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LENS

A brand or a sticker on a productseems to be all the validation neededfor consumer satisfaction: new andimproved, organic, trans-fat free, eco-

friendly. It is whatit is, except whenit isn’t. Labels and packaging are there to inform,warn and guidethe consumer, butsometimes all theydo is confuse.

And who wantstrickery when it

comes to such finery as caviar? Thechoices used to be beluga, osetra andsevruga. But beluga has been banned

in America, and the harvest of wildosetra and sevruga from the Caspianand Black Seas for the internationalmarket was halted. Instead, six stur-geon species are farmed, and thedifferences among them are not clear,said The Times.

“Some dealers are taking advan-tage of the confusion, and perhaps adding to it, by labeling many of the new farmed caviars ‘osetra,’ ” The Times reported.

The packaging on Zwyer caviarsays that it is oscietra (a spelling forosetra) and uses the motto “The Cas-pian Legacy.” Yet the fine print says it contains roe from Siberian baeriiraised in Uruguay. The company says

that baerii is “a kind of osetra”; othersdisagree.

Also in the realm of legal but con-fusing is the marketing of “light” cigarettes. By June, under the new federal tobacco law in America, com-panies cannot use words like “light” or “mild” on packages to imply thatsome cigarettes are safer than oth-ers. Instead, tobacco companies allover the world are using light colored packaging for light cigarettes, The Times reported.

Companies say they are using colorsto identify different packs and tastes.But studies have shown consumersbelieve that the terms and colors meana safer product, The Times reported.

From caviar to cigarettes to calo-ries, there’s a lack of clarity. The serv-ing sizes on many packaged foods aretoo small, making their calorie countsmisleading, wrote The Times. TheFood and Drug Administration is try-ing to change that. For ice cream, theserving size on the carton is half a cup.For packaged muffins, it’s often half amuffin. But people eat more than that.

“To consumers, the serving sizeappears to be inconsistent and in-tuitive,” Wendy Reinhardt Kapsak, senior director of health and wellness at the International Food Information Council Foundation, told The Times.“They have trouble trusting it.”

Garnering trust is often what

drives a brand, and pharmaceuticalcompanies are doing just that. Drug companies are getting into the gener-ics market in emerging economies in Eastern Europe, Asia and LatinAmerica, where many are willing to pay a premium for generics from well-known makers. These branded generics are seen as a sign of authen-ticity and quality control, wrote The Times. Giants like Sanofi-Aventis andGlaxoSmithKline are buying generic makers and putting their name on packages, in effect telling consum-ers: “You can trust us.”

But with brand saturation and all the fine print, trust is a fickle partner.Like the designer Norma Kamalisaid, “The idea of branding, we haveto rethink that. Sometimes a label only gets in the way.” ANITA PATIL

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: JUSTIN MOTT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES; SIMEN GRYTOYR FOR

THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE VALENTINA PETROVA FOR THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE

What’s Behind a Label?

A Seat AT THE

Table

V VIIIMONEY & BUSINESS

Wall Street icons call

for more regulation.

ARTS & STYLES

The new wonders

of Alice’s world.

INTELLIGENCE: Europe’s current of pacifism, Page II.

For comments, write tonytweekly@nytimes.com.

WOMEN HAVE FOUGHT hard to gain a foothold in the halls of

power and today stand on the cusp of wielding more influence

than ever before. The New York Times International Weekly

is presenting its first installment of the Female Factor series. This issue in-

cludes articles about the growing prominence of women in the political life

of Bulgaria, known for its macho traditions. Yordanka Fandakova, above

center, has become the first female mayor of Sofia. Mu Sochua, top right, a

member of the Cambodian Parliament, battled for women’s rights and is

now in a struggle for her own. Benja Stig-Fagerland, an economist, helped

bring females to corporate leadership roles in Norway. Page IV.

The Female Factor

The Female Factor, a project of the International Herald Tribune, pres-

ents yearlong coverage of where women stand in the 21st century. For

multimedia, a special report on the 100th anniversary of International

Women’s Day and more articles: global.nytimes.com/femalefactor

VISCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

I am Robot. Let me

cook for you.

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

II MONDAY, MARCH 8, 2010

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New ThinkingAnd Old Weapons

PARISThe basis of any military alliance

must be shared threat perception.It has been lacking for Europe andthe United States since the end of the cold war. To Europeans, 11/9 trumps9/11. The November 9, 1989, fall of the Berlin Wall propelled Europeans intoa post-modern peace trance that AlQaeda’s attack on America shook but did not break.

I know Europeans, through in-vocation of NATO’s core Article 5,declared the assault on New Yorkand Washington an attack on themall. I know the European sacrificesin Afghanistan are real, even if na-tions like Italy and Germany don’tgo where the fight hurts most. I knowjihadist terror has spilt Europeanblood in Spain and Britain.

All this is true, but I don’t see unity at the breach. European skepticismover America’s wars is virulent, asthe likely Dutch withdrawal this yearof its 2,000 troops in Afghanistanmakes clear.

This Dutch anti-war sentiment,which led to the collapse last monthof the governing coalition, is consis-tent with a strong current of Euro-pean pacifism, evident in chronicunder-spending on defense. Exhor-tations from America to wake upto danger have failed to convinceEuropeans to spend more on theirmilitaries.

The latest call came, with rarebluntness, from United States De-fense Secretary Robert Gates: “The demilitarization of Europe — where

large swaths of the general publicand political class are averse to mili-tary force and the risks that go withit — has gone from a blessing in the20th century to an impediment toachieving real security and lastingpeace in the 21st.”

Rough translation: Europe andAmerica inhabit different strategicworlds. But didn’t President Barack Obama vow to restore transatlantic cooperation after the trauma of theIraq war? Yes, but Obama, in hiscoolness, has fallen short.

I hear Vladimir Putin refers toObama as “America’s Gorbachev.”From Putin, this is not a compliment. It alludes to hesitancy, half-steps, ab-sence of follow-through.

European leaders, from NicolasSarkozy to Angela Merkel, havefelt they had little of Obama’s at-tention and less of his camaraderie.Sarkozy, who supported Obama ef-fusively during his campaign for theWhite House, has been particularlydisappointed. The inclination todo Obama any favors by spendingmore on defense is thereby reduced.Most European nations don’t meetNATO’s targets of spending at least2 percent of gross domestic product

on defense.Europe is a post-modern continent

whose core project, the EuropeanUnion, is about securing peace after centuries of war, dismantling bor-ders and undoing nationalism in the name of shared prosperity.

At the very heart of European inte-gration lies the rejection of war. For as long as Soviet tanks stood on the Prussian plains, there was a limit to that inclination. But since their with-drawal, it has been ascendant.

Europeans pity their war dead;Americans extol the glory of sacri-fice. Europeans see the horror of war above all; Americans see the hero-ism.

When Obama came into office, Eu-ropeans believed that he would bringthe global war on terror to a close.Obama has retired the phrase, often refers to extremists rather than ter-rorists, is ending the war in Iraq and sketching an exit in Afghanistan.But he has stopped short of rejecting the notion of a war on terror, an ideaEuropeans find hard to grasp. Whenand how, Europeans wonder, does itever end?

Obama is now going to have to fightvery hard to keep European NATOforces in Afghanistan until a mini-mum of stability is assured. This willrequire warmer, subtler Europeandiplomacy than he has mustered todate.

A former German defense ministersuggested European security beginsin the Hindu Kush. But Europeansdon’t believe it — the Hindu Kush isnot Berlin — and the “demilitariza-tion” of which Secretary Gates spoke is real.

Every four years the White House is-sues a “nuclear posture review.” Thatmay sound like an anachronism. Itisn’t. In a world where the United Statesand Russia still have more than 20,000nuclear weapons — and Iran, North Korea and others have seemingly un-quenchable nuclear appetites — what the United States says about its arsenalmatters enormously.

President Obama’s review was due toCongress in December. That has beendelayed, in part because of administra-tion infighting. The president needs toget this right. It is his chance to finally jettison cold war doctrine and bolster America’s credibility as it presses to rein in Iran, North Korea and otherproliferators.

Mr. Obama has already committed rhetorically to the vision of a worldwithout nuclear weapons. But we are concerned that some of his advisers, especially at the Pentagon, are re-sisting his bold ambitions. He needsto stick with the ideas he articulated in his campaign and in speeches last year in Prague and at the United Na-tions. These are some of the importantquestions the posture review must ad-dress:

THEIR PURPOSE: Current doctrinegives nuclear weapons a “critical role”in defending the United States and itsallies. And it suggests they could beused against foes wielding chemical, biological or even conventional forces.Mr. Obama’s aides have proposedchanging that to say that the “prima-ry” purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack against the Unit-ed States or its allies. This still invitesquestions about whether Washington values nuclear forces against non-nu-clear targets.

Given America’s vast conventionalmilitary superiority, broader uses areneither realistic nor necessary. Anyambiguity undercuts Washington’s

credibility when it argues that other countries have no strategic reason to develop their own nuclear arms.

HOW MANY: President George W.Bush disdained arms control as oldthink, and Washington and Moscowhave not signed an arms reductiontreaty since 2002. Mr. Obama launchednegotiations on a new agreement thatwould slash the number of warheads each side has deployed from 2,200 tobetween 1,500 and 1,675. Both sidesshould go deeper. The review should make clear that there is no need for a huge hedge, and that tactical weaponshave an utter lack of strategic value —as a prelude to reducing both.

