MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2009 Copyright © 2009 The New York Times

Supplemento al numero

odierno de la Repubblica

Sped. abb. postale art. 1

legge 46/04 del 27/02/2004 — Roma

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

LENS

By ANDREW E. KRAMER

and ANDREW C. REVKIN

MOSCOW

FOR HUNDREDS OF years, mariners have

dreamed of an Arctic shortcut that would allow

them to speed trade between Asia and the West.

Two German ships are navigating that transit for the first

time this month, aided by the retreat of Arctic ice that sci-

entists have linked to global warming.

The ships started their voyage in South Korea in late July

and began the last leg of the trip on September 12, leaving

a Siberian port carrying 3,175 metric tons of

construction materials. They are due to ar-

rive in Rotterdam in late September.

Russian ships have long moved goods

along the country’s sprawling Arctic

coastline. And two tankers, one Finn-

ish and the other Latvian, hauled fuel

between Russian ports using the route,

which is variously called the Northern

Sea Route or the Northeast Passage.

But the Russians hope that the German

ships will inaugurate the passage as a reliable

shipping route, and that the combination of

the melting ice and the economic benefits

of the shortcut — it is thousands of ki-

lometers shorter than southerly routes

— will eventually make the Arctic pas-

sage a summer competitor with the

Suez Canal.

“It is global warming that enables us to

Do you sleep well? For $400, the Zeo

alarm clock will tell you.

Wear the accompanying headband

to bed, David Pogue wrote in a review

for The Times, and the clock will chart

the time you spend

in the various sleep

stages: light, deep

or rapid eye move-

ment — REM —

sleep. Then you can

upload the data to

a Web site and get

a numerical sleep

quality score.

“It’s truly amazing, if not a little

creepy, to see all of this data about

a part of your existence that you’ve

known nothing about until now,” Mr.

Pogue wrote.

You may know little about what hap-

pens while you’re asleep, aside from

a few bizarre dreams. But scientists

have made several recent discoveries

about the third of our lives we spend

resting up, or at least trying to.

About 5 percent of the population can

wake up fully rested, without an alarm

clock, after limited sleep, wrote Tara

Parker-Pope of The Times. Ying-Hui

Fu, a professor of neurology at the Uni-

versity of California, San Francisco,

and her colleagues found a mutation of

a gene linked to circadian rhythms in

two naturally short sleepers, a mother

and daughter who slept six hours a

night. The mutation could be a key in

understanding sleep disorders.

“We know sleep is necessary for

life, but we know so little about sleep,”

Dr. Fu told Ms. Parker-Pope. “As we

understand the sleep mechanism more

and more and all the pathways, we’ll

be able to understand more about what

causes sleep problems.”

If you are tossing and turning at

night, online counseling can help. Stud-

ies in the United States and Canada

have shown that Web-based cognitive

behavioral therapy can ease insomnia,

Amanda Schaffer wrote in The Times.

“I liked that it was over the Internet,”

one study participant, Kelly Lawrence,

51, of Canada, told Ms. Schaffer, “be-

cause when you don’t get your sleep

you don’t want to have to get up and go

to appointments.”

If all else fails, do as Albert Einstein,

Winston Churchill and Thomas Edison

did: take a nap. A new study shows

napping helps with problem solving,

wrote Nicholas Bakalar of The Times.

Study participants took two word as-

sociation tests. Those who took a nap

between tests that included REM sleep

— the kind that includes dreams — per-

formed 40 percent better on the second

test than on the first.

“Dreams are fanciful,” Sara Med-

nick, the associate professor of psychi-

atry who led the study, told Mr. Baka-

lar. “They incorporate strange ideas

that you would never have put together

in waking life.”

Some sleep questions remain unan-

swered. For example, why do giraffes

sleep for 5 hours a day while bats sleep

for 20? One theory, Benedict Carey

wrote in The Times, is that animals

sleep when finding food is the most

risky. The bat feeds on insects that

come out at night, and sleeping during

the day keeps it hidden from predators.

A corollary to this theory is that

we are the most awake when we are

inclined to be the most productive, ac-

cording to Mr. Carey. An inability to hit

the pillow at 10 p.m., therefore, may not

be a sign of a disorder.

“If sleep has evolved as the ultimate

time manager,” he wrote, “then being

wired at 2 a.m. may mean there is valu-

able work to be done.”

Pillow Science

Con tin ued on Page IV

V VI VIIIWORLD TRENDS

Russia’s shrinking

linguistic empire.

MONEY & BUSINESS

Lego’s toys change as

well as the company.

FASHION

High fashion faces a

redefining moment.

INTELLIGENCE: The new financial centers, Page II.

For comments, write tonytweekly@nytimes.com.

