cloudbursts of scorn from the great Eastern liberal conspiracy, the establishment view of Bush has also moved significantly. We have already gone in two years from the affable campaign doofus portrayed in Alexandra Pelosi's HBO documentary and Frank Bruni's election memoir, ''Ambling Into History,'' to the incisive, decisive chief executive of Bob Woodward's war-room reconstruction, ''Bush at War.'' That transformation cannot be entirely written off as a masterful spin job, nor entirely attributed to a presidential growth spurt following the grave challenge of the terror attacks. There is something there, some pre-existing quality, that avid Bush critics have missed.

One of the biggest mistakes people have made about Bush is to look at all the seasoned pros he hired and take that as a sign of weakness. Much Washington punditry still insinuates that Dick Cheney is the presidential ventriloquist, that Rove is the political mastermind -- and that Bush is in over his head. This seems to me wrongheaded. In most of the world an executive who surrounds himself with highly competent advisers is regarded as admirably self-confident.

Lou Cannon points out that both Reagan and Bush picked vice presidents (George H. W. Bush and Dick Cheney, respectively) with resumes far more impressive than their own. Contrast that to Nixon's choice of Spiro Agnew or Bush Sr.'s of Dan Quayle -- gravitas-free running mates seemingly intended not to overshadow the president.

Speaking of Reagan and the younger Bush, Cannon told me, ''They don't have a huge ego, and that enables you to get really strong people around you. Reagan never took umbrage, when I was covering him, if Jim Baker got credit for something, or George Shultz. It never bothered him a bit. Bush has that. If Cheney or Rumsfeld gets credit, that's fine with him.''

The White House is, to be sure, protective, intolerant of public dissent, cautious about putting the gaffe-prone president into situations (like regular press conferences) where he might embarrass himself. But Bush has shown a willingness to overrule his better-credentialed aides on important matters, including Cheney on the decision to take Iraq to the United Nations.

''You can't watch Bush and Cheney together for half a minute and feel any doubt about who is the trusted adviser and who is the president,'' says Frum, who was himself initially unimpressed by Bush.

As for the idea that Bush is lazy, incurious or just not very bright, his supporters argue that critics have tended to judge the president by standards that are superficial or misleading. Bush is not, like Bill Clinton, a polymath who can dazzle you with his mastery of detail, who can speak for hours without notes, who can argue an issue from a dozen sides. He is, they say, adept at focusing an issue, asking the pertinent questions, relegating distractions to the sidelines, driving on to a decision and sticking to it.

Compare the disciplined Bush of ''Bush at War'' with the Bill Clinton of another recent insider book, Kenneth Pollack's ''Threatening Storm.'' That book, a case for going to war against Iraq, portrays the Clinton administration (in which Pollack served) prolonging the discussions while recoiling from the big decisions, equivocating, shifting ground, always looking to keep options open.

''Good advice doesn't come in a box marked 'good advice,' '' Frum says. ''No president can know all he needs to know. What you want, above all, is somebody who's got the ability to recognize good choices when they are presented to him.''

n wednesday mornings, the Washington foot soldiers of the right -- the gun rights people, the anti-abortion groups, the privatize-everything lobby, the tax-cut enthusiasts -- meet to talk strategy at the office of Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. The active political right can be roughly divided into conservatives and revolutionaries -- those who are governed by a sense of caution and pragmatism, whether the issue is sustaining the economy or keeping the world safe for American interests, and those who have a fervor to change the fundamentals and are willing to break some eggs to do it. The Norquist meeting is omelet central.

Those, like Norquist, who have been around through periods of frustration and irrelevance have not felt so pumped since the heady and short-lived House rule of Newt Gingrich -- and that was the passion of opposition. Now the White House sends emissaries to their meetings and treats them as allies. They sense that this is Reagan redux, and while some wonder -- as ideologues often wonder when in the company of politicians -- if they are being used, Norquist assures them that in Bush they have a serviceable marriage of political expedience and radical agenda.

Norquist has been a field marshal and a kind of political id for Reagan and Gingrich. He is convinced that Bush, unlike his father, both buys the basic rightist, leave-us-alone agenda on principle and believes that, properly articulated, it is the route to sustained political gain for his party. ''Bush 41 didn't learn from Reagan,'' Norquist told me. ''His whole view of what was doable was determined pre-Reagan. George W. is a post-Reagan president. He came of age watching Reagan succeed and his father fail. With Bush, this stuff is visceral.''

Under the first President Bush, of course, the pragmatists were clearly in charge. Under Reagan -- and again now -- the play-it-safers and the boat-rockers coexist in a state of tension, an energetic, charged equilibrium.

This is most obvious in the area where least was expected of Bush: his engagement of the world. Bush has been willing to throw overboard reams of established foreign-policy doctrine in his enthusiastic assumption of the role of solo superpower, scrapping the ABM treaty, scheduling the first deployment of antimissile batteries and enshrining ''pre-emption'' as the American military doctrine. In Reagan's administrations, scorn for treaties and international organizations as an encumbrance on American power was rife, but not dominant. It is the default position in the Bush White House.

Reagan had within his administrations a coterie of moralists, mostly in the second and third tier, who advocated an interventionist role for America. Bush, of course, does, too. They are, many of them, the same people: Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith at the Pentagon (and Richard Perle in an advisory role), Richard Armitage and John Bolton at the State Department, U.N. Ambassador John Negroponte, Elliott Abrams at the National Security Council and others.

''When George Bush Sr. took over as president, Jim Baker couldn't wait to sweep out these old Reagan people,'' one senior Reagan aide said. ''They had no positions to speak of in the first Bush administration. But now they're back.''

From Reagan's ''evil empire'' to Bush's ''axis of evil,'' clarity of purpose is now the posture, if not always the practice, of American policy. Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, sees this as the clearest similarity between Bush and Reagan -- an assertion of moral certainty, even when it makes some people squirm. By framing the struggle with Communism, and now the war on terror, as a fight of good versus evil, she says, these presidents delegitimized the enemy and forced the argument beyond mere tactics.

''Many people are much more comfortable with on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand explanations,'' she said. ''But there are very often cases where there are not arguments on both sides. And I think President Bush has been pretty willing, when that is the case, to speak in black-and-white terms.''

Righteous purpose is strong stuff, and it can be highly flammable. It's worth remembering that moral certainty led Reagan's administration into the culminating scandal of Iran-contra, the scheme to sell missiles to Iran and divert the profits to arm anti-Communist guerrillas in Nicaragua. Bush has not only rehired several of the Iran-contra intriguers, but he has also reproduced elements of the climate in which the plot was hatched -- obsessive secrecy, a premium on loyalty, a taste for working through foreign proxies, an impatience with Congressional oversight.

Four years after he last slept in the White House and two years before he wrote an eloquent farewell to America and drifted into the fog of Alzheimer's, Reagan gave a speech that suggested how he might have coped with the messy world Bush inhabits. In December 1992, he walked into the Oxford Union, his perpetual tan offset by a light blue suit, and took his place behind the twin teleprompters that accompanied him on his travels.

''Evil still stalks the planet,'' he declared. At the time, the first President Bush was confounded by the horrors of failing states from Somalia to Yugoslavia. Al Qaeda's brand of stateless terrorism had not yet riveted the world's attention, but it was clear that some sort of ill-defined mayhem was replacing Communism as the main worry for Western civilization. Reagan had presided over the end of the cold war, but his successor, for all his talk of a new world order, had made little headway in defining what that would be. Now Reagan offered his answer: a great, humanitarian coalition in which America would stand alongside other civilized states.

Most of his life, Reagan conceded, he had seen international organizations like the United Nations as an encumbrance, as ''debating societies'' and hotbeds of hostility toward America. But the end of the cold war had liberated these organizations for a higher purpose. He proposed nothing less than a standing ''army of conscience,'' operated by the United Nations, to carve out humanitarian sanctuaries from evil.

The speech received almost no attention here, but it is amazing to read now, when Reagan's spiritual successor is laboring to answer the same questions of American purpose. Bush's new American imperialism -- he would prefer to call it leadership -- seems a far cry from Reagan's idealistic Oxford vision of common cause. In practice, though, I imagine Reagan would have been game to go it alone when the United Nations tried his patience, and Bush, for his part, has found it useful to temper his unilateral impulses. Bush's speech to the United Nations, warning the world body of irrelevance if it did not rise to the challenge of Iraq, was not so far in spirit from Reagan's -- though a Bush ''army of conscience'' seems more likely to be wearing the uniforms of the 101st Airborne than the blue helmets of the U.N.