NEW WEAPONS: The United Statesbuilt its last new warhead in 1989. Sowhen aides to President George W.Bush called for building new weapons,it opened this country to charges of hy-pocrisy and double standards when itdemanded that North Korea and Iranend their nuclear programs.

Mr. Obama has said that this coun-try does not need new weapons. But we are concerned the review will openthe door to just that by directing thelabs to study options — including a newweapons design — for maintaining thearsenal. The government has a strongand hugely expensive system for en-suring that the stockpile is safe andreliable. Mr. Obama has already vastlyincreased the labs’ budgets. The reviewshould make clear that there is no needfor a new weapon.

ALERT LEVELS: The United Statesand Russia each still have about 1,000weapons ready to fire at a moment’s no-tice. Mr. Obama has rightly describedthis as a dangerous cold war relic. Thereview should commit to taking asmany of those forces off hair-trigger alert as possible — and encourage Rus-sia to do the same.

Dutch Retreat

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

After the collapse of its coalitioncabinet, the Netherlands is set to with-draw its 2,000 troops from Afghani-stan by the end of this year. That deci-sion is an embarrassment to the Neth-erlands, to NATO, and to Washington at a moment when President Obama’s counterinsurgency strategy faces acrucial test.

The withdrawal will be a blow to the Afghan province of Oruzgan, wheremost of the Dutch troops have beenstationed since 2006 and have earned

INTELLIGENCE/ROGER COHEN

A Clash of Cultures

Why much of Europe is reluctant to fight the war in Afghanistan.

Send comments to intelligence@nytimes.com.

a reputation as good fighters, sensitiveto local needs and concerns.

It is possible, though unlikely, thatthe next Dutch government couldchange its mind after elections thisJune. For now, Washington, otherNATO partners and the Dutch need to reflect on how this happened and how to contain the damage.

The Dutch cabinet fell when the La-bor Party, one of the main coalitionpartners, refused NATO’s request toextend the Oruzgan mission for an ad-ditional year. The mission had already been extended twice before. But withDutch casualties rising sharply, publicsupport evaporated.

That forced new elections, in whichthe main issue is likely to be not Af-ghanistan but the more emotionalquestion of restricting Muslim im-migration to the Netherlands. Thebiggest parliamentary gains are ex-pected to go to the xenophobic Free-dom Party, which also advocates with-drawing from Afghanistan.

We fear the Dutch decision couldprovide cover for wavering politicians elsewhere .

Europe’s leaders need to tell them-selves — and their voters — the truth.The war in Afghanistan is not justabout America’s security. It, too, isabout denying sanctuaries to Al Qae-da, which has also carried out deadly terrorist attacks in Europe. NATO isstronger when it stands together.

The Netherlands weakens itself and all of its allies by choosing to standalone.

There were floods on Saturday,February 27 in Les Cayes, in south-western Haiti. It rained in Port-au-Prince on the Thursday before, andagain on Saturday and Sunday night,long enough to slick the streets andmake a slurry of the dirt and con-crete dust. Long enough, too, to give asense of what will happen across thecountry in a few weeks, when the realstorms start.

Mud will wash down the moun-tains, and rain will overflow gutterschoked with rubble and waste, turn-ing streets into filthy rivers. Life willget even more difficult for more thana million people.

New misery and sickness willdrench the displaced survivors ofthe January 12 earthquake — like the 16,000 or so whose tents and flimsyshacks fill every available inch of the Champ de Mars, the plaza in Port-au-Prince by the cracked and crumbledNational Palace, or the 70,000 whohave made a city of the PetionvilleClub, a nine-hole golf course on amountainside above the capital.

The rainy season is the hard dead-line against which Haiti’s govern-ment and relief agencies in Port-au-Prince are racing as they try to solve a paralyzing riddle: how to sheltermore than a million displaced peoplein a densely crowded country thathas no good place to put them.

The plan after the quake was tomove people to camps outside thecity. But in a sudden shift at the end of February, officials unveiled a new idea. They would try to send as manypeople as possible, tens of thousands,back to the shattered streets of Port-au-Prince before the rains come. The prime minister approved it on Febru-ary 26.

If it sounds insane, insanity isrelative in Haiti now. Consider thechoices:

¶Let people stay in filthy, fragilesettlements where no one wants tolive, and pray when the hurricaneshit.

¶Build sturdy transitional housingin places like Jérémie, in the south-west, that can absorb the capital’soverflow.

¶Encourage people to return toneighborhoods that are clogged withrubble and will be for years, wherethe smell of death persists. In areas like Bel Air and Fort National, nearChamp de Mars, people whose homesstill stand are sleeping outside, infear of aftershocks. They were stillpulling bodies out of Fort Nationallate last month.

The first plan is intolerable. Thesecond may come true only severalyears and hurricanes from now. Thethird is merely absurd.

Officials believe that if they clearjust enough rubble from certain ar-eas of the city and improve drainagein flood-prone areas, they can easethe pressure on the camps and savelives. It makes some sense to keeppeople near their neighborhoods,holding on to what remains of theirlives and livelihoods.

But when what remains is nothing,it’s hard to make sense of that idea.Harder still when you realize that theHaitian government and aid agen-cies are still overwhelmed by thecrisis. The government hasn’t evenfigured out where to put the rubble,and doesn’t seem to know who is liv-ing where.

Official word was that 80 percentof refugees in Champ de Mars were from Turgeau, where debris-clearing

is to begin. I talked with about 40 peo-ple throughout the Champ de Mars. They were from Bel Air, Fort Na-tional, St. Martin. Nobody was from Turgeau. Several knew of the planand a few had registered for it. Butnobody had been told where, whenand how they would leave.

Pascal Benjamin, a 29-year-oldhuddled with family on the edge ofthe Champ de Mars, is from Bel Air. “Iheard they were going to find a place,but they never came to talk to us.”

I spoke with Selondieu Marcelus,his brother, Sony, and nephew, Ri-cardo. They were standing besidea yellow tent marked with sardonicgraffiti. “Donnons le pays aux Fran-çais,” it said. “Let’s give the country to the French.”

Mr. Marcelus once lived on RueMacajoux in Bel Air. He lost his wifethere. He didn’t know where he wouldend up. As long as the place has work, jobs, electricity, I don’t mind, he said. He was unusual. Most of those I met,in Champ de Mars and in the vastblue-and-orange tarpscape blanket-ing the Petionville Club, said theydearly wanted to go home.

It seems certain that this plan for Haiti’s displaced is going to be inef-fective, and that people will sufferand die for lack of anything better.The only rational plan for Haiti is to disperse the population of a city that filled to bursting years ago. Making it easier for people to crowd back intoPort-au-Prince, looking for jobs and space that don’t exist, is ludicrous.

It’s a sign of the scale and perplex-ing nature of this disaster — and the fix faced by the government that istoo slowly confronting it — that theludicrous option is the only one avail-able.

Editorial Observer/LAWRENCE DOWNES

Haiti’s Futile Race Against the Rain

Repubblica NewYork

W O R L D T R E N D S

MONDAY, MARCH 8, 2010 III

By EDWARD WONG

MANZHA, China — Tucked awayin China’s steamy tropical southwestare the villages of the Dai people, fa-mous throughout the country for araucous annual tradition: a water-splashing festival where the Daidouse one another for three days inthe streets using any container theycan get their hands on.

But in Manzha and four surround-ing villages, the springtime festivalhas taken on added significance —or insignificance, depending on how you look at it. At a site called the Dai Minority Park, water-splashing ex-travaganzas take place every day.

Well-to-do Chinese arrive by thebusload to take part in a wild frenzyof dousing and dunking and drench-ing with 100 Dai women dressed inbright pink, yellow and blue tradi-tional dresses — “our warmest and sweetest Dai princesses,” as an an-nouncer calls them.

“A lot of tourists want to come seethis, but it’s only a few days a year,”said Zhao Li, one of the managementoffice employees, who are virtually all Han, the dominant ethnic group in China. “So we decided to make itevery day.”

The Dai park, with its wooden stilt homes, groomed palm trees and el-ephant statues, is part of an increas-ingly popular form of entertain-ment in China — the ethnic themeplayground, where middle-classHan come to experience what theyconsider the most exotic elementsof their vast nation. The Dai park,whose grounds encompass 333 ac-

tual Dai households, attracts a half-million tourists a year.

The parks are money-makingventures. But scholars say theyalso serve a political purpose — toreinforce the idea that the Chinesenation encompasses 55 fixed ethnicminorities and their territories, allruled by the Han.

“They’re one piece in the puzzleof the larger project of how Chinawants to represent itself as a multi-ethnic state,” said Thomas S. Mul-laney, a historian at Stanford Uni-versity in California who studiesChina’s ethnic taxonomy. “The end goal is political, which is territorial unity .”

The most famous park, the Na-tionalities Park in Beijing, is a com-bination of museum and fairground.Ethnic workers from across Chinadress up in their native costumesfor mostly Han tourists. In someparks, Han workers dress up as na-tives — a practice given legitimacy by the government when Han chil-dren marched out in the costumesof the 55 minorities during the open-ing ceremony of the 2008 SummerOlympics.

About 500 residents work in theDai village and put on the daily show,including water-splashing festivalsand dragon boat races.