UNITED STATES

RUSSIA

Yokohama

Rotterdam

Arctic

Ocean

Pacific

Ocean

Northeast Passage

13,600 KMS.

Southerly route

20,750 KMS.THE NEW YORK TIMES

A Coveted PassageBELUGA GROUP

German ships, with help from a Russian ice breaker, are pioneering the melting Arctic as a shipping route. A northern voyage would save time and fuel over the southern journey.

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

II MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2009

Direttore responsabile: Ezio Mauro

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The Iran Deadline

In the debate over health care,

here’s an inequity to ponder: Nikki

White would have been better off ifshe

had been a convicted bank robber.

Nikki was a slim, athletic college

graduate who had health insurance,

had worked in health care and knew

the system. But she had systemic lu-

pus erythematosus, a chronic inflam-

matory disease diagnosed when she

was 21, which gradually left her too

sick to work. And once she lost her

job, she lost her health insurance.

In any other rich country, Nikki

probably would have been fine,

notes T. R. Reid in his important and

powerful new book, “The Healing of

America.” Some 80 percent of lupus

patients in the United States live a

normal life span. Under a doctor’s

care, lupus should be manageable.

Indeed, if Nikki had been a felon, the

problem could have been averted, be-

cause courts have ruled that prison-

ers are entitled to medical care.

As Mr. Reid recounts, Nikki tried

everything to get medical care, but

no insurance company would accept

someone with her pre-existing con-

dition. She spent months painfully

writing letters to anyone she thought

might be able to help.

Finally, Nikki collapsed at her

home in Tennessee and was rushed

to a hospital emergency room, which

was then required to treat her with-

out payment until her condition sta-

bilized. Since money was no longer

an issue, the hospital performed 25

emergency surgeries on Nikki, and

she spent six months in critical care.

“When Nikki showed up at the

emergency room, she received the

best of care, and the hospital spent

hundreds of thousands of dollars on

her,” her stepfather, Tony Deal, told

me. “But that’s not when she needed

the care.”

By then it was too late. In 2006, Nik-

ki White died at age 32. “Nikki didn’t

die from lupus,” her doctor, Amylyn

Crawford, told Mr. Reid. “Nikki died

from complications of the failing

American health care system.”

“She fell through the cracks,” Nik-

ki’s mother, Gail Deal, told me grim-

ly. “When you bury a child, it’s the

worst thing in the world. You never

recover.”

We now have a chance to reform

this cruel and capricious system. If

we let that chance slip away, there

will be another Nikki dying every

half-hour. That’s how often someone

dies in America because of a lack of

insurance, according to a study by a

branch of the National Academy of

Sciences. Over a year, that amounts

to 18,000 American deaths.

After Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000

Americans eight years ago , we went

to war and spent hundreds of billions

of dollars ensuring that this would not

happen again. Yet every two months,

that many people die because of our

failure to provide universal insur-

ance — and yet many members of

Congress want us to do nothing?

Mr. Reid’s book is a rich tour of

health care around the world. Be-

cause he has a bum shoulder, he

asked doctors in many countries to

examine it and make recommenda-

tions. His American orthopedist

recommended a titanium shoulder

replacement that would cost tens of

thousands of dollars and might or

might not help. Specialists in other

countries warned that a sore shoul-

der didn’t justify the risks of such

major surgery, although some said

it would be available free if Mr. Reid

insisted. Instead, they offered physi-

cal therapy, acupuncture and other

cheap and noninvasive alternatives,

some of which worked pretty well.

That’s a window onto the flaws in

our health care system: we offer ti-

tanium shoulder replacements for

those who don’t really need them,

but we let 32-year-old women die if

they lose their health insurance. No

wonder we spend so much on medi-

cal care, and yet have some health

care statistics that are worse than

Slovenia’s.

My suggestion for anyone in Nik-

ki’s situation: commit a crime and

get locked up. In Washington State,

a 20-year-old inmate named Melissa

Matthews chose to turn down parole

and stay in prison because that was

the only way she could get treatment

for her cervical cancer. “If I’m out,

I’m going to die from this cancer,” she

told a television station.

Mr. and Mrs. Deal say they are

speaking out because Nikki wouldn’t

want anyone to endure what she did.

“Nikki was a college-educated, mid-

dle-class woman, and if it could hap-

pen to her, it can happen to anyone,”

Mr. Deal said. “This should not be

happening in our country.”

Struggling to get out the words,

Mrs. Deal added: “The loss of a child

is the greatest hurt anyone will ever

suffer. Because of the circumstances

she endured with the health care sys-

tem, I lost my daughter.”

Complex arguments are being

raised in the debate over health care,

yet the central issue isn’t technical

but moral. Do we wish to be the only

rich nation in the world that lets a

32-year-old woman die because she

can’t get health insurance? Is that

really us?