Bush's domestic policy is (as Reagan's was) less coherent, obscured as it is by the preoccupation with a menacing world, and more subject to the vagaries of electoral politics. A couple of months ago, the conventional wisdom was that Bush had no domestic agenda. He had gotten his tax cut and a version of his education plan, and that was pretty much the end of it. But it should be amply clear by now that Bush is determined to break from the center-hugging course -- the incrementalism, fiscal prudence, and moderation -- that characterized the presidencies of his father and Clinton.

Bush has not just cut taxes; he has pushed tax cuts with a supply-side bias -- that is, with the professed aim of stimulating investment rather than consumer demand, and too bad if this favors the rich or engorges the debt. He has persisted in arguing for tax cuts long after many Republicans, especially the cautionary voices of big business, have started worrying more about the deficit.

Many Republicans, anxious about red ink and wary of the Democrats, expected Bush to tack toward the middle, perhaps pre-empting the Democrats by cutting the payroll tax, which would most benefit lower-income taxpayers. (Even Reagan, without recanting in the slightest his devotion to the gospel of tax reduction, responded to mounting deficits by signing three tax increases into law.) On the contrary, Bush's latest budget plan is a fresh splash of Reaganism -- eliminating taxes on dividends altogether, for instance.

Bush has already surpassed Reagan in advocating a shift of responsibilities from government to the private sector, and from the federal governments to the states. The aim to partly privatize retirement (through individual investment accounts), education (through vouchers) and welfare (through faith-based charities) has proceeded gradually, and with some temporary retreats, but no one close to Bush doubts that it is a sustained crusade. You could easily imagine Reagan's husky chuckle the other day as Bush announced plans to outsource up to 850,000 federal jobs -- about half the government's civilian work force -- to private contractors. This is on top of the 170,000 federal employees who will lose most of their contract protections when they are folded into the new Department of Homeland Security. In the name of efficiency, Bush stands not only to weaken the federal apparat, but also to bleed the public employee unions -- the lone growth sector of organized labor. By regulation and legislative initiative, the Bush administration has been methodically undermining what remains of organized labor's influence. If, as some labor experts believe, the precipitous decline of union clout began in 1981, when Reagan dismissed striking air-traffic controllers, then Bush is indeed continuing Reagan's work with relish.

Bush's appointees to federal regulatory bodies like the Federal Communications Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission have, of course, been as ardently antiregulation as Reagan's, and Bush has been, if anything, more willing to brandish executive powers to accomplish deregulatory missions that might face a hard time in Congress. His scorn for environmentalists as naysayers, nit-pickers and limit-mongers is undisguised, as was Reagan's.

A world without trade barriers, in which markets spread a balm of democracy, is another Reagan dream to which Bush has professed allegiance. (Reagan first proposed a free trade zone for North America in 1979.) Here it is tempting to say the comparison breaks down. Among those who believe Bush puts political expedience above principle, there is no more damning evidence than his decision in March to slap punitive tariffs on steel imports, and his condoning of similar anticompetitive favors to the farm and textile industries. The Republican faithful were scandalized by how readily the man who preaches free trade was willing to pander to protectionist sentiment.

The indignation was justified, but possibly premature. Yes, White House officials concede, the steel tariffs were part of a political calculation, but one they insist serves a larger strategic end. The tariffs were used to persuade lawmakers in steel and textile states that Bush was not some free-trade zealot who would endanger American jobs if he was given greater freedom to negotiate trade deals without Congress looking over his shoulder. With those bartered votes, Bush won that authority by the narrowest of margins.

The president's next act got nowhere near as much attention as his protectionist backsliding. In November he proposed to the World Trade Organization that tariffs on all industrial and consumer goods be phased out, reaching zero in the year 2015. The proposal -- like Reagan's free-trade proposals -- was regarded skeptically, as a rhetorical gambit or a negotiating posture, and it may prove to be nothing more. But textile-state lawmakers were alarmed, and they have come to believe that on free trade Bush is dead serious.

So, incidentally, have the Teamsters. The conservative trucking brotherhood is one of the few unions Bush has actively courted. But in November he stiffed them on one of their highest priorities. He ordered that Mexican truckers be permitted to transport goods from south of the border anywhere in the United States. This, by the way, was another case of Bush finding the sweet spot where political advantage and principle coexist. By moving to open cross-border traffic this way, he infuriated the Teamsters -- who have taken him to court -- but he sent a valentine to the 20 million people of Mexican descent who live in America.

The point is not that Bush won't do what it takes to be re-elected. He will co-opt and retailor Democratic ideas (as he has done on the creation of a Homeland Security Department and prescription drug coverage), he will temporarily drop issues when the time is not right (as he did on school vouchers) and he will compromise (as he did, for example, by going along with the federalization of airport security). But for all the political tacking, this is a president with a discernible direction, and it is not the middle of the road.

''Bush 43 is exactly where Reagan was, but he stands on Reagan's shoulders,'' Norquist said.

When the pollster Richard Wirthlin began working with Reagan, then governor of California, in 1969, he was puzzled by the fact that Reagan consistently polled six to nine points higher than any of the opinion research models predicted. It took Wirthlin a few years to figure out the problem. The forecasting models were weighted heavily toward issues -- whether or not voters felt a candidate held compatible views on a checklist of subjects.

''Issues appeal rationally, but Reagan appealed way beyond the rational dimension,'' Wirthlin recalls. ''He tapped into values.'' Thus while many voters found Reagan's specific positions too conservative, they voted for him anyway because he seemed to care about the kind of things they cared about, and they generally trusted him to do the right thing. Bush, says Wirthlin, connects in the same way.

Bush's father and Bill Clinton were programmatic presidents. For any problem, they had a five-point plan. Al Gore, of course, was the ultimate wonk candidate, the man of to-do lists, the man who badgered Bush during the final debate to declare his view of ''the Dingell-Norwood bill,'' whatever that was. Bush, though he has a better command of detail than Reagan, is not facile enough to play that game, and when he does let himself get pinned down on the details, he exposes the fact that on taxes or guns or abortion he is more conservative than most voters.

''Bush instinctively, and Rove intellectually and tactically, knew they should not compete issue by issue,'' said a Republican strategist. ''Clinton and Gore had the edge. So you got a values campaign: 'an era of responsibility,' 'leave no child behind' and, of course, 'compassion.' ''

As president, Bush has continued to emphasize themes -- encapsulated in slogans, stenciled on backdrops, illustrated by powerful visuals. Matthew Dowd, who runs polling for the Republican National Committee, said Bush's inattention to detail -- so easily mocked -- hurts him not at all with voters. ''Voters are pretty sophisticated,'' Dowd said. ''They think nitty-gritty detail is going to be decided by Congress anyway. It's more important to connect on principles and values.''

In the alchemy of politics, moreover, stupid can be smart. Presidents who don't pretend to be supervising every detail are less likely to be blamed when details go awry.

Reagan, whose swing voters were Southerners and blue-collar Democrats, sometimes deployed the language of values to stir resentment. Bush, who hopes to add more suburban women and Hispanics to the Republican base, has managed to market fundamental changes as a gentle, centrist agenda.

''Reagan's rhetoric on welfare was the welfare Cadillac cheat,'' said a senior White House official. ''Bush's rhetoric is that welfare saps the soul and drains the spirit.'' This is probably little consolation to the poor, who face ever more stringent work requirements unaccompanied by money to help pay for child care.

If people basically trust Bush when he professes humanitarian concern on subjects like welfare, prescription drugs, education and retirement -- and so far most seem to trust him -- then he can bring about changes that would have frightened the electorate in Reagan's day.

The best example of this is Social Security. Before he was elected president, Reagan proposed allowing individuals to ''opt out'' of Social Security. But when, soon after taking office, he sent Congress a proposal to slash the retirement program, the plan hit a buzz saw. He never dared offering legislation to privatize Social Security, although the idea was discussed.

Martin Feldstein, who was chairman of Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers, said they couldn't figure out a way to do it without arousing a panicky backlash among elderly voters. When Feldstein worked with candidate Bush on the design of his tax and Social Security proposals, though, he was impressed that Bush had discerned a new political opportunity that may outweigh the fears of the elderly. Polls showed that younger and middle-aged voters were comfortable with individual retirement instruments like 401(k) programs. Moreover, the anxiety about whether Social Security will be around when they retire, which has always been seen as an argument for shoring up the status quo, is in Bush's mind an argument for inventing something new.

Thus while the administration is still debating the timing of an assault on Social Security -- are voters ready for it before 2004? How big a setback was the implosion of Enron's retirement plan? -- the president no longer regards Social Security as the lethal ''third rail'' of American politics. It is likely to be one of the big bets of his presidency.