Some tourists pay to sleep in fam-ily homes that stay true to Dai tradi-tion.

“If you know how to run a busi-ness, you can benefit from the park,”said Ai Yo, a father of two who runs one of 27 official homestays. “But ifyou don’t do business, there’s no realbenefit.”

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

LAHORE, Pakistan — For thosewho think Pakistan is all hard-liners,all the time, three activities at an an-nual festival here may come as a sur-prise.

Thousands of Muslim worshiperspaid tribute to the patron saint of thiseastern Pakistani city last month bydancing, drumming and smoking pot.

It is not an image one ordinarily associates with Pakistan, a country whose tormented western border re-gion dominates the news. But it is animportant part of how Islam is prac-ticed here, a tradition that goes back a thousand years to Islam’s roots inSouth Asia.

It is Sufism, a mystical form of Islam brought into South Asia bywandering thinkers who spread the religion east from the Arabian Pen-insula. They carried a message of equality that was deeply appealing to indigenous societies riven by caste and poverty.

In modern times, Pakistan’s Sufis have been challenged by a stricterform of Islam that dominates in Saudi Arabia. That orthodox, often political

Islam was encouraged in Pakistan inthe 1980s by the dictator, Muhammad Zia ul-Haq. Since then, the fundamen-talists’ aggressive stance has tendedto eclipse that of their moderate kin,whose shrines and processions havebecome targets in the war here.

But if the stomping, twirling, sing-ing, drumming kaleidoscope of acrowd is any indication, Sufism stillhas a powerful appeal.

“There are bomb blasts all around, but people don’t stay away,” saida 36-year-old bank teller named Najibullah. “When the celebration comes, people have to dance.”

Worshipers had come from all over Pakistan to commemorate the death of the saint, Ali bin Usman al-Hajveri, an 11th-century mystic.

The dancing and drumming was part of a natural rhythm of life thatafter nearly 10 centuries was as much about culture as it was about faith.

“It’s a festival of happiness!” shout-ed a cook, Muhamed Nadim, over the din, when asked what was being cel-ebrated. “People feel comfort here.”

Naeem Ashraf Rizvi settled easily into a conversation with a foreigner about life in Pakistan. The over-whelming majority of Pakistanis are

Sufi, he explained, and despise vio-lence inflicted by the more hard-line Deobandis, the school of thought thatwas supported by General Zia.

Last year was Pakistan’s worst for militant attacks since 2001.

“Sufis have not spread terrorism,”Mr. Rizvi said. “We are its victims.”

He added, “We are condemning the violence, but no one is listening to us.”

For all of Mr. Rizvi’s enlightened views, his opinion veered back in a grimly familiar direction on the ques-tion of who was responsible for the attacks. It was a list of culprits mostPakistanis recite by heart: the UnitedStates, India and Britain.

Worse than the violence, Mr. Rizvi said, was the weakness of the govern-ment, which seemed unable to accom-plish much. Nor was a military take-over the answer. The only solution, he said, was a revolution by the people, like the one in Iran in 1979.

But in Pakistan, where illiteracy is rampant and leaders are more focused on jockeying for power thanfulfilling a political vision, that is a distant wish.

“Everyone is quiet,” Mr. Rizvi said. “They are not listening yet. They are sleeping.”

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JASON TANNER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Pakistani Sufis have been challenged by a more militant form of Islam . Worshipers take part in a festival.

SHIHO FUKADA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Tourists at Dai Minority Park, one of China’s ethnic theme playgrounds, take part in the annual water-splashing festival.

LAHORE JOURNAL

Mystical Islam Flourishes in Pakistan

Xiyun Yang contributed reporting.

Waqar Gillani contributed reporting.

China Turns Its Minorities Into Tourist Attractions

Controversial Buses Tell a Story of South Africa’s Continuing RiftsBy CELIA W. DUGGER

SOWETO, South Africa — Since the days of apartheid, when blacks wererequired to live in distant townshipslike this, Susan Hanong, a 67-year-old maid, has commuted to the wealthynorthern suburbs of Johannesburg,one of the spectral figures trudgingthrough darkened streets on longtrips to wash white people’s clothes and mind their children.

But at dawn recently, after walking through Soweto, Mrs. Hanong behelda vision of urbanity: a stylish, newhigh-tech bus station. She settled infor a smooth, tranquil ride on the bus,so different from her usual experienceon minibus taxis.

“These people on taxis, they shout atus,” she said. “They say, ‘Granny, just move!’ They talk funny to the people. On the bus, no one can shout at you,you see.”

South Africa has erased apartheid from its statute books, but the racist schemes of white minority rule remainin residential segregation. Millions ofblacks still live in townships far fromcenters ofemployment. Those with jobsmust endure commutes that devourtheir time and meager incomes, whilelegions of jobless people are isolated

from opportunity.The new Bus Rapid Transit systems

planned for South Africa’s major cities in recent years have promised to easethose hardships by providing fast, af-fordable, dignified travel on bus lanes cleared of other vehicles.

Prodded by a national commitmentto improve public transportation forsoccer’s 2010 World Cup, Johannes-burg is carrying out the nation’s most ambitious program. The city predict-

ed that buses would be rolling fromSoweto, where a quarter of the city’sfour million residents live, to Sandton, the region’s commercial hub, by June.

But its bus project is falling shortof that goal and has also become a re-minder of just how challenging it is for South Africa to transcend its scarred history. The project has confrontedresistance from both suburbanitesin what were once exclusively whiteenclaves and from some in the black-

owned minibus taxi in-dustry that sprang upduring apartheid.

Rehana Moosajee, theCity Council member wholeads Johannesburg’sTransportation Depart-ment, ruefully acknowl-edged that the buseswould not reach Sandtonbefore the current cityadministration’s term ex-pired next year, and sheoffered no certain pre-diction about when theywould make it there.

“The transport system tells a very big story of the psyche of the nation,” she said, explaining that the

country still had a long way to go inbridging racial and class divides.

The city’s first challenge was towin over the formidable minibus taxiindustry, which moves 14 million peo-ple daily in a nation of 49 million, farmore than the bus and rail systemscombined. It is perhaps the country’s greatest success story of black entre-preneurship, though with a history of ruthless violence. Experts estimatethat hundreds, if not thousands, of

people have died in “taxi wars” to con-trol routes.

The city has offered taxi proprietors ownership of the bus operating com-pany, but negotiations have dragged.

The city has also faced steely op-position from suburbanites that some officials describe as a classic case ofnot-in-my-backyard resistance.

Shireen Ally, a sociologist at theUniversity of the Witwatersrand and a resident of Killarney, one of the af-fected suburbs, said race had every-thing to do with the suburbs’ reaction.Ms. Ally said she was disturbed by“the incapacity of these suburbanites to think about it from the perspective of the women they trust their children and home to, the women they call partof the family.”

Shortly after 5 a.m., while the sub-urbs slumbered, Mrs. Hanong stepped out from her small, tidy home in Sowe-to , bound for her housekeeping job .

Her preference for the new buses isso strong that she walks an extra halfhour to reach them. They cost about65 cents each way, a savings of about 50 cents over taxi fare, a consider-able sum, given her earnings of $160 a month.

“It’s comfort,” she said.

JOAO SILVA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

New buses offer a smoother ride, but the transit system is still inadequate.

Repubblica NewYork

W O R L D T R E N D S

IV MONDAY, MARCH 8, 2010

By DAN BILEFSKY

SOFIA, Bulgaria — Prime Minis-ter Boiko M. Borisov of Bulgaria, athick-necked former karate instruc-tor, bodyguard and onetime fireman,may seem an unlikely feminist.

But the tough-guy politician hasin recent months promoted a legion of women, heralding what some are calling a revolution in the politics ofthis macho Balkan country.

“Women are more diligent thanmen, and they don’t take long lunch-es or go to the bar,” insisted Mr.Borisov, a former mayor of Sofia,the capital, who has cited his mother and Chancellor Angela Merkel ofGermany as his role models.

“Women have stronger charactersthan men because when they say no they mean no, and they are less cor-ruptible,” he said last summer, in-augurating the women’s wing of his center-right party.

While some critics view Mr. Bori-sov’s elevation of women as littlemore than a cynical ploy aimed atgiving this poor, notoriously cor-rupt country an image makeover,few dispute that the empowermentof women in Bulgarian public life isreaching new heights, even as men still dominate politics. Women inhigh places include the justice minis-ter, the mayor of Sofia, the speaker ofParliament, the nominee to lead the European Union’s humanitarian aidand the head of the prime minister’soffice.

Irina Bokova, the Bulgarian dip-lomat who recently defeated theEgyptian culture minister to leadthe United Nations Educational,Scientific and Cultural Organiza-tion, is a 57-year-old mother andarms control expert. In 2009 elec-tions for the European Parliament,60 percent of the candidates put for-ward by Mr. Borisov’s center-rightparty were women. And after thenational elections in July, 34 of 116Bulgarian Parliament seats wereheld by women — not a large per-centage in some countries, but bigfor Bulgaria.

Kamen Sildniski, deputy chiefprosecutor, noted that there were no criminal cases of corruption againsta woman in Bulgaria and that wom-en who applied to the Prosecutor’sOffice consistently outperformed

men on polygraph tests.“It’s hard to admit, but women are

less corruptible than men and arecleaner — because they are morerisk averse,” he said.