An Assault on the Press

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

The United States and the other ma-

jor powers have given Iran until late

September to begin substantive nego-

tiations on restraining its nuclear pro-

gram. And Tehran has now announced

that it is ready to resume talks, and the

Obama administration says it is ready,

too. Unfortunately, there is no sign that

Iran is serious about doing much more

than buying more time.

Tehran has presented a proposed

agenda with vague suggestions about

dealing with global issues, but insist-

ed that the file on its nuclear efforts is

closed.

In the seven years since its nuclear

fuel program was revealed, Iran has

managed to deflect any real punish-

ment by promising to talk. It contin-

ues to defy a United Nations Security

Council order to stop producing nu-

clear fuel and has shrugged off three

sets of watered-down sanctions that

either failed to target Iran’s economic

vulnerabilities or were listlessly en-

forced .

American and European officials

say they are developing a more per-

suasive list of sanctions if Tehran

continues to resist; a ban on new en-

ergy investment in Iran and a possible

cutoff of gasoline exports to Iran are

two leading possibilities. If Washing-

ton and Europe cannot get Russia and

the Security Council to go along, they

must be ready to move on their own

this time.

Most experts agree that Iran has al-

ready produced enough low-enriched

uranium for at least one bomb, but

they disagree on how close Iran is to

building a weapon. There is almost no

disagreement on Iran’s ultimate goal.

Even the top nuclear inspector for the

United Nations, Mohamed ElBaradei,

who too often gives Iran the benefit of

the doubt, has acknowledged a “gut

feeling” that Tehran wants the tech-

nology to build a bomb.

Iran’s economy is vulnerable. Un-

employment and inflation are high;

foreign investment is low. Banking

sanctions imposed by the United Na-

tions and separately by the United

States and Europe have had some bite.

The incentives package on offer from

the major powers — including an end

to diplomatic isolation and carefully

monitored cooperation on peaceful

nuclear energy — should be re-empha-

sized. Iranians need to see that there

is a real choice.

Iran’s stolen presidential election

and the crackdown that followed have

deepened fissures in Iranian society

and complicated engagement. But

President Obama is right to remain

open to broader talks.

That is not meant to legitimize the

government. If done deftly, it could un-

dercut the mullahs’ attempts to blame

the United States for their own failures

and make clear the price of continued

obstructionism.

There is not a lot of time left for the

world to forge a common position. The

negative rumblings out of Russia —

which is again playing down the need

for sanctions — are disturbing. We are

worried about the growing drumbeat

in Israel for military action.

An attack on Iran would be a disas-

ter. So would allowing Iran to build a

nuclear weapon. The United States

should never have to choose between

those two disastrous courses. If diplo-

macy shows promise, it should contin-

ue. But if Iran is playing the same old

game, the major powers must be ready

to exact a real economic price.

There are too many ways to silence

journalists who do not always follow

the government line.

The Committee to Protect Journal-

ists catalogs deaths and imprison-

ments — 14 journalists murdered so

far this year and an estimated 150 un-

fairly imprisoned around the world.

Now Turkey has provided a particu-

larly chilling example of another way

to shut down independent voices — a

fine of $2.5 billion that appears to be

designed to put a media company out

of business.

The media group, Dogan Yayin, is

a widely respected conglomerate of

newspapers and television stations.

Dogan journalists have not shied away

from stories that the government of

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s iron-

willed prime minister, does not like.

That makes it all the more suspicious

that the Erdogan government levied a

tax penalty on the Dogan group that

is almost as much as the value of the

entire company.

Executives of the European Union,

which has been considering the addi-

tion of Turkey to its powerful group,

quickly noted their concern. “When

the sanction is of such magnitude that

it threatens the very existence of an

entire press group, like in this case,

then freedom of the press is at stake,”

a spokesman said.

Turkey has made important strides

in the last decade, amending its Consti-

tution and bringing Turkish law more

in line with European standards. Steps

like this undermine that progress.

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

The Body Count at Home

The death toll mounts. The enemy is a broken health care system.

GENEVA

Here in the home of money the

streets still purr with prosperity and

the bankers’ serene expressions say

it all: a year on from financial Arma-

geddon, things could be a lot worse.

Of course, it’s taken the equivalent

of several Marshall Plans to save

capitalism. The trillions of dollars

thrown by Western governments at

the gaping hole left by the great lever-

age binge dwarf the postwar United

States aid to a shattered postwar Eu-

rope. Ordinary taxpayers, many of

them now without jobs, have bailed

out the sobered Masters of the Uni-

verse. It’s not surprising there’s a lot

of anger about.

But there have been other forces

at work in sparking a fragile recov-

ery, and they are more encouraging.

During a recent visit to Brazil, I was

struck by the country’s confidence.

When I asked about the crisis, the an-

swer was: “What crisis?”