Bush's thematic approach to tectonic changes in government is not all marketing gloss. Bush is not, at heart, as antigovernment as Reagan was, in part because much about government that antagonized people in the 1980's has been ameliorated. Top tax rates that seemed stifling at 70 percent are now around 40 percent. Absurd excesses of regulation have been reduced, and entitlements like welfare no longer inspire the same anger. And of course the threat of terrorism has awakened, not least in Bush himself, a greater appreciation that government has a purpose.

Thus while Reagan tried to abolish the federal Department of Education, Bush has tried instead to refashion it as an enforcer of accountability in the states and cities where most education decisions get made. (Testing, more than vouchers, has always been Bush's great enthusiasm in education.)

Whether the rationale is sound management or ideology, though, the results are no less substantial. Private retirement accounts, faith-based initiatives, vouchers, outsourcing and volunteerism all diminish the role of government in favor of the marketplace and individual responsibility.

There is little prospect, of course, that Bush will actually shrink the government. But then Reagan didn't, either. Thanks to the armor of special interests and to the predilection of presidents to do things, Reagan left behind a much bigger federal enterprise than he inherited, including a whole new cabinet department (Veterans Affairs) and 60,000 more employees. Reagan asked Americans to dream heroic dreams, but he rarely asked them to give up anything. President Bush, even with a war on, shows no greater desire to bet on sacrifice.

When he was compiling Reagan's radio addresses for publication, Martin Anderson found himself wondering how often Reagan had discussed abortion. He searched 1,044 scripts and found exactly one speech on the subject. In it, Reagan justified abortion to protect the health of the mother or in cases of rape, thus falling well short of the right-to-life hard line. As governor, he signed one of the most liberal state abortion laws, and as president he did little directly to challenge the essentially permissive state of American law.

Yet Reagan was always treated by the anti-abortion constituency as a kindred spirit. This is another Reagan lesson Bush seems to have taken on board: if you have underlying credibility with the advocacy groups, you do not have to undertake quixotic efforts on their behalf.

Friends say that on abortion, gay rights, school prayer and other culture-war issues, Reagan's sympathy for the religious right bumped up against his hands-off view of government, and against his reading of the public mood. Bush, like Reagan, understands that Americans like a good example, but they won't abide a scold. He has thus managed to champion both ''traditional'' values and ''inclusiveness,'' and when the two are hard to reconcile -- on gay rights, for instance -- he avoids the issue.

A fine example of Bush's instinct to tiptoe around cultural land mines was his intervention the other day in a Supreme Court case on university admissions. Operating in the backwash of the Trent Lott affair, with Republicans scrambling to demonstrate their empathy for black voters, Bush endorsed ''diversity'' and denounced ''quotas,'' but in his legal brief he ducked the hard question of whether racial preference is ever allowable.

Bush's concessions to the culture warriors may be meaningful, but they will not be frontal. He can, and has, cut off aid to family-planning programs overseas. He can, and will, sign a bill outlawing the procedure critics call partial-birth abortion. And he will appoint federal judges whom the right finds congenial. (Asked during the campaign to identify his favorite Supreme Court justices, Bush named Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, exciting conservatives to the point of ecstasy.)

He can also appeal to the anti-abortion movement by restricting new technologies like stem-cell research. In the months before Sept. 11, Bush went through an agonizing public process of deciding, and concluded that stem cells should be treated as human life. As Frum points out, this was the biggest political victory the ''pro-life'' lobby had enjoyed in many years, but it was accomplished without riling Americans who favor abortion rights.

In promoting his agenda, Reagan had the advantages of a silken tongue (which Bush does not) and a demoralized opposition (which Bush shares). While polls earlier this month showed the first flickers of doubt about Bush's conduct, his 58 percent approval rating is identical to Reagan's when he won his 49-state re-election victory in 1984. Bush has a few other things going for him that Reagan lacked.

First, the national war footing has generated a swell of patriotism and shared anxiety that floats not only a more muscular foreign policy but also much of the president's domestic agenda, at least until now. The president has little hesitation in invoking the war on terror on behalf of just about anything. Second, the economy, while dyspeptic, is suffering in a different way than it did in Reagan's day. In the 1980's Reagan's ambition to reduce the size of government, and particularly the relentless growth of entitlements, was impeded by the high rate of inflation. Inflation drives up the cost of government programs and makes people cling to the security of the federal safety net. Inflation today is the least of the economy's problems. Third, Bush has a friendlier and more cohesive Republican majority in Congress than Reagan had for most of his tenure.

Bush has a firmer hand on his executive branch too. Under Reagan and Bush, the tensions between conservatives and radicals have been personified by divisions among their top advisers. The skirmishes between Colin Powell's State Department and Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon over the projection of American power had their precursors under Reagan, when Secretary of State George Shultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger clashed. Shultz, like Powell, was sometimes in the position of taming the in-house idealists, and like Powell, he sometimes suffered the slings of archconservatives. Bush, like Reagan, presides over an uneasy coexistence of tax-cut zealots and deficit hawks.

But Bush is undoubtedly Reagan's superior in the executive management of a divided, competitive staff. Reagan delegated all but the biggest decisions. He recoiled from internal conflict and could not bear to fire anyone. (David Stockman, the budget director, unburdened himself to a reporter on the voodoo of Reagan's economics and kept his job anyway.) The Reagan years were marked by angry resignations, endless wars of leaks and back-stabbing. Bush, perhaps by virtue of his business education and experience -- and his years as, in effect, a junior White House staff member to his father -- is more personally engaged in sorting out the issues, maintaining the discipline and culling the misfits. By comparison with that of Reagan's day, the tension between the diplomats and the moralists, between the tax-eliminators and the deficit hawks, between the idealists and the realists, has been contained and synthesized into a common cause. A result is that Bush is less likely than Reagan to be constrained by contention in his own ranks.

There was about Reagan, like it or not, a dream of America and its potential that was often utopian. It was easy to ridicule -- as the first President Bush did with his memorable sneer at the ''vision thing'' -- but it made Reagan more than the sum of his advisers and his constituencies.

What is Bush's morning in America? He clearly has the instinct to do big things, and barring some failure of leadership -- a serious misadventure abroad, a corroding economy -- he has the license. What does America look like if he succeeds?

Two years ago the question would have seemed ridiculous. We knew America had to be governed from the center. That was the lesson of Bill Clinton's popularity, it was the constraint imposed by a divided electorate and in Bush's case it was the price of a minority victory. Bush had no mandate. But Bush, like Reagan, seems to believe that presidents make their own mandates.

What Bush is striving for, on the evidence of the choices he has made so far, is bold in its ambition: markets unleashed, resources exploited. A progressive tax system leveled, a country unashamed of wealth. Government entitlements gradually replaced by thrift, self-reliance and private good will. The safety net strung closer to the ground. Government itself infused with, in some cases supplanted by, the efficiency and accountability of a well-run corporation. A court system dedicated to protecting property and private enterprise and enforcing individual responsibility. A global common market that hums to the tune of American productivity. In the world, America rampant -- unfettered by international law, unflinching when challenged, unmatchable in its might, more interested in being respected than in being loved.

If he fails, my guess is that it will be a failure not of caution but of overreaching, which means it will be failure on a grand scale. If he succeeds, he will move us toward an America Ronald Reagan would have been happy to call his own.

Bill Keller is a Times columnist and a senior writer for the magazine.

Is New York Shivering, or Sniveling?

Is New York Shivering, or Sniveling?
By JANNY SCOTT
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/nyregion/26COLD.html

And now a few counterintuitive facts about our little cold snap:

As of late last week, January 2003 was only the 36th coldest January on record for New York City. Averaging 29 degrees, this January has been downright balmy compared with, say, January 1918, when the average was 21.7 degrees.

Not a single low temperature has set a record. The lowest temperature so far this month was an un-record-shattering 7 degrees on Jan. 18 in Central Park. That would not be a record for any day in Januaries past.

Nor has this string of chilly days been the longest on record in New York City. The temperature has not risen above freezing since Jan. 13, but that stretch of days falls short not only of the 16-day record set in 1961 but also of a 13-day run logged as recently as winter 2000. And this year's snap was expected to end this weekend, with temperatures climbing in the high 30's today.

Those sobering truths, courtesy of meteorologists at Pennsylvania State University, seem to have escaped the notice of New Yorkers in recent days. Instead, they have busily hung on the histrionics of broadcast weatherpeople, comparing their travails to those of characters in Jack London stories and loudly indulging in the kind of banal weather jabber one might once have assumed they left their smaller towns to escape.

What gives?

New Yorkers pride themselves on their ability to flourish in one of the more grueling urban environments in the world. Some are also famous for a supposedly contrarian frame of mind. But when the temperature drops below freezing and newscasters start piling up adjectival phrases like "bone chilling," legions of New Yorkers suddenly fall apart.