In the case of Bulgaria, sociolo-gists say the recent rise of women inpolitics can be traced to the Commu-nist era, when socialist ideology em-powered women to be equal to men.

Tatyana Kmetova, executivedirector of the Center of Women’sStudies and Policies, noted that un-der Communism, women were ex-pected to work and often receivedthe same wages as men. “We never had a feminist movement in thiscountry,” she said, noting that in the late 1970s, Bulgaria had the highest

percentage of working women in theworld. “During Communism, wom-en in Bulgaria were represented inalmost every walk of life, from plant managers to medicine.”

Yordanka Fandakova, the firstwoman to be mayor of Sofia, amother, grandmother and formerheadmistress, said she had faceddiscrimination during the mayoralcampaign when opponents taunted her for being a lackey of Mr. Borisov.She won by a landslide anyway inNovember, with many analysts at-tributing this to Mr. Borisov’s sup-port.

“During the election my oppo-nents called me one of Borisov’sgood girls,” she said. “The mediatried to portray me as weak. But Ipersonally don’t devote much timedistinguishing between men andwomen. Results are results.’’

By SETH MYDANS

MAK PRAING, CAMBODIA —“I’m going to get my votes!” cried MuSochua as she stepped into a slenderrowboat. “One by one.”

She was crossing a small river here in southern Cambodia on a recent stopin her never-ending campaign for re-election to Parliament, introducingherself to rural constituents who may never have seen her face.

The most prominent woman in Cam-bodia’s struggling political opposition,Mu Sochua, 55, is campaigning now,three years before the next election,because she is almost entirely exclud-ed from government-controlled news-papers and television.

“Only 35 percent of voters know who won the last election,” she said.

She has no time to lose.Ms. Mu Sochua is a member of a new

generation of women who are working their way into the political systems of countries across Asia and elsewhere,from local councils to national assem-blies and cabinet positions.

A former minister of women’s af-fairs, she did as much as anyone to putwomen’s issues on the agenda of Cam-bodia as it emerged in the 1990s from decades of war and mass killings. But she lost her public platform in 2004when she broke with the government, and she is now finding it as difficult

to promote her ideas as it is to simply gain attention as a candidate.

She says her signal achievement,leading women into thousands ofgovernment positions, has done littleto advance women’s issues in a stub-bornly male-dominated society.

And she has found herself with a newburden: battling for her own rights. Asshe has risen in prominence, the politi-cal stands she has taken have become a greater liability to her than genderbias has been.

Most recently, she has been caughtin a bizarre exchange of defamationsuits with the country’s domineering prime minister, Hun Sen, in which, to no one’s surprise, she was the loser.

It started last April here in Kam-pot Province, her constituency, when Mr. Hun Sen referred to her with thephrase “cheung klang,” or “stronglegs,” an insulting term for a woman inCambodia. She sued him for defama-tion; he stripped her of her parliamen-tary immunity and sued her back. Her suit was dismissed in the politicallydocile courts. In August she was con-victed of defaming the prime minister and fined 16.5 million riel, or about$4,000, which she has refused to pay.

“Now I live with the uncertaintyabout whether I’m going to go to jail,”she said. “I’m not going to pay the fine. Paying the fine is saying to all Cambo-

dian women, ‘What are you worth? A man can call you anything he wants,and there is nothing you can do.”’

As an outspoken opponent of theprime minister, she has found, herparticipation taints any group, action or demonstration with the stigma ofpolitical opposition.

“My voice kills the movement,” she said.

During her six years as minister of women’s affairs, Ms. Mu Sochua cam-paigned against child abuse, maritalrape, violence against women, human trafficking and the exploitation of fe-male workers. She helped draft thecountry’s law against domestic vio-lence. In part because of her work, she said, “People are aware about gender. It’s a new Cambodian word: ‘gen-de.’ People are aware that women haverights.”

But where political empowerment ofwomen is concerned, she said, promi-nence has not translated into progress for a women’s agenda. “They don’tspeak out,” she said. “It’s hard to talkabout this — I don’t want to antagonizewomen — but if women suffer from oursilence, we are responsible. What are we doing to make their lives better?

“This is where women can hurtwomen. They are in politics, but theyare part of the problem by keeping si-lent.”

By NICOLA CLARK

OSLO — Arni Hole remembers theshock wave that went through Nor-way’s business community in 2002when the country’s trade and indus-try minister, Ansgar Gabrielsen, pro-posed a law requiring that 40 percent of all company board members bewomen.

“There were, literally, screams,”said Ms. Hole, director general of the Equality Ministry. “It was a real shocktreatment.”

Even in this staunchly egalitariansociety — 80 percent of Norwegianwomen work outside the home, andhalf the current government’s min-isters are female — the idea seemedradical, if not for its goal, then for the sheer magnitude of change it would require.

Back then, Norwegian women heldless than 7 percent of private-sectorboard seats; just under 5 percent ofchief executives were women. Aftermonths of heated debate, the measure was approved by a significant major-ity in Parliament, giving state-owned companies until 2006 to comply andpublicly listed companies until 2008.

Many prominent business leadersdismissed the 2003 law as a political

stunt and argued that Norway, withjust 4.8 million people, did not haveenough experienced women to meetthe quota. One chief executive of asoftware company told the businessnewspaper Dagens Naeringsliv thatcompanies would have to recruit “es-cort girls” to meet the target.

Nearly eight years on, the share offemale directors at the roughly 400companies affected is above 40 per-cent, while women fill more than aquarter of the board seats at the 65largest privately held companies. Tomany feminists, this is the boldestmove anywhere to breach one of themost durable barriers to gender equal-ity.

Indeed, the world has noticed: Spainand the Netherlands have passed sim-ilar laws, with a 2015 deadline for com-pliance. The French Senate will soon debate a bill phasing in a female quota by 2016, after the National Assemblyapproved the measure recently. Bel-gium, Britain, Germany and Sweden are considering legislation.

But researchers now are grappling with some frustrating facts: Bringinglarge numbers of women into Nor-way’s boardrooms has done little —yet — to improve either the profession-

al caliber of the boards or to enhance performance. In fact, early evidencefrom a little-noticed study by the Uni-versity of Michigan suggests that theimmediate effect has been negative.And the sixfold increase in women asdirectors has not yet brought any realrise in the number of women as chief executives.

In the past 50 years, women havegained ever more prominence in poli-tics and society. A decade into the 21st century, however, their corporatepower remains slight.

In the European Union, 9.7 percentof the board members at the top 300companies were women in 2008, ver-

sus 8 percent in 2004, according to theEuropean Professional Women’s Net-work. In the United States, roughly 15percent of the board members of theFortune 500 companies are women,while at the top of Asian companies,women remain scarce: In China andIndia, they hold roughly 5 percentof board seats, in Japan, just 1.4 per-cent.

Traditional tendencies die hard.The higher up the corporate ladder,the greater the perceived risk associ-ated with choosing managers who arenot “homogenous,” said Hilde Tonne,an executive vice president and head of communications at Telenor, a global

telecommunications company based in Oslo. “Diversity is not as easy as youmove up.”

When the Norwegian governmentfirst made its case for the quota, thenumber of women on boards had been growing by less than 1 percent a yearfor a decade. It would have taken 200 years, Ms. Hole said, to reach 40 per-cent. The quota was sold to Norway’sbusiness community as a way to gaingreater social equity and competitive edge: “Profit is made by employingthe best people, regardless of gender,”she said.

Some say that women are still notfighting for leadership posts. Andsome see potential risks in sacrific-ing experience for the sake of socialequity.

“When you suddenly replace 30 per-cent to 40 percent of your board withinexperienced people, it is easier forthose new members to be manipulat-ed — that’s just common sense,” saidRuilf Rustad, a professional investor.

Ms. Tonne, an early skeptic, is today among those convinced that the lon-ger-term effects of legislated diversityoutweigh the short-term drawbacks.

“We have excluded women for 1,000years,” she said, with a smile. “So wehave already had quotas — it’s justthat they were for men.”

JUSTIN MOTT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Mu Sochua, an opposition candidate, has fought for Cambodian women and run afoul of the government.

INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE

STOYAN NENOV/REUTERS

Prime Minister Boiko M.Borisov promoted a legion ofwomen in Bulgaria.

Women in the Boardroom:In Norway, It’s the Law

A Crusader Is Rowing Upstream in Cambodia

Patron Gives Women Lift in Bulgarian Politics

Hilde Tonne, an executive vice president at Telenor,says diversity is harder toachieve at the higher ranks.

Repubblica NewYork

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

MONDAY, MARCH 8, 2010 V

By LOUIS UCHITELLE

Put aside for a moment the populistpressure to regulate banking and trad-ing. Ask the elder statesmen of these industries — giants like George Soros,Nicholas F. Brady, John S. Reed, Wil-liam H. Donaldson and John C. Bogle— where they stand on regulation, andthey will surprise you with their popu-list attitudes.

They certainly don’t think of them-selves as angry Main Streeters. Theygrew quite wealthy in finance, typi-cally making their fortunes in the ’70sand ’80s when banks and securitiesfirms were considerably more regu-lated. And now, parting company withthe current Wall Street chieftains, theywant more rules.