Who has not seen them and heard them hunting down long underwear as though they were stockpiling protein bars for the apocalypse, threatening in exasperation to leave the country, parroting dubious wind chill factors and "real feel" statistics from all-news radio, and commiserating boisterously with strangers for whom they would not usually have the time of day?

"It's like all of a sudden people forgot that it's supposed to be cold in winter," said Danny Koch, who runs the Town Shop, a lingerie store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan that carries long underwear. "When I was a kid, the Hudson River used to freeze over every other year or so. Now, it's like we're living in some tropical climate: `Can you believe . . . ?' "

True, it has been a couple of years since New York City was this cold for this long. The last two winters were mild, memories are short and people have gotten used to the idea of global warming. And New York's population is transient: Tens of thousands of recent arrivals were not even here for the last extended freeze, the one in 2000.

But even many longer-term residents appear to be ill equipped, sartorially and psychically, for cold weather. They package their stroller-bound children in plastic, like cutlets in the fridge; then they themselves sally forth without so much as a hat. Some New Yorkers are too hip for L. L. Bean, too preoccupied to use a zipper. Some choose a cigarette for warmth.

"People in New York spend a lot of money on things that have to be hidden when it's cold," said Mitchell L. Moss, director of the Taub Urban Research Center at New York University. "Like their hair, their earrings, their makeup. New York is a very visual city. Cold weather eliminates that part of your life, because you have to cover up all the things you're promoting about yourself."

As Professor Moss sees it, New York is a pedestrian city, which leaves New Yorkers exposed to the elements in a way that the denizens of automobile-oriented cities are not. In addition, he says, tall buildings create wind tunnels. "The urban construction patterns of New York City aggravate the cold air and make it even more difficult to maneuver."

Without snow, cold weather is especially hard on New Yorkers, Professor Moss suggests. A snowstorm offers an aesthetic thrill and an opportunity for heroics. Without snow, cold weather serves up neither. It is also antithetical to New York's culture of constantly chatting, he said. Cold inhibits talk.

"There's no joy in the cold here," Professor Moss said. "Cold weather is something you endure. It's not something you have to conquer. We're energized by hurdles. But the cold is just a drain on our energies."

New York City has an illustrious weather history. In January 1857, the coldest month of the 19th century, Long Island Sound was icebound for 30 days, a weather historian, David M. Ludlum, wrote in The Encyclopedia of the City of New York. Twelve inches of snow fell on Jan. 18 and 19 that year. Temperatures hovered at zero degrees before dropping on Jan. 24 to minus 9.

More recently, in the winter of 1993-4, snow and ice remained on the ground for more than two months. Snowfall totaled 53.4 inches and the average temperature in January was 5.9 degrees below normal.

It helps to remember that even those statistics are unimpressive to people in places like International Falls, Minn., proud holder of the title "The Icebox of the Nation." There, insulated coveralls are all the rage. Tom Shilts, the director of the public library , says schoolchildren play outside during recess until the wind chill factor is minus 30.

"I don't think we've hit zero since maybe last weekend," Mr. Shilts said in a telephone interview late last week on a day when he said the temperature that morning had been minus 18. "It's not gigantic news, no. It's cold out. But it's not like anybody's keeping track."

Will He Star Again in a Buyout Revival?

Will He Star Again in a Buyout Revival?
By RIVA D. ATLAS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/business/yourmoney/26HICK.html

THOMAS O. HICKS is nothing if not an optimist. The baseball team he owns, the Texas Rangers, finished dead last in the American League West in each of the last three seasons — despite the skills of Alex Rodriguez, who won a 10-year contract worth $252 million from Mr. Hicks, the most ever paid to a professional athlete. As Mr. Hicks said recently, "I'm feeling pretty good about the current season."

So it is with his main job, running Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, a private investment firm that specializes in leveraged buyouts. Mr. Hicks is struggling to restore his and the firm's reputation after losing about $1 billion for his investors from minority stakes he took in six telecommunications and 13 Internet companies at the peak of the 1990's stock market bubble. "We got sucked up in the vortex of the new economy," Mr. Hicks said in a recent interview.

That was hardly the firm's only misstep. Hicks, Muse's joint purchase, with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, of Regal Cinemas also ended disastrously. Regal filed for bankruptcy in September 2001, costing the firm and its investors an additional $500 million. And Hicks, Muse has risked $1 billion on media companies in Argentina, which has been in a recession for four years.

Then there is the Viasystems Group, an electronics equipment maker Hicks, Muse controls that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last October.

Still, a chastened Mr. Hicks, who will turn 57 next month, says that he and his firm will restore its reputation now that he has refocused the firm on what it does best: buying companies at reasonable prices and expanding them to increase profits — what he calls his "buy and build" strategy. The feeble economy is offering opportunities not seen in a decade, and many troubled companies are eager to discard parts of their businesses.

If only things were that simple.

All of the big names in leveraged buyouts — from Kohlberg Kravis to Thomas H. Lee Partners — are digging out from a pile of failed, or bankrupt, acquisitions. And all have had a hard time realizing gains from their better investments, what with the weak market making it nearly impossible for them to take the businesses public or sell them to another company.

But many of these firms, too, are on the prowl for deals. Kohlberg Kravis and the Texas Pacific Group are looking at Britain's Safeway, which is on the block. And Diageo, the British liquor company, last month agreed to sell Burger King to Texas Pacific, Bain Capital and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners.

OST have plenty of money. Last summer, the Blackstone Group raised the largest buyout fund ever, $6.5 billion, beating Thomas H. Lee, which had raised $6.1 billion in 2001. All told, buyout firms now have more than $100 billion in cash, according to Morgan Stanley. Riding a resurgence in the junk bond market, which provides some leverage, buyout firms announced $10 billion of acquisitions in the fourth quarter, the highest level since the fall of 2000, according to Standard & Poor's. Last summer's auction of the Qwest directory business attracted as many as 10 buyout firms.

"Buyouts are back with a vengeance," said Alan Jones, who heads a group at Morgan Stanley catering to these firms. "There are suddenly lots of affordable things to buy."

That competition makes Hicks, Muse's task harder, though Mr. Hicks argues that he is mostly pursuing midsize acquisitions that other firms care little about.

At the annual meeting with his investors last October, Mr. Hicks declared his firm to be "on track, on message and doing the kinds of deals that have delivered outstanding returns to our limited partners."

How? With chances slim to none that Mr. Hicks can pry profits out of his foray into Argentina, he promises that he will not make any more investments in Latin America until it stabilizes. He will no longer take less than a controlling interest in a company, as he did in telecommunications.

And he will avoid technology and telecommunications companies altogether, despite potential bargains. (He remains optimistic about Viasystems, which will emerge from bankruptcy this week.) Instead, he intends to stick to three familiar industries: food, manufacturing and media, including radio, television and cable.

Set on this strategy, in fall 2001 Mr. Hicks told investors in his firm's newest fund that he hoped to deliver net profit close to the 30 percent he had achieved with earlier funds. That would be a sharp contrast with the prior fund, which is expected merely to break even, among the worst performances in the industry.

That goal is a tall order for Mr. Hicks, a 6-foot-3 Dallas native; rival buyout firms are aiming for returns of 20 percent or less, according to consultants and competitors. In fact, Mr. Hicks recently told his investors that more modest returns were possible.

That is because times have decidedly changed. Banks are more cautious: they want buyout firms to contribute close to 40 percent of the purchase price in cash, compared with less than 10 percent in the late 1980's, the heyday of buyout firms. In one of Mr. Hicks's earliest deals, the acquisitions of Dr Pepper and Seven-Up in the 1980's, he and his backers put up just 7 percent. The return was more than 20 times their investment.

The less leverage a buyout includes, of course, the lower the ultimate returns to the investors.

"Returns are definitely down," said Lawrence Schloss, who manages more than $26 billion in buyout and related investments at Credit Suisse First Boston. "But a return of more than 20 percent isn't bad when the stock market is down three years in a row."

Some investors are wary. Many pension funds and other institutions passed on the chance to invest when Hicks, Muse set out in 2000 to raise its latest United States-focused buyout fund, the firm's fifth. Mr. Hicks and his partners were ultimately able to scrape together only $1.6 billion, a far cry from the $4.5 billion they had sought.

AST July, a Dallas magazine called D went so far as to feature a doctored photo of Mr. Hicks on its cover, his pockets turned inside out. "Is Tom Hicks going broke?" it asked.

It did not help that last September Mr. Hicks put his other sports franchise, the Dallas Stars hockey team, up for sale.

A spokesman for Mr. Hicks, Roy Winnick, calls the D article "pure drivel," and denies that Mr. Hicks is facing a cash squeeze. Forbes magazine's estimate last fall of his net worth, at $725 million, is "a lot closer to reality," he said.

The hockey team offering, Mr. Hicks said, "was a lifestyle choice," adding that he preferred to focus his free time on the Rangers, which he bought from a group that included George W. Bush in 1998.

Mr. Hicks says he wants to restore his firm's reputation not because he needs the money, but because his name is on the door and he wants the firm to survive long after he personally has stopped doing deals.

He was so eager to earn the good will of his investors that in the fall of 2000 he promised investors a 20 percent return on some $200 million in Internet investments that he had made with borrowed money, in anticipation of raising the new fund. In leveraged-buyout circles, this is unheard of.

If the investments failed to meet that return, Mr. Hicks promised, he and his partners would make up the difference, using their share of the profits on past and future deals.

Now that many of those investments have fallen far short of the promised return, Mr. Hicks and his partners are on the hook for some $200 million.

"It was one of the craziest things ever done by an LBO firm," said one competitor who did not want to offend Mr. Hicks.

The firm's investors, of course, appreciated the gesture.

"They are really committed to proving to the world that the fourth fund was an aberration," said William F. Quinn, president of the pension management arm of the AMR Corporation, parent of American Airlines, and a longtime investor with Hicks, Muse.

More than two years later, investors are waiting for Mr. Hicks to pay off most of the pledge. He and his partners have repaid $60 million, but Mr. Hicks said he expected this year to announce a means of repaying the rest.

Investors are now watching how Mr. Hicks invests the rest of the fund.

Mr. Hicks and his partners say they have returned to the firm's strategy of making an initial, sometimes small, acquisition in a target industry and then expanding it through a series of add-on deals.

One of Hicks, Muse's best-known buildups was in radio, where, starting with two stations, it created the second-largest collection of stations in the country, buying 441 stations in more than 30 acquisitions. That company, AMFM, merged with Clear Channel Communications in August 2000. Investors in Hicks, Muse's earlier funds have made a 42 percent annualized return on these radio investments, although the firm still holds a 6 percent stake in the combined company.

A second buildup, International Home Foods, was sold to ConAgra three years ago, also for a return of around 40 percent.

In 2001, Hicks, Muse started a new buildup in the food industry, called Pinnacle Foods, begun with the purchase of the North American brands of Vlasic Foods for $350 million, including the well-known pickle brand as well as Swanson, the frozen-dinner maker.

"Our best returns have been on acquisitions of $250 million to $1 billion," said John R. Muse, one of Mr. Hicks's partners, who runs the firm's $1.5 billion European buyout fund. (A third partner, Jack D. Furst, oversees most of the manufacturing investments.)

But Mr. Muse said the firm would still tackle larger deals, often with a partner, if they were tempting enough.

In 2001, Hicks, Muse teamed up with the buyout firm Apax Partners to acquire Yell, the directory division of British Telecommunications. Hicks, Muse competed against Kohlberg Kravis and Texas Pacific for the deal, then the largest European buyout ever.

So far, Yell's performance has been good. In the quarter ended Sept. 30, Yell reported cash flow of $147 million, up 38 percent from the previous year, on sales of more than $420 million.

Still, the sluggish stock market is making it hard to show tangible results from Mr. Hicks's newfound focus. He had hoped to take Yell public last summer in London, for example, but with the appetite for stock offerings as weak there as in the United States, Hicks, Muse had to cancel its plans.

"Some of our biggest wins haven't shown up yet," Mr. Hicks said. Now, the firm is talking about selling Pinnacle, possibly as early as this spring, according to an executive briefed on the plans.

Mr. Hicks has some time: just half of the latest fund is invested, and he expects it will be at least another couple of years before he uses up that money and needs to raise a new fund.

Some pension fund managers and investment bankers are convinced that Mr. Hicks will do what he must to salvage his reputation. "Tom is an extremely driven guy," said one banker who has lent the firm money.

One indication of Mr. Hicks's determination was the quiet departure of two partners involved in some troubled investments.

Michael Levitt, who ran Hicks, Muse's New York office and handled some of its telecommunications deals, resigned in August 2001 rather than relocate to Dallas. Mr. Levitt declined to comment.

HARLES TATE, a partner who led many of its efforts in Latin America, retired last June at 57. Mr. Tate said there was "absolutely no connection" between his departure and the performance of the investments, adding that he had long planned to retire.

"We all collectively take guilt for bad decisions, Mr. Hicks said. He added that his firm last year let go 15 percent of its staff over all.

But Mr. Hicks is adamant that he, and his firm, will be around for many years to come. He personally plans to stick around at least until age 65, he said, or another eight years.

"This firm," Mr. Hicks said, "is my legacy."

At the Beating Heart of an Export Machine

At the Beating Heart of an Export Machine
By KEITH BRADSHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/business/worldbusiness/26CHIN.html

SHENZHEN, China -- THE giant maroon, blue and white cranes here hoist 40-foot-long steel freight containers onto four container ships, each as long as two football fields. The cranes work around the clock, yet lines of trucks bearing containers keep coming, and vessels often crowd a nearby anchorage waiting to be loaded at Yantian port.

The port, open less than eight years, is just one of a half dozen in the Pearl River delta in southeastern China, including the world's busiest container port, Kwai Chung in nearby Hong Kong. Together these ports now handle almost as many containers as all the ports in the United States combined, and are growing much more swiftly. More than a third of the electronic goods, clothing and other products that flood through here are headed for America.

With 3,000 miles of navigable waterways and hundreds of barges that bring containers full of parts right to factories' docks and take away assembled merchandise, the delta is turning into a Venice of manufacturing. The region has led the way in China's extraordinary transformation into a global trading power, producing fully 40 percent of China's exports.

Yet in recent weeks, the delta has also been the scene of an acrimonious struggle over who will control the highways, bridges, tunnels and ports that transport an ever-growing river of goods.

The fight has been pitting some of Asia's wealthiest tycoons, like Sir Gordon Wu and Li Ka-shing, against one another. The tussle is also a contest over the delta's political future, as increasingly assertive municipal governments here and in other cities of Guangdong Province try to seize control of logistics and shipping businesses long controlled by Hong Kong.

The delta region is slightly larger than Connecticut, extending from Hong Kong and Macau, at the mouth of the delta, to Guangzhou, 80 miles upstream, and to Huizhou to the east and Foshan to the west. It exports nearly the same value of goods as all of Mexico or South Korea.

The rising trading power of China — its exports leaped 22 percent last year, and it now trails only the United States, Japan, Germany and France — has been especially important for transportation companies and port operators. Countries that are more developed rely heavily on exports of high-value products that are either small, like computer chips, or that require practically no shipping, like banking and insurance services. But China's ascendancy is in manufactured goods, from shoes and furniture to fax machines and electric fans, and these tend to be bulky products for which shipping and logistics account for a considerable portion of the final price.

EACH city in the delta is now trying to capture as much of this business as possible by outbuilding its neighbors, often with wasteful and duplicative results. Five international airports were built in the late 1990's in a 60-mile radius, and a similar boom is starting for ports and bridges.

"The Pearl River delta has already become one metropolis," said a recent report from CLSA, the investment bank, and Civic Exchange, a nonprofit research group in Hong Kong. "Administratively, it remains a nightmare with many jurisdictions."

Several Hong Kong developers, led by Sir Gordon, chairman of Hopewell Holdings, want to build a bridge from Macau to Hong Kong's Lantau Island and a new deep-water container terminal port at the western end of it. That would allow factories on the southwest bank of the Pearl River, which lacks deep harbors, to send goods by truck to the new port for loading onto ocean-going ships.

But Shenzhen officials want a tunnel farther up the river, connecting Zhuhai to Shenzhen. That would mean more goods going through Shenzhen's ports. And Guangzhou officials want to build an immense new container terminal farther upstream.

Guangzhou is also replacing its airport with an enormous new one, to compete with Hong Kong's four-year-old airport and recently opened airports in Zhuhai, and is brushing off criticism from Hong Kong that it is all unnecessary. "We are not asking Hong Kong not to develop," Lin Shusen, the mayor of Guangzhou, said recently. "In the same vein, there are some projects that we need to develop, and we hope Hong Kong will not expect us not to."

Even before any construction can begin, trade in the delta will be in for some big changes. On Feb. 2, the United States Customs Service will start levying penalties on any shippers that send containers to the United States without first complying with a 14-item checklist intended to reduce the risk that weapons of mass destruction are concealed inside. The new rules apply to exporters all over the world, but may particularly be a problem here, where exporters take pride in their ability to minimize inventory costs by sending goods to ships hours before sailing time.