While the younger generation, veryvisibly led by Lloyd C. Blankfein, chiefexecutive of Goldman Sachs, lobbies Congress against such regulation, theirspiritual elders support the reform pro-posed by Paul A. Volcker and, surpris-ingly, even more restrictions. “I am a believer that the system has gone badly awry and needs massive reform,’’ saidMr. Bogle, the 80-year-old founder andfor many years chief executive of the Vanguard Group, the huge mutual fundcompany.

Mr. Volcker, 82, signed up the support

of nearly a dozen peers whose averageage is more than 70 and whose pedi-grees on Wall Street and in bankingare impeccable. But while Mr. Volcker focuses on a rule that would henceforthprohibit a bank that takes deposits fromalso buying and selling securities for itsown account — risking losses in the pro-cess — most of his prominent supporterssee that as a starting point in a broaderreturn to regulation. And most do not hesitate to speak up in interviews.

Listen to Nicholas Brady, a Treasurysecretary in the late 1980s and early 1990s and before that chairman of Dil-lon Read & Company, now extinct, butin its day a prestigious Wall Streethouse. “If you are a commercial bank,’’he said, “and you wish the governmentto guarantee your deposits and bail

you out if necessary, then you can’t beinvolved in speculative activity.’’

John S. Reed, a former Citigroup co-chairman, played a role in building Citiinto a powerhouse that mingled com-mercial banking and all sorts of tradingactivities. That mix helped to precipi-tate the current credit crisis, requiring a costly federal bailout of Citigroup,among others, in 2008.

Mr. Reed, now 71, was gone by then,and from retirement he has secondthoughts. He even thinks about resur-recting the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933,which prevented banks from engagingin any sort of trading activity involvingstocks and bonds. (It was revoked in1999, partly at the behest of Citigroup,then run by Sanford I. Weill.)

“I can be convinced that we shouldmove back in the direction of Glass-Steagall,’’ Mr. Reed said, disagreeing on this with Mr. Weill who, at 76, hasnot retracted his view that deregula-tion was the right course. Mr. Weill hashanging on a wall of his retirement of-fice one of the pens that President Clin-ton used to sign the bill that revoked Glass-Steagall.

Mr. Reed, in contrast, wonders ifa trading operation should even ex-ist under the same roof as a standard commercial bank. The traders make

more in salary and bonuses than the bank employees, and there are fric-tions. “The bank people say ‘if thecapital market guys take big risks, whycan’t we do so too and earn the same bucks?’ ’’ Mr. Reed said. “They start trying to do things that make them lookgood, like making risky commercialloans and driving for volume.’’

George Soros, the billionaire trader,falls into place as one of Mr. Volcker’selder statesmen, referring to him as“an extraordinary public servant.’’

But the Volcker Rule is emphaticallynot enough, Mr. Soros said.

At 79, Mr. Soros says he has watchedGoldman Sachs, and other firms like iton Wall Street, grow too big to fail.

“You have to recognize that they en-joy an implicit guarantee,’’ he said of thebig trading houses. “To pretend theywill be allowed to fail is not credible.’’

The solution for Mr. Soros is to avoidfailure in the first place. The big WallStreet firm “would have to be closelyregulated to make sure they don’t fail,’’he said.

Derivatives contracts are a majorsource of risk, and Mr. Soros wouldlimit their use. These contracts arestill ubiquitous. When they come due in great quantities, as they were aboutto do in the fall of 2008, the contagionspreads, undermining one financialinstitution after another.

That worries William H. Donaldson,a chairman of the Securities and Ex-change Commission in the George W.Bush administration, and a co-founderof Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, aprominent Wall Street firm in its day.

To deal with such issues, Mr. Donald-son, now 78, would have Congress cre-ate a powerful regulatory body, inde-pendent of the Federal Reserve, whosemembers would be appointed directlyby the president.

“The Volcker Rule and Mr. Volcker’sinitiative,’’ he said, “are really taking the discussion of regulation to a wholenew level.’’

By RACHEL DONADIO

CÁDIZ, Spain — Beyond its pink-hued Atlantic light and the distinction of being the oldest city in Europe, thisAndalusian outpost is best known for two things: its famous carnival and its chronic unemployment.

Both were on vivid display on arainy February afternoon, as a group of roving musicians called I’ll StartMonday belted out a “chirigota,” orsatiric song. A crowd cheered, drinksin hand, as the group sang of an an-gel on the narrator’s shoulder telling him to “grow up” and get a job; while a devil on the other said: Why bother? Go have fun.

The song explains a lot about the situ-ation here in Cádiz, in southern Spainjust north of Gibraltar. Joblessness hasclimbed to 19 percent in Spain, the high-est in the euro zone, after the collapse ofa housing bubble. But here in Cádiz, itis at a staggering 29 percent — and hasbeen in double digits for decades.

Elsewhere in Europe, such highnumbers would lead to deep social un-rest. Not so in Cádiz. Here, as acrossthe Mediterranean, life remains com-fortable thanks to a complex safety netin which the underground economy,family support and government sub-sidies ensure a relatively high quality of life.

“This is a place where you can livewell, even when unemployed,” said

Pilar Castiñeira, 30. “Life is four days long,” she added, recounting a Spanishsaying. “On one you’re born, on anoth-er you die, and in the two in between,you have to have fun.”

That was certainly the case during carnival in early February. Peoplewalked around the city’s colorfuldowntown, drinking, listening to theroving musicians and eating fried fish out of paper cones.

Yet beyond the bar hopping, therewere other realities. Miguel Cervera

García, a grizzled 47, explained howhe made ends meet. He said he hadpicked olives and worked as a plumb-er, but never officially. “I’ve alwaysworked, but without a contract,” hesaid amiably. He added that jobs withcontracts were better, “since you getsocial security and paid sick days.”

Payroll taxes and unemploymentbenefits are high in Spain, and manypeople avoid them by hiring workersunder the table or by offering themtemporary contracts that avoid thehigh costs of hiring and firing.

Officials estimate that Spain’s un-derground economy equals at least 20percent of the official economy. In An-dalusia, it is believed to be higher.

Juan Bouza, Andalusia’s chief offi-cial for employment in Cádiz, reiter-ated a central tenet of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s ap-proach to the crisis: extending unem-ployment benefits even as the state deficit is growing. “We don’t think that people will find a job more easily if weremove help,” Mr. Bouza said. “Wethink the weakest people need help.”

To some, the cultural acceptance of unemployment is part of the problem.“For most people here being unem-ployed and — while it lasts — livingoff state benefits is perfectly natural,”said David Pantoja, 36, an out-of-work carpenter who founded an association for the unemployed in Cádiz. “It’s just a fact of life, like love or death.”

Cádiz is on the windier Atlantic side of southern Spain. Mr. Bouza spoke of the region as a centerpiece in the gov-ernment’s plan to turn Spain into a hubfor renewable energy projects. “Thiswill be the Silicon Valley of renewable energy,” he said.

But not everyone is buying it. “They said that by 2012, Cádiz would be a bed-room community” for nearby industri-al areas, said Esteban Vias Casais, 58, a retired factory worker who lives on a disability pension. But the city alreadyis one, he added with a wink. “Here, ev-eryone sleeps, and no one works!”

By MARTIN FACKLER

KARIYA, Japan — After years of feeling the sting of Toyota’s cost-cut-ting, some of the workers and suppli-ers that used to be the company’sbiggest cheerleaders are instead ex-periencing a sense of grim pleasure over the company’s woes.

The change is rooted in the chang-ing behavior of Japanese corpora-tions. Communities like Kariya thatonce enjoyed a near familial relation-ship with Toyota, have been feeling forsaken for years as this country’s social contract has changed.

While employment is still for lifefor Toyota’s full-time workers, some complain that the company is nowmiserly with wage increases. Overtime it has steadily reduced theranks of its short-term contractorsand pressured its suppliers to de-crease prices.

For decades, thousands of autoparts companies like Sankyo Seiko were Toyota’s loyal legions. Butthe auto giant’s demands in recentyears for ever lower prices havedriven many of these companies out of business.

Toyota now pays them about 30percent less for the same part than itdid a decade ago, despite the higher cost of raw materials like steel, manycompanies say.

“Toyota just squeezes us, like it’strying to wring water from a drytowel,’’ said Masayuki Nishioka, 49,whose factory in Kariya makes the rubber seals for Toyota’s car win-dows.

In January,Sankyo’s owner, TeruoMoewaki, appeared on television todo the unthinkable: criticize Toyota, announcing that he would no longer accept orders from the automaker.

“I said on TV what they all wantto say, but are afraid to,’’ said Mr.Moewaki, 60. “Toyota said we were all one big family. But now they are betraying us.’’

To hear many here tell it, in goodtimes Toyota failed to increase wag-es for employees and forced pricecuts on suppliers even as it earnedrecord profits. Since the downturn,these critics say, Toyota has releasedthousands of contract workers and squeezed parts makers.

Toyota has become a symbol here of how corporate Japan has begun to

violate the nation’s unspoken post-war social contract, in which bigpaternalistic companies share thewealth in good times and bad.

“Toyota is attacked so much be-cause it has become the face of cor-porate Japan,’’ said Hisao Inoue, the author of two books on Toyota. “AllJapan’s social problems, economicproblems, political problems allseem to pile up on Toyota.’’

Mr. Inoue said the criticism can beunfair, and is part of a broader reac-tion here against globalization andthe embrace of American-style com-petition under former Prime Minis-ter Junichiro Koizumi.