Concerns about security rules, port construction plans and other logistics issues are no minor matter here in the delta, where as much as a fifth of Hong Kong's economy depends on the processing of goods for export.

Ports, bridges and tunnels do not just create jobs for dock workers and truckers. Garments and pairs of shoes that cost $2 to make in the delta sell for many times that in the United States, partly because many tasks must be done between the factory gate and the store shelf overseas. These include sorting and inspecting merchandise, packing it into containers, and financing and insuring the goods. Computer printers, VCR's, telephones and other electronic goods are the delta's biggest exports, followed by textiles and apparel, with 36 percent of the shipments going to the United States and 23 percent to the European Union.

The world's largest multilevel industrial building is an immense complex in Hong Kong owned by an American company, the CSX Corporation. The 14-story building at the Kwai Chung docks has 16 miles of roads inside, mostly of three lanes, and handles 10,000 trucks bearing containers each day. Companies like Adidas, Wal-Mart, Target, Next and Liz Claiborne all lease space in the building for various tasks, like inspecting garments.

In one room, lacy white women's vests from the Next brand are loaded into a container in exactly the order they will need to be unloaded at a British department store — eliminating the need for warehouse and sorting space in Britain. Each vest is already on its hanger and has a tag with a price in British pounds.

But packing and loading containers is not cheap. Especially expensive are the handling charges the shipping lines have levied on exporters in recent years. The shippers contend that they are only passing on what they describe as unusually steep fees collected by port operators in China.

In suggesting a new port, Sir Gordon has played on the anger that many exporters here feel at the handling charges, which are highest in the delta. American and European importers, not Chinese exporters here in the delta, typically pay all freight charges except for initial loading fees. Many shippers contend that the port operators form an oligopoly that overcharges the shipping lines for loading containers.

"Hong Kong has got the highest charges of anywhere in the world for terminal charges," Sir Gordon said. "And you know where the second highest is? Yantian, the same management."

The port operators dispute this, especially Hutchison Port Holdings, the world's largest, which manages more than half of Kwai Chung and all of Yantian. John F. Meredith, the company's group managing director, contended that other ports had even higher charges although they used different names for them. He also accused the shipping lines of charging customers much more than they are paying the ports.

"The shipping lines are desperate to get income into their systems, with freight rates so low," he said. Shipping executives deny that they are padding the charges.

HUTCHISON is a subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa, which in turn is controlled by Mr. Li, Hong Kong's wealthiest tycoon. Mr. Li has more than most at stake in the debate over a bridge across the Pearl River, as he also controls two-thirds of the many shallow-draft barges with cranes operating on the river. The barges collect containers up and down the river, then sail to the mouth of the delta and load the big boxes directly onto ocean-going ships.

Hong Kong's port operators question the insistence of Guangzhou officials that a huge port at Nansha is even feasible. The muddy Pearl River is too shallow to accommodate modern container ships, and shipping lines are planning even bigger vessels.

Guangzhou's plan is an enormous dredging operation to deepen the Pearl River's shipping channel to 48 feet from 30 feet all the way from Nansha to the ocean.

Environmentalists are appalled but have limited influence. Hong Kong port operators say that the port in Buenos Aires has not been able to accept the larger container ships despite continuous dredging, and question whether the Pearl River can ever be deepened.

"When you go up the Pearl River, you're going up one of the world's largest gravel conveyor belts," said William McHugh, CSX's chairman of Asian terminals.

The shallowness of the Pearl River makes it attractive for bridge builders, however. Of all the projects pending, the bridge seems to have the most momentum, having received a strong endorsement on Jan. 8 from Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong's chief executive, while provincial officials in Guangdong have toned down some of their objections. "It's one of the most obvious things that should have been built, but because of the lack of coordination over the last 20 or 30 years, it wasn't," said Franklin Lam, a Hong Kong equities analyst at UBS Warburg.

Hanging over every debate about future civil engineering projects, and over the future of the delta itself, is the region's growing competition with Shanghai and the Yangtze River delta.

The Pearl River delta still has a slightly greater economic output and exports. But the Yangtze River delta is attracting more domestic and foreign investment. It is also far ahead in growth industries like heavy manufacturing, computer chip fabrication and financial services that Beijing sees as more important to China's future than the light industry that dominates the Pearl River delta.

Yet the Pearl River delta could have considerable growth ahead. Its southwest bank has less than a quarter of the output of the cities along the northeast bank. Investors have put most of their money into factories within a three-hour drive of Hong Kong — allowing entrepreneurs in chauffeur-driven Mercedeses and BMW's to make the trip to their factories and back in a single day. A bridge from Hong Kong to Macau would open up large areas of farmland for development.

Fully developing the other side of the delta is likely to produce another flood of exports from what is already becoming the world's workshop. "Does that mean double the trade?" asked Michael J. Enright, a business professor at Hong Kong University. "Not necessarily, but not much short of that."

Family Seeks Asylum, to Practice a Faith Freely

Family Seeks Asylum, to Practice a Faith Freely
By ARTHUR BOVINO
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/nyregion/nyregionspecial/26NEED.html

Every weekend, Fat Ping Cheung and De Rong Zhang take their son, Stanley Chun Chi Cheung, to Kissena Corridor Park in Flushing, Queens, to practice the exercises, similar to tai chi, that are a part of the spiritual movement known as Falun Gong.

They come here because they have faith in Falun Gong and its ability to improve and elevate the mind, body and spirit. They have faith, and in America their faith — everyone's faith — is a protected right.

That's why they came here, to this park, and to this country.

Mrs. Zhang was born in China, and Mr. Cheung was born in Hong Kong. They married in 1998, though Mrs. Zhang had never expected marriage in her life. In 1994, she said, the gas heater in her apartment in Shenzhen, China, exploded while she was showering. She said she suffered burns on her face and arms.

"I couldn't work at all," she said through a translator, Janet Xiong, a friend. "I couldn't be exposed to the sun. The doctors recommended skin grafts and plastic surgery."

But the operations were too costly, she said. Soon after, Mrs. Zhang was introduced to Falun Gong, with its slow-motion exercises, meditations and healing theories. She says that practicing the exercises and striving to be a better person made her burns clear up. Soon after, Mr. Cheung started Falun Gong as well.

As newlyweds, they seemed to have a brighter future within their grasp, although they had to live apart. Mrs. Zhang worked as a floral arranger at the Shenzhen Agricultural Research Institute. Mr. Cheung was a chef at his father's restaurant on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong. And in November 1998, Mrs. Zhang was pregnant.

And in 1999? That's when the Chinese Communist government banned Falun Gong.

Mrs. Zhang said the police began approaching her often, asking her why she wanted to practice Falun Gong. Worried about the future their baby would face if born a Chinese citizen, Mrs. Zhang and Mr. Cheung left for St. Martin in the Caribbean, where Mr. Cheung worked at a relative's restaurant. Their baby, Stanley, was born there in 1999.

In January 2000, Mrs. Zhang returned to China with Stanley. Mr. Cheung returned to his job in Hong Kong. The decision was tough, but Mr. Cheung could earn more money there. They saw each other as often as they could. But meanwhile, the harassment worsened in China.

On Nov. 11, 2000, Mrs. Zhang said, she was at home talking with a friend when the police arrived. "They ransacked and searched the apartment," she said. "They took our pictures of my son and took us to the police station."

The police questioned Mrs. Zhang about her involvement in Falun Gong. "They put my baby on a bench where he was crying and cold," she said. She had heard stories about Falun Gong practitioners and their children being beaten or killed. So she pretended to go to the bathroom, and then raced out of the station into a cold, rainy night.

She called all her relatives and her husband, imploring them to help her get Stanley back. The family quickly formed a plan. "My brother went to the police and guaranteed to bring me to them in exchange for my baby," Mrs. Zhang said.

Her brother took the baby to Mr. Cheung, while Mrs. Zhang had already begun her journey out of China. She took a bus to Huanggang, a train to Shanghai, and a flight to Japan. There, she was reunited with her husband and child and, using tourist visas, they flew to New York.

They could not return to China, so they applied for political asylum. After their case was assigned to a judge, the Immigration and Naturalization Service referred the family for legal representation to the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, one of seven charities supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. There they met Diana Castanéda, a staff attorney for the charity's immigrant and refugee services department.

"I interviewed them and felt they had a strong case," Ms. Castanéda said. "And there was no other way for them to pay for a lawyer."

The Catholic Charities used $3,000 of Neediest money to help the family, pay for such items as interpreters and research. On Nov. 11 of last year, "the judge found they had met their burden," Ms. Castanéda said.Their status will be finalized in March.

Mrs. Zhang, 39, and Mr. Cheung, 45, now sublet a room in an apartment in Flushing, Queens. Mr. Cheung does interior renovation, and Mrs. Zhang has given flower-arranging workshops at the public library.

But they still face uncertainties. For example, they say, the tenant from whom they are subletting has asked them to move by March.

Still, they are determined to make their own way, as they have before.

Mr. Cheung said: "We will solve our own financial problems. We don't want to be a burden to this society. We want to merge into society and become part of the community."

Out, Damned Spot

Out, Damned Spot
By DEBORAH STEAD
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/nyregion/26FEAT.html

IT'S not exactly an urban mystery. More a case of mass denial, or a lack of anthropological curiosity. Whatever the reason, only some New Yorkers, including, now, the mayor, know that the black blobs stuck to pavements around the city are not part of the concrete mix, not stray bits of asphalt, not hardened drips of roofing tar. No, the splotches, some amoeba-shaped and some round as half dollars, are pieces of discarded chewing gum.

"Those little black dots on the sidewalk," Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg called them in November during his regular radio program, lamenting their ubiquity and confiding that he had always wondered what they were.

"That's gum," he told his listeners. Twice, as if it were hard to believe.

The mayor urged property owners to turn this discovery into action. "Hire a company to come and clean your sidewalk," he said.

As it turns out, the available arsenal to battle the gum now includes a new weapon: a solvent that vaporizes the splotches. Gumbusters of New York, the company that deploys the mixture, has served about 300 clients, including the Statue of Liberty, since its founding three years ago. Perhaps it's high time for all this attention, because there is evidence that New York's hefty new cigarette tax may be producing a city of even more gum chewers - and potential gum litterers.

True, a smear on the sidewalk is not crime in the streets. It's not an act of terrorism. It's not a battered school system, a rising homeless population, a buffeted economy or the specter of shrunken city services.

But hardened gum underfoot is undeniably an urban hallmark. And of course, the bigger and denser the city, the more the gum, which may make New York the gum splotch capital of the world.

Like artifacts at a dig site, these splotches can be found where they were abandoned. Many land outside restaurants, stores, subway stations, subway cars and anyplace people have been standing in line. Others, in a sign of good intentions, pile up near refuse baskets on street corners.

Who knows? Among the millions of gum blobs on New York's 12,500 miles of pavement may be a fragment from the era of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, who ran a campaign to reform gum litterers in 1939. "Mayor's Gum Drive Off to Fast Start - Two Companies and a Flood of Volunteers Join Up," read a headline in this newspaper at the time.

"It's one of those things that has become a fact of city life," said Tim Tompkins, president of the Times Square Business Improvement District. "I think, on a core level, most people are used to it."

Historically speaking, New York may deserve all its abandoned gum. In an odd tale that touches on the Alamo by way of Staten Island, it was here, in the late 19th century, that the world's first chewing gum factory was built. But if the city gave birth to modern chewing gum, it once again has a few forces, not least a mayor, who want to take it off the streets.

How New York Got Its Spots

The chewing gum industry got its start in New York because chicle, a rubbery substance produced by the tropical sapodilla tree, found its way to Staten Island. It was carried here, as a chew, by General Santa Anna, the Mexican dictator who prevailed at the battle of the Alamo in 1836. Santa Anna came to Staten Island as an exile, after he was defeated by Sam Houston and after Texas became a state. There he met Thomas Adams, a local inventor.

In 1869, Adams tried, unsuccessfully, to make tires from Santa Anna's stash of chicle, then gave it a chew himself and liked it better than the paraffin-wax or spruce-resin chewing plugs that New Yorkers were buying from pharmacists at the time. (Today's gums are made mostly with a synthetic-polymer gum base.) By 1876, according to The Encyclopedia of New York City, the inventor had opened Adams Sons & Company on Vesey Street in Lower Manhattan, the first gum factory. Its packages featured a drawing of City Hall and the slogan "Adams' New York Chewing Gum, Snapping and Stretching."

The Adams company, long a part of Pfizer and now slated to be sold to Cadbury-Schweppes, dominated the gum business that grew up in the early 20th century, making Chiclets, Tutti Frutti gumballs and other brands. Gum spread throughout America, then throughout Europe, as G.I.'s in both world wars enjoyed and distributed the gum supplied in their rations.

Gum also spread all over the sidewalks of New York. In a 1939 New York Times article headlined "Bogged in Chewing Gum," a hotel executive complained that "the city of New York may become totally enveloped in refuse chewing gum in the course of time."

That same year, Mayor La Guardia embarked on his public education campaign against gum litterers. He pressured gum companies to print warnings on their wrappers about proper gum disposal and announced a search for a "catchy" advertising slogan for a cleanup. His final choice? "Don't Gum Up the Works." As part of the campaign, "some 20,000 wads were scraped from one spot on Times Square alone," wrote Robert Hendrickson, author of "The Great American Chewing Gum Book" (Stein & Day, 1976).

So it continued in New York: a lot of gum spit out, a little gum removed. And some gum immortalized. In 1972, a self-defined "disposable artist" named Les Levine who lived on Mott Street cast about 30 pieces of freshly chewed gum in gold. The resulting works, called "Solid Gold Chewing Gum," were shown at the Fischbach Gallery in Manhattan; the sculptures are a comment about art, "about the making process," Mr. Levine said in a recent interview.

The Bull's-Eye Stratagem

These days, discarded gum is practically part of the city's infrastructure.

"When you think about doing something special, a nicer type of sidewalk or something," said Mr. Tompkins of the Times Square BID, "you have to consider the gum issue."

Although gum spots are found throughout the city, the problem is understandably worse in more congested areas. The Grand Central Partnership, another large business improvement district, struggles daily against the litter in its gum-heavy neighborhood. "It's a disgusting sight," said Alfred C. Cerullo III, president of the partnership.

And it may be worse below street level. For a time in the 90's, the Transit Authority set up targets at selected gum-encrusted stations and invited passengers to hurl their gum at bull's-eyes instead of dropping it on the ground. The program was discontinued because it was not cost-effective.

Many subway riders are inured to the splotches. "It's so dirty, I just block it out," said Eneas Soares, a Hunter College student, pointing to the heavy gum deposits along the downtown subway platform at 96th Street and Broadway.

That's assuming they know it's gum in the first place. "It's too much to be chewing gum," said Lenora Jones, a retired customer service representative, who sat nearby eyeing an unbroken line of splotches along the platform's edge.

Too much, indeed. Americans chew about $2.8 billion worth of gum every year, according to a report by Packaged Facts, a market research company. Using Wrigley's 25-cent pack as a measure, that adds up to about 56 billion pieces annually. And there's no reason to think that New Yorkers chew less than their share. "As far as I can tell, gum consumption is pretty uniform across the United States," said Jim Echeandia, a Texas-based confectionery consultant.

The city's recently increased cigarette tax, which raised the price of a pack to about $7.50, may mean that New Yorkers will chew even more as they try to reduce their smoking or quit. At the United Grocery at 94th Street and Broadway, Anna Khan, whose family owns the store, now orders six boxes of gum a week instead of the two boxes she ordered before the tax took effect on July 1. "One customer, he used to buy two packs of cigarettes a day," she said. "Since the price went up, he buys five to six packs of gum a day instead."

New Yorkers - unlike, say, the residents of Switzerland - are not famous for their neatness. But it is unclear why depositing gum on the ground became acceptable, especially given that it is officially prohibited as littering or spitting under city regulations.

"It would be a good graduate student project," said Mr. Tompkins of the Times Square BID, laughing. " 'The Rupturing of the Social Contract With Respect to Gum Disposal.' "

The reduction of subway graffiti got a big boost from new technology that made it easier to clean the trains. For their part, gum makers are trying to devise a gum that does not adhere to pavements.

"There are a number of encouraging developments, but no new products ready for consumer testing," said Amy Chezem, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Chewing Gum Manufacturers. The companies also say they have made progress toward a gum base that breaks down over time, but, she added, "The prospect is still a way off."

Scraping, Slicing, Steaming

Until then, gum removal will remain a constant struggle.

Sanitation crews for the Grand Central Partnership routinely remove gum from news boxes and phone booths in eastern Midtown. "They scrape it, they use solutions," Mr. Cerullo said. "Every day, seven days a week. It's an ongoing battle." Periodically, he also hires power washers to remove gum stuck to the sidewalk.

At Grand Central Terminal, three "degummers" - employees wielding broom handles outfitted with razor-sharp blades - patrol the concourse every night at 1 a.m. as part of the general cleanup. The floor, made of Tennessee marble, resists nicking "and allows the gum to come up," said Dan Brucker, a spokesman for Metro-North Railroad, which operates Grand Central.