Cities like Kariya appear to beturning into a new rust belt of aban-doned neighborhoods, with econo-mists estimating the number ofsmall manufacturers in this part of

Japan has dropped by half in the last two decades to about 180,000. Unem-ployment has also taken off in Aichi prefecture, where Nagoya is located,doubling to 4.5 percent last year fromthe year before.

One of the newly jobless is Os-amu Miura, who worked for twoyears monitoring quality control at a sprawling plant making Prius hy-brids in nearby Toyota City, wherethe automaker is based. Two months ago, the company said it would notrenew his contract, making him one of thousands in that category after the global financial crisis began.

But unlike most of the others, Mr. Miura has refused to go quietly. Ev-ery day, he has reported for work at the factory gate, where he is invari-ably turned away. On a recent rainy afternoon, a half-dozen current and former Toyota employees, members of a small labor union, joined him to hand out fliers to passing workers.

“Toyota is going in the wrong di-rection, and so is Japan,’’ said Mr.Miura, 40, who taped a blue plac-ard to his chest that said, “Let mework!’’

The Elders of Wall Street Favor Even Tighter Restrictions

LAURA LEON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Lucia Magi contributed reporting.Makiko Inoue contributed reporting from Toyota City.

Being unemployed, and on the dole, isnormal in Cádiz.

Japanese growhostile as their socialcontract splinters.

At Home, Toyota Faces Anger of Clients and Staff

For Some in Spain, Sting of Joblessness Is Slight

“ …they (big

trading houses)

enjoy an implicit

guarantee. To

pretend they will

be allowed to fail

is not credible.”

GEORGE SOROS

Billionaire trader

“I am a believer

that the system

has gone badly

awry and needs

massive reform.”

JOHN C. BOGLE

Founder and former chief executiveof the Vanguard group

Andalusia’sunderground economy and

safety net allow the jobless to live well.

Street musicians during carnival in

Cádiz.

Repubblica NewYork

S C I E N C E & T E C H N O L O GY

VI MONDAY, MARCH 8, 2010

By IAN DALY

PITTSBURGH — At CarnegieMellon University here, ProfessorPaul Rybski and a pair of graduatestudents showed off their most ad-vanced creation.

The culmination of two years of re-search and the collective expertise of17 faculty members, undergraduates and doctoral students in the Human Robot Interaction Group, it is a robot outfitted with a $20,000 laser navi-gation system, sonar sensors and aPoint Grey Bumblebee 2 stereo cam-era that functions as its eyes.

With Dr. Rybski looking on like aproud parent, a bearded graduatestudent typed away at a laptop andthe robot rolled forward to fulfill its primary function: the delivery of one foil-wrapped granola bar.

“Hello, I’m the Snackbot,” it said ina voice not unlike that of HAL 9000, from “2001: A Space Odyssey.” “I’ve come to deliver snacks to Ian. Is Ian here?”

I responded affirmatively. “Oh, hel-lo, Ian,” it said. “Here is your order. I believe it was a granola bar, right?”

Yes, it was. “All right, go ahead andtake your snack. I’m sure it would begood, but I wouldn’t know. I prefer a snack of electricity.”

Designed to gather information onhow robots interact with people, theSnackbot has been carefully consid-ered for maximum approachabilityin every detail, from its height to its color.

“We figured, what better way to getpeople to interact with a robot thanhave something that offers themfood?” Dr. Rybski said.

The Snackbot is but one soldier ina veritable army of new robots de-signed to serve and cook food and,in the process, act as good-will am-

bassadors, and salesmen, for a more automated future.

In 2006, Fanxing Science andTechnology, a company in Shenzhen, China, unveiled what was called the“world’s first cooking robot” — AIC-AI Cooking Robot — able to fry, bake, boil and steam its way through thou-sands of Chinese delicacies from atleast three culinary regions.

In 2008, scientists at the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratoryin Lausanne, Switzerland, came out with the Chief Cook Robot, which can make omelets (ham and Gruyèrewere in its first).

Last June, at the International

Food Machinery and TechnologyExpo in Tokyo, a broad-shoulderedMotoman SDA-10 robot with spatulasfor arms made okonomiyaki (savory pancakes) for attendees; anotherrobot grabbed sushi with an eerilyrealistic hand.

Then, a month later in Nagoya, Ja-pan, the Famen restaurant opened,with two giant yellow robot armspreparing up to 800 bowls of ramennoodles a day.

In an economic downturn, withunemployment rates mounting, the very idea of a robot chef might seem indulgent at best — at worst, down-right offensive. However, these ro-bots aren’t likely to be running the

grill stations or bringing you soupanytime soon — and the bad econ-omy might be part of the reason. At $100,000 a pair, their cost is “too highto make bowls of ramen,” said Fa-men’s owner, Kenji Nagaya.

But they may be worth the cost at Mr. Nagaya’s other workplace, therobotics company Aisei in Nagoya,where he is the president. “I havemade and programmed industrialrobots at our company so long, andI was thinking to set up a place topromote our business,” he said. “Ithought opening a ramen shop withrobots would have a huge impact on promoting our business.”

While cooking is certainly a more universal way to showcase a robot’s abilities than, say, laser-welding, itis also unique in its ability to tacklesomething deeper: namely, the pub-lic’s angst over a future populated byvengeful hominoid machines.

“How do you change this percep-tion that robots are going to be way too intelligent and destroy us?” saidDr. Heather Knight, a roboticist atthe NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratoryin California. “One of the fastest waysto people’s hearts is food, right?”

While robots could certainly bedeveloped and trained for these jobs, some culinary arts are so delicateand ancient that even these ma-chines’ creators wouldn’t trust them to inhuman hands.

“Would you like to have a robothand that makes sushi?” said Mikio Shimizu, the president of Squse, acompany in Kyoto, Japan, that isresponsible for the sushi-grabbinghand. “Do you really want it? Formaking good sushi, a robot never canbeat a human professional sushi chef.A robot never can go beyond a hu-man’s skill or human intelligence.”

By SINDYA N. BHANOO

A honeybee brain has a millionneurons, compared with the 100 bil-lion in a human brain. But, research-ers report, bees can recognize faces,and they even do it the same way wedo.

Bees and humans both use a tech-nique called configural processing,piecing together the components ofa face — eyes, ears, nose and mouth — to form a recognizable pattern, ateam of researchers report in a re-cent issue of The Journal of Experi-mental Biology.

“It’s a kind of gluing,’’ said MartinGiurfa, a professor of neural biology at the University de Toulouse, France,and one of the study’s authors.

It is the same ability, Dr. Giurfasaid, that helps humans realize that a Chinese pagoda and a Swiss chalet are both abodes, based on their com-ponents.

“We know two vertical lines, with a hutlike top,’’ he said. ’’It’s a house.’’

In their research, Dr. Giurfa andhis colleagues created a display ofhand-drawn images, some faces and some not.

The faces had bowls of sugar water in front of them, while the nonfaceswere placed behind bowls containingplain water. After a few failed trips to the bowls without sugar water, thebees kept returning to the sugar-filled bowls in front of the faces, the scientists found.

The images and the bowls werecleaned after every visit, to ensurethat the bees were using visual cues to find the sugar and not leavingscent marks.

The researchers found that beescould also distinguish a face thatprovided sugar water from one thatdid not.

After several hours’ training, thebees picked the right faces about 75percent of the time, said Adrian Dyer,another author of the study and a vi-sion scientist at Monash Universityin Australia.

The researchers said that whilethey were biologists and not com-puter scientists, they hoped theirwork could be more widely used, in-cluding by face recognition experts.“If somebody else finds it interest-ing and it improves airport security, that’s great,’’ Dr. Dyer said.

“The potential mechanisms canbe made available to the wider facialrecognition community.’’

Dr. Giurfa said that the benefit ofstudying a creature as simple as thebee was in knowing that it did not

take a complex neural network todistinguish objects. This could offer hope to technologists, he said.

But while the research on bees isinteresting, it does not help with themost difficult problem technologists are having, said David Forsyth, acomputer science professor at theUniversity of Illinois, whose researchfocuses on computer vision.

That challenging problem is tobuild systems that can recognize the same people over a period of time,Dr. Forsyth said, after their hair has grown, or when they have sunglass-es on, or after they have aged. These are all tasks that humans can usuallyperform but that computers struggleto replicate.

“I highly doubt that bees can tellthe difference,’’ Dr. Forsyth said,adding, “If bees did that, I’d fall offmy chair.’’

By DENNIS OVERBYE

How many ways can a star go “ka-boom!”? It might depend on what kindof galaxy the star lives in, astronomerssaid recently.

For the last 20 years, astronomersseeking to measure the cosmos haveused a special type of exploding star, known as Type 1a supernovas, asdistance markers. They are thoughtto result when stars known as whitedwarfs grow beyond a certain weightlimit, setting off a thermonuclear cata-clysm that is not only bright enough tobe seen across the universe but is alsoremarkably uniform from one super-nova to the next.

Using them, two teams of astrono-mers a little more than a decade agoreached the startling and now widely held conclusion that some “dark en-ergy” was speeding up the expansion of the universe.

But astronomers, to their embar-rassment, have not been able to agree on how the white dwarf gains its fatal weight and explodes, whether by slow-ly grabbing material from a neighbor-ing star or by crashing into anotherwhite dwarf.