But perhaps the organization taking the most focused aim at the problem is a small Queens company called, appropriately, Gumbusters, headed by Brad Fields, a trim 32-year-old entrepreneur with a low-key manner and high aspirations.

So far Gumbusters of New York, one of the American franchisees of a Dutch company, has vaporized gum spots from 500,000 square feet of the city, Mr. Fields said. But that, he knows, is just a tiny clearing here in the petrified-gum forest, and the underbrush can grow back fast. The new McDonald's at 42nd Street hired Gumbusters last September, and needed it to return just weeks later.

The nature of his work has turned Mr. Fields into something of a gum anthropologist. "I walk with my head down now, like most New Yorkers, but I do it for business knowledge," he said. He can explain why some wads are huge ("Kids chew four pieces at a time"), why some are just larger than average (probably bubble gum), why some have tails (someone stepped on them when they were fresh, pulling them along the street before they hardened), and how long it takes for a pink, white or green confection to become a grimy stain that stubbornly stays put ("I'd give it about 24 hours").

Gumbusters has cleaned gum from the sidewalks of Carnegie Hall, the sidewalks of the Magic Johnson Theater in Harlem and Arthur Ashe Stadium. (Pavement cleaning is the duty of property owners, not the Department of Sanitation.) In November, Mr. Fields degummed 100 square feet of pavement in City Hall Park to demonstrate his system to the Parks Department.

Bill Tai, who as chief of the department's Manhattan operations branch arranged for the display, was noncommittal about the chance for any Parks Department business. "I don't know what will come of it," he said. "We don't have a lot of extra money in our budget."

Around the same time, Mr. Fields demonstrated his company's steam-and-solvent system at the Gumbusters headquarters in Long Island City. With two of the company's five employees, he climbed into a Gumbusters truck painted with smiley gobs of colorful gum. He hopped out at a nearby corner and hooked up a small, portable "gumcart" to a surprisingly quiet generator. "No point in trading gum pollution for noise pollution," he said.

Then the three men, using a long brush attachment, handily evaporated 25 black blobs from the pavement before moving to another spot. "Probably Juicy Fruit," Mr. Fields said, as one splotch liquefied and dribbled away. "We can smell the gum sometimes. The flavor wafts up."

The low-pressure system, Mr. Fields added, uses less water than high-pressure power-washing, which must be done at night when pedestrians are absent.

His prices depend upon gum density, but customers generally pay 35 cents a square foot plus $18 a gallon for the patented solution. His clients can buy their own gumcart from the company for $5,900, as managers for Pennsylvania Station and the Statue of Liberty have done.

Innovative Thinking Is the Cup Currency for New Zealand

Innovative Thinking Is the Cup Currency for New Zealand
By WARREN ST. JOHN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/sports/othersports/26BOAT.html

AUCKLAND, New Zealand, Jan. 25 — The defining moment of Team New Zealand's current America's Cup defense took place not on the water or at some high-tech tank-testing facility, but at a bare-bones motel on the island of Waiheke off Auckland.

It was in the summer of 2000, just a few months after New Zealand's 5-0 sweep of the Italian team Prada in the America's Cup that year. Crowds jammed Viaduct Harbor to cheer the team as national heroes when they won the Cup in February. But by summer, it had all come apart.

Team New Zealand was in debt, while the lineup for the next Cup included men with bottomless pockets: the billionaires Larry Ellison, Ernesto Bertarelli and Craig McCaw.

To make matters worse, those billionaires had hired 30 of Team New Zealand's best sailors, including Russell Coutts, the two-time Cup-winning skipper, and his tactician, Brad Butterworth, who joined Bertarelli's Swiss team, Alinghi.

So with a new-age management consultant as a guide, the Kiwi team went to Waiheke for two days of exercises aimed at exorcising what the yacht designer Clay Oliver called "all the old baggage." The consultant encouraged the yachtsmen to build cardboard dioramas representing a farewell to the past and an embrace of the future.

Teams collaborated in a contest to build contraptions that could protect eggs from breaking when dropped. There was some role playing and a lot of talking — far-out stuff to Kiwis unfamiliar with touchy-feely American team-building seminars. But they loosened up, and at the end of the first night, Team New Zealand's chief executive, Ross Blackman, played his guitar and sang into the early hours.

"At the end of the day we had gotten it out of our system and were ready to move on," Oliver said. "In retrospect, it was very important. We were finally getting comfortable with `This is the new team and we are going to go somewhere,' and `Let's go out and jump to a new curve.' "

"Jump to a new curve" became the mantra for Team New Zealand's designers for several months. Though the phrase smacks of new-economy earnestness — a variation on "thinking outside the box" — it had real implications for the way an America's Cup team operates.

Syndicates typically improve their yachts through a years-long process of incremental refinements — a tweak here, a nudge there — followed by weeks of computer analysis to see what, if anything, the tweak actually accomplished. But without the top-flight sailors who had won the Cup in 1995 and 2000, the New Zealand team could not rely on nuanced changes. It needed something big.

The result is the most radical design innovation for an America's Cup boat since Australia II's winged keel in 1983: the Hula (short for hull appendage), a 20-foot-long clamshell that attaches beneath the back of the boat and has the effect of lengthening the waterline, which in theory should make a boat faster. When the Hula was unveiled at a ceremony in late December, it was a sensation, the yachting world equivalent of the Segway, the high-tech scooter.

Bruce Farr, the Oracle-BMW designer, mused that the Hula had gotten its name because it danced around the rules. But despite widespread skepticism that clamping a big carbon fiber toboggan underneath your yacht would pass muster with America's Cup measurers, Alinghi said it would not protest. Alinghi, it turns out, had tried to build an underwater toboggan of its own, but could not get the contraption to work.

Actually, the Hula is only the most prominent of a series of developments by the Kiwi team that have served to take the Cup competition to even greater levels of obsessiveness. Team New Zealand tried to jump the curve wherever it could.

"We figured there might be opportunities in every aspect of the campaign," said Tom Schnackenberg, a nuclear physicist-turned-sailor for Team New Zealand. "I suppose the other thing is that we set pretty high goals. We have a burning ambition."

In the past, it took the team an hour and a half to launch its yachts each morning. The team came up with a new skirting method and simplified crane system that cut that time to 30 minutes, which meant more time on the water.

A team physiologist takes blood samples from the crew twice a day using a new New Zealand-developed machine that draws blood through the skin, without needles. The needle-less approach allows for easy monitoring of protein and hormone levels, which team doctors then correlate with information from questionnaires about sailors' daily routines. Sailors are then told what they should eat when, and how long they should sleep.

And there are other innovations on board: a superlightweight boom, a four-spreader rig, an extra-long bulb at the bottom of an extra-thin keel.

The net gain from all this curve jumping? A second or two a per mile, maybe.

But to an America's Cup skipper, especially a first-time Cup skipper, any advantage helps. Team New Zealand's helmsman is 29-year-old Dean Barker, a Coutts protégé, who was ceremoniously handed the helm in the last race of the match with Prada in 2000. Kiwis always expected to see Coutts and Barker sailing together in this America's Cup; they just assumed it would be on the same boat. When racing for the Cup starts Feb. 15, mentor and student will enter the starting box as adversaries.

"He was probably as mature back then as he is now," Schnackenberg said of Barker, "but he wouldn't have had the opportunity to express it as much. As far as leading the team, he's not a man to get up and make speeches. The team doesn't work that way. Dean's not one to try to stamp his personality on the team. He just does his job."

Part of a Team New Zealand skipper's job is courting sponsors. Without a single billionaire backer, Team New Zealand has had to go out and scrap for every dollar. Barker spent much of his time leading up to the regatta giving sailing clinics for sponsors faraway on the South Island. The team does not have to pay to house its crew — most are locals who bring their own sandwiches on the boat each day — but its budget is still less than half of the $85 million Ellison and Bertarelli are thought to have spent. All the more reason to cut corners and jump curves.

The difficulty of being the America's Cup defender is not knowing how those innovations stack up against the competitors'. Alinghi has been racing since October — the team lost only 3 races out of 26 on the way to the Cup final — while Team New Zealand has been practicing. The team invited a few reporters along for a training session last week and had trouble with two spinnaker hoists in a moderate breeze. A fast boat could buy a margin for such errors, but Team New Zealand only knows how fast it is against itself.

"The sailing team prepares on the assumption that you'll be racing an even boat," Schnackenberg said. "If it turns out you do have a fast boat, that's good news. If you have a slow boat, there's not a lot you can do about it but be dignified about losing."