In a telephone news conference on February 17 and a paper publishedFebruary 18 in the journal Nature,Marat Gilfanov and his colleague,Akos Bogdan, both of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garch-ing, Germany, said that for at leastone class of galaxies in the universe,the roundish conglomerations of old-er, redder stars known as ellipticals,these supernovas are mostly producedby collisions.

“We have revealed the source of themost important explosions in cosmol-ogy,” Dr. Gilfanov said., adding thatuntil now “we didn’t know exactlywhat they were.”

Reasoning that white dwarfs slowly gobbling gas from neighbors wouldemit X-rays as the captured gas felland was heated, Dr. Gilfanov and Dr. Bogdan used NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory to look at five ellipticalgalaxies and the central bulge of thenearby Andromeda galaxy — all ofwhich are composed of older stars.

The satellite recorded only aboutone-thirtieth to one-fiftieth of the X-rays that would be expected from suchwhite dwarfs, leading the astronomersto conclude that no more than 5 per-cent of the supernovas in those typesof stellar systems could be producedby accreting white dwarfs.

The observations leave open thepossibility that accreting dwarfsmight be responsible for more of thesupernovas in spiral galaxies likeour own, which tend to have younger,more massive stars. That leaves open the possibility of two different kinds of Type 1a supernovas at loose in the uni-verse and could add extra uncertainty into efforts to use exploding stars asstandard candles to make precisemeasurements of the universe.

Mario Livio, a theorist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, said thatwhile the new results and the idea oftwo classes of supernovas “muddiesthe water,” they would not affect themeasurements of dark energy.

The Robot’s Here With Your Lunch

CHANDRA

A Type 1a supernova outside a galaxy in the Virgo cluster.

BASILIO NORIS

ADRIAN DYER

Researchers found that bees could distinguish one face from another.The path of a bee as it learned the configuration of a human face.

An insect learnsfeatures the way humans do.

ExploringCollisionsThat LightUp Space

Warning to Swatters: Bees Remember Faces

Machines that curry favor with humans byserving food.

Repubblica NewYork

E D U C AT I O N

MONDAY, MARCH 8, 2010 VII

Religious workers

Graders and sorters

Building managers

Natural scientists*

Physicians and dentists

Law enforcement officers

All workers

Bartenders

Social workers

Social scientists*

Creative artists

Authors and journalists

Professors

Ideology at Work

Professors are more likely to identify themselves as liberals than those in any other occupation, according to an analysis of General Social Survey data from 1996 to 2008.

THE NEW YORK TIMESSource: Neil Gross, University of British Columbia

*Non-academic Moderate includes “slightly liberal” and “slightly conservative.”

LIBERAL

Percent who say they are:

MODERATE CONSERVATIVE

43%

37

33

29

28

27

14% 20

9

11

13

18

14

5

11

17

20

10

10

15

29

31

32

32

35

46

By PATRICIA COHEN

The overwhelmingly liberal tilt ofuniversity professors has been ex-plained by everything from outrightbias to higher I.Q. scores. Now newresearch suggests that critics mayhave been asking the wrong ques-tion. Instead of looking at why mostprofessors are liberal, they shouldask why so many liberals — and sofew conservatives — want to be pro-fessors.

A pair of sociologists think theymay have an answer: typecasting.Conjure up the classic image of a hu-manities or social sciences profes-sor, the fields where the imbalance isgreatest: tweed jacket, pipe, nerdy, longwinded, secular — and liberal.Even though that may be an outdat-ed stereotype, it influences youngerpeople’s ideas about what they wantto be when they grow up.

Jobs can be typecast in differentways, said Neil Gross and EthanFosse, who undertook the study. Forinstance, they cited the low num-bers of male nurses. Discrimina-tion against malecandidates maybe a factor, but the primary reason for the disparity is thatmost people con-sider nursing to bea woman’s career,Mr. Gross said.

Nursing is whatsociologists call“gender typed.”

Mr. Gross said that “professors anda number of other fields are politicallytyped.” Journalism, art, fashion, so-cial work and therapy are dominatedby liberals; while law enforcement,farming, dentistry, medicine and themilitary attract more conservatives.

“These types of occupational repu-tations affect people’s career aspira-tions,” he added in a telephone inter-view from his office at the Universityof British Columbia. Mr. Fosse, his co-author, is a Ph.D. candidate atHarvard University.

The academic profession “has ac-quired such a strong reputation forliberalism and secularism that overthe last 35 years few politically or re-ligiously conservative students, butmany liberal and secular ones, haveformed the aspiration to becomeprofessors,” they write in the paper,“Why Are Professors Liberal?” Thatis especially true of their own field,sociology, which has become associ-ated with “the study of race, class andgender inequality — a set of concernsespecially important to liberals.”

What distinguishes Mr. Gross and

Mr. Fosse’s research from so much ofthe hubbub that surrounds this sub-ject is their methodology. Whereasmost arguments have primarily re-lied on anecdotes, this is one of theonly studies to use data from the Gen-eral Social Survey of opinions and so-cial behaviors and compare profes-sors with the rest of Americans.

Mr. Gross and Mr. Fosse linkedthose empirical results to the broaderquestion of why some occupations —just like ethnic groups or religions —have a clear political hue.

Using an econometric technique,they were then able to test which ofthe theories frequently discussedwere supported by evidence andwhich were not.

Intentional discrimination, one of the most frequent and volatile charg-es made by conservatives, turned outnot to play a significant role.

Typecasting, of course, is not the only cause for the liberal tilt. Thecharacteristics that define one’s polit-ical orientation are also at the fore ofcertain jobs, the sociologists report-

ed. Nearly half ofthe political lopsid-edness in academiacan be traced to fourcharacteristics thatliberals in general,and professors inparticular, share:advanced degrees;a nonconservative religious theology

(which includes liberal Protestants and Jews, and the nonreligious); anexpressed tolerance for controver-sial ideas; and a disparity between education and income.

The tendency of people in any insti-tution or organization to try to fit inalso reinforces the political one-sid-edness. In “The Politically Correct University: Problems, Scope andReforms,” a collection of essays pub-lished by the American EnterpriseInstitute in Washington, D.C., a con-servative research group, Daniel B.Klein, an economist at George MasonUniversity in Virginia, and CharlottaStern, a sociologist at Stockholm Uni-versity, argue that when it comes tohiring, “the majority will tend to sup-port candidates like them in the mat-ter of fundamental beliefs, values andcommitments.”

To Mr. Gross, accusations by con-servatives of bias and student brain-washing are self-defeating. “Theirony is that the more conservativescomplain about academia’s liberal-ism,” he said, “the more likely it’sgoing to remain a bastion of liberal-ism.”

By SAM DILLON

WASHINGTON — Thousands ofpublic schools in America stoppedteaching foreign languages in the lastdecade, according to a government-financed survey — dismal news fora nation that needs more linguists toconduct its global business and diplo-macy.

But another contrary trend haseducators and policy makers abuzz:a rush by schools in all parts of Amer-ica to offer instruction in Chinese.

Some schools are paying for Chi-nese classes on their own, but hun-dreds are getting some help. The Chi-nese government is sending teachersfrom China to schools all over theworld — and paying part of their sala-ries.

At a time of tight budgets, manyAmerican schools are finding that of-fer too good to refuse.

In Massillon, Ohio, south of Cleve-land, Jackson High School started its

Chinese program in the fall of 2007with 20 students and now has 80, saidParthena Draggett, who directs Jack-son’s world languages department.

“We were able to get a free Chineseteacher,” she said. “I’d like to start aSpanish program for elementary chil-dren, but we can’t get a free Spanishteacher.”

(Jackson’s Chinese teacher is notfree; the Chinese government payspart of his compensation, with thedistrict paying the rest.)

No one keeps an exact count, butrough calculations based on the gov-ernment’s survey suggest that per-haps 1,600 American public and pri-vate schools are teaching Chinese, upfrom 300 or so a decade ago.

Among America’s approximately27,500 middle and high schools offer-

ing at least one foreign language, theproportion that have Chinese roseto 4 percent, from 1 percent, from1997 to 2008, according to the survey,which was done by the Center for Ap-plied Linguistics, a research group inWashington, and paid for by the fed-eral Education Department.

Founders of the Yu Ying charterschool in Washington, where all class-es for 200 students in prekindergar-ten through second grade are taughtin Chinese and English on alternatedays, did not start with a guest teach-er when it opened in the fall of 2008.

“That’s great for many schools, butwe want our teachers to stay,” saidMary Shaffner, the school’s execu-tive director.

Yu Ying recruited five native Chi-nese speakers living in the UnitedStates. One is Wang Jue, who immi-grated to the United States in 2001and graduated from the University ofMaryland.

After just four months, her prekin-dergarten students can already sayphrases like “I want lunch” and “I’mangry” in Chinese, Ms. Wang said.

By MARC LACEY

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Haiti’s best universities are in wreckage,their campuses now jumbles of col-lapsed concrete, mangled desks andchairs, and buried coursework. Hun-dreds of professors and students were entombed, although the exact number of dead is complicated by the fact thatclass lists and computer registrieswere also wiped out by the quake.

“You’re in class, your professor istalking, you’re writing notes and then you’re buried alive,” said ChristinaJulme, 23, recounting how her semes-ter at State University came to a halton the afternoon of January 12.

Ms. Julme, ailing and slipping in andout of consciousness, was pried fromher collapsed classroom after twodays of having her dead professor’s legtouching her, an injured friend’s facea few inches from her own and class-mates’ bodies growing fetid.

The obliteration of higher educa-tion is expected to have longstandingeffects on this devastated country,where even in the best of times a tinypercentage of young people went on tocollege.

“What the earthquake has done tous, besides breaking buildings andkilling much of the population, it haswiped out many of those who were the future leaders of the country,” saidLouis Herns Marcelin, a Universityof Miami sociologist who runs a re-search institute here. “The impact washuge, but we still don’t even know how

huge.”The country’s main nursing school

is gone, as is the state medical college.The science building at the state uni-versity has been ripped open, and the teacher’s college teeters on its side. At the Graduate School of Technology,Jean Foubert Dorancy, 22, climbedatop the wreckage, littered with com-puter parts, and lamented: “This was the best computer school in Haiti.What do I do now?”

It was a troubled education system that fell. Many of its buildings weredecaying, the result of decades of ne-

glect. Classes were overflowing withstudents, and many had only mediocrepreparation academically becausestudents from the best high schools,the children of the elite, would often go to overseas universities and not come back.

“Most of my friends weren’t study-ing but were just hanging on thestreet,” said Jacques Gaspard, 38, who was enrolled in a trade school that col-lapsed. “Now I’m on the street, too.Everybody’s on the street.”

Haiti’s state university was the only place to earn a degree until the end of the long rule of the Duvaliers in 1986.

Since then, scores of universities haveopened, many of them slipshod institu-tions without accreditation, but others are well-run schools open to talentedstudents regardless of their means.

There are already plans to reviveHaiti’s universities using tents or tem-porary structures until more perma-nent structures can be built. And someearly signs have emerged that Haiti’s damaged university system may berebuilt better. At Quisqueya, Even-son Calixte, the assistant dean of en-gineering, said all students would berequired to study geology from now on so that they understood earthquakes.There will be a particular focus onbuilding codes, he said.

It was arguably a shortage of edu-cated professionals in Haiti that en-sured so much of Haiti would collapse. “There’s a total lack of qualified archi-tects, urban planners, builders andzoning experts,” said Conor Bohan,an American who founded the Haitian Education and Leadership Program, ascholarship program for students withtop grades but few resources. “People were living in substandard housingin places where they shouldn’t havebeen.”

Ms. Julme, who studied communi-cations, managed to get a job at theUnited Nations radio station, althoughshe focuses on music, not news, to get her mind, and the minds of her listen-ers, off of all the awful things that haveoccurred.

“The dean is dead,” she said of herdestroyed linguistics college. “Thevice dean is dead. I don’t see how the university can go on.”

In Quake’s Aftermath, Lessons Interrupted

Deborah Sontag contributed report-ing.

The academic lifetends to attract more liberals.

Why Professor Is a LabelThat Leans to the Left

Chinese

Instruction

On the Rise

PHOTOGRAPHS BY LYNSEY ADDARIO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

BRENDAN HOFFMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Already ailing, highereducation in Haiti iswiped out.

The quake has ruinedcentersof higherlearning.Christina Julme was in class whenit struck. A schoolin Port-au-Prince.

At the Yu Ying school in Washington, subjects alternate between English and Chinese.

Repubblica NewYork

A R T S & S T Y L E S

VIII MONDAY, MARCH 8, 2010

By RANDY KENNEDY

Over the last several months Jeff Koons, 55,who has always been a polarizing artist, hasbeen at work in a role he has never assumedduring his three-decade career, that of curatorof other people’s art. Last summer he acceptedan invitation by the New Museum of Contempo-rary Art in New York to organize an exhibition ofworks from the important collection of the Greekbillionaire Dakis Joannou, a collection in which Mr. Koons’s own work plays a pivotal part.

That fact — along with Mr. Joannou’s closefriendship with Mr. Koons and Mr. Joannou’srole as a trustee at the New Museum, though he is not underwriting the show or providing input — has caused some people, even in the insular contemporary-art world, to worry that the ar-rangement is too clubby.

This was part of Mr. Koons’s motivation tospeak in detail for the first time about his life asa collector of art, not just as a creator of it. He de-cided to engage with it as a way to demonstrate his deep, idiosyncratic engagement with the his-tory of art (mostly Western) and history’s veryliteral role in many of his new paintings. He saidhe wanted to make the case that, for many yearsnow, he has viewed creating art and thinkingabout the works of art he loves as increasingly inseparable activities.

“Art has this ability to allow you to connectback through history in the same way that bi-ology does,” he said. “I’m always looking forsource material.”

Mr. Koons wants to do well by the New Mu-seum, which gave him his first solo exhibition in 1980, and by Mr. Joannou, whose collection

is influential and widely admired. But as some-one confident enough in his younger years toproclaim that he was picking up the mantle of Duchamp and Picasso and “taking us out of the 20th century” with his own work, Mr. Koons al-so wants to prove himself worthy of joining the ranks of well-known artists who have turnedtheir talents successfully to organizing shows.

As he walks around his buzzing studio, hissource material often blares out these days. Im-ages of Roman marbles, mostly female nudes,peek out of his paintings. Dalí motifs abound.Warhol and the Venus of Wil-lendorf and Roy Lichtensteinshare unlikely quarters inother paintings. A strangestone carving in the shapeof a vagina, probably part aCeltic fertility figure, that Mr. Koons recently came acrosson the Internet and bought (“I love to just look around on thecomputer after the kids go tobed”) was the centerpiece of another work inprogress .

The art-historical dots that Mr. Koons con-nects in his own thinking about such worksare plentiful. The form of an inflatable lobster can simultaneously name-check Duchamp,Dalí and H.C. Westermann, the eccentric Chi-cago sculptor. A Dalí motif appearing in the newpaintings, the image of a draped cloth from a1969 work that Mr. Koons owns, leads him back to a painting he says he believes was the clear model for the cloth, “Venus Rising From the Sea — a Deception,” by Raphaelle Peale, America’s

first notable still life painter, which leads himforward again to Dalí’s last painting, “TheSwallow’s Tail” from 1983, in which Mr. Koons said he can discern the form.

Mr. Koons has collected since the beginning of his life as a professional artist. His choices arestylistically and historically diverse but tend to share a preoccupation with the body and sexu-ality, which is also a major theme in Mr. Joan-nou’s collection and Mr. Koons’s take on it.

What drew him to the Courbet bull, whichhe bought at a Sotheby’s auction in 2007, one

of four paintings he owns bythat artist? “I like this type ofwork,” he said simply about the Courbet, then pointed to abrown patch on the bull’s fur and explained that he stares at the patch often and won-ders whether it might repre-sent “some form of, you know,soul or really a personal part”of Courbet’s own being.

Lisa Phillips, the New Museum’s director,said that one reason she and the museum’s cu-rators made the unusual decision to hand theJoannou show over to Mr. Koons was precisely because of his unconventional and compulsiveway of looking at art.

Standing in his studio next to an image of aradiant Poussin from his collection, he said,“When I view the world, I don’t think of my own work. I think of my hope that, through art, peo-ple can get a sense of the type of invisible fabricthat holds us all together, that holds the world together.”

By LARRY ROHTER

Instead of Wonderland, it’s Underland. In-stead of Alice as a bored but clever child, weget Alice as a 19-year-old rebel and warrior,dispatching the monstrous Jabberwocky witha magic sword. Disney’s second rendering ofLewis Carroll’s fantasy is a world apart fromboth its 1951 cartoon version and the originalVictorian-era text.

Directed by Tim Burton, “Alice in Wonder-land,” a 3-D blend of live action and animation that opens in March and April globally, is meantas a contemporary, subversive take on a cher-ished story. With the 20-year-old Australian ac-tress Mia Wasikowska as Alice, it begins withan unwanted marriage proposal before veeringoff into Underland, where Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter and Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen await.

Since “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”and its sequel, “Through the Looking-Glass,”were first published nearly 150 years ago, Al-ice’s tale has been retold in many versions andmany media, including as a musical, anime,video game and more than a score of film and television adaptations. But for Mr. Burton thevery abundance and familiarity of the material“in the subconscious and in the culture” was anincentive to take it on.

“I’ve seen mostly everything, but there’s nev-er been a version for me that particularly works,that I especially like or that blows me away,” hesaid. “It always ends up seeming like a cluelesslittle girl wandering around with a bunch of weir-dos. And the fact that there was no one definitive

version was helpful. It’s not like the Disney car-toon was the greatest. So I didn’t feel that pres-sure to match or surpass.”

Linda Woolverton, the film’s screenwriter,said that when she began her script, she “dida lot of research on Victorian mores, on howyoung girls were supposed to behave, and then did exactly the opposite.” As she put it, “I was thinking more in terms of an action-adventurefilm with a female protagonist” than a Victorianmaiden.

The river of tears that a confused Alice cries in Carroll’s original text upon arrival in Won-derland has been written out of the story. “Icouldn’t have her break down like that,” Ms.Woolverton said. A drawing by John Tenniel,the illustrator who worked with Carroll, show-ing a boy fighting the dragonlike Jabberwock,

was transformed into an image depicting Alice in action.

Refusing to marry, Alice inst