The last global financial meltdown

of 1997 flattened developing-world

economies from Indonesia to Brazil.

This time, in a measure of significant

power shifts, these economies have

shown resilience and helped buoy

demand. The only major stock in-

dexes in positive or neutral territory,

measured in American dollars, for

the past year were in China, Brazil,

Indonesia, South Africa and India.

China and Brazil led the pack, up 50

percent and 16 percent respectively.

The five leaders, taken together, are

emerging powerhouses of the 21st

century. They have not “decoupled”

from the United States, but they’ve

ended their dependency. Their inter-

nal markets are growing. So, too, are

their trade with each other, their re-

serves and their self-confidence.

Despite the crisis, China is ex-

pected to grow 8 percent this year. It

has just overtaken Germany as the

world’s largest exporter and the Unit-

ed States as the world’s largest auto

market. The question is not whether,

but when exactly in the first quarter

of this century, China will become the

largest global economy.

These are head-turning transfor-

mations, lifting myriad people from

poverty, even as they create intrac-

table environmental and social pres-

sures. Without such new centers of

growth, robust enough now to with-

stand United States disaster, the

economic tailspin would have been

still more violent. And of course the

emerging 21st-century powers —

some of them financing a lot of Amer-

ica’s debt — have been bolstered by

the very mobility of capital that left

Icelandic or German banks vulner-

able to toxic mortgages in Kansas.

So let’s be wary of too much re-

formist zeal. I said there’s a lot of un-

derstandable anger. Politicians are

responding with several proposals,

including the German finance min-

ister’s recent call for a tax on global

financial transactions. The French

president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been

ranting about bankers’ bonuses and

calling for new measures of econom-

ic performance that would factor in

health and happiness.

I’ve nothing against happiness, but

I’m skeptical. Of course companies

receiving government money should

cap salaries and bonuses in line with

guidance from their new owners: the

state. Leverage must be regulated.

But President Obama is dreaming if

he thinks what he called “unchecked

excess” can be banished forever.

In general, for all their failings,

all their heady and then calamitous

excesses, markets are more efficient

than regulators. They have deliv-

ered the startling growth of the new

economic powers. They have also

— with massive emergency surgery

in the form of injected public money

— shown unexpected bounce. The

global financial system needs adjust-

ment, not dismantlement.

INTELLIGENCE/ROGER COHEN

The New Powerhouses

Emerging economiesgain confidence inthe downturn.

Send comments to intelligence@nytimes.com.

• An article last week about

China’s tightening control

over the production of rare

earth minerals misidentified

the country in which Avalon

Rare Metals, a non-Chinese

producer, was trying to open

a new mine. It is Canada, in

the northwest area, not Aus-

tralia.

•Because of an editing error,

an article in the July 20 issue

about a glass box installed on

the 103rd floor of the Sears

Tower in Chicago referred

incorrectly to how high it is

above the sidewalk. It is 412

meters, not a kilometer.

CORRECTIONS

Repubblica NewYork

W O R L D T R E N D S

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2009 III

Pacific

Ocean

Caribbean

Sea

Medellín

ANTIOQUIA

Bogotá

PuertoBerrío

Doradal

COLOMBIAPANAMA

Kms. 160

Hacienda Nápoles

Short Memories and Big DreamsSome memorable “bubbles” from history:

1637: Tulip Mania

The Dutch bid up prices for these flowers to astounding heights. One sailor

was allegedly jailed for eating a bulb -- worth more than the cost of feeding

the ship’s entire crew for a year -- that he mistook for an onion. When the

bubble popped, tulip traders begged the government to prop up the market.

1840s - 1870s: Railroads

Railroads revolutionized industry and transportation, but railway speculation

ballooned, and then popped, in Britain in the 1840s and then America in

the 1870s. Debt-burdened railroad investments helped unleash the Panic

of 1873 in the U.S.

1720: The South Sea Bubble

Britain’s South Sea Company was granted a trade monopoly with Spain’s

South American colonies in exchange for assuming England’s national

debt — a burden it could not carry when relations with Spain deteriorated.

Investors lost fortunes after bidding up prices of stock in this and other

“bubble companies” that sprang up around England. With a financially

burned populace out for blood, many government and South Sea

Company officials were prosecuted.

By SIMON ROMERO

DORADAL, Colombia — Even in Colombia,

a country known for its paramilitary death

squads, this hunting party stood out: more

than a dozen Colombian Army soldiers, two

men with long-range rifles, their assistant and

a taxidermist.

They stalked Pepe for three days in June

before executing him in a clearing about 100

kilometers from here with shots to his head

and heart. But after a snapshot emerged of

soldiers posing over his carcass, the group

suddenly found itself on the defensive.

As it turned out, Pepe — a hippopotamus who

escaped from his birthplace near the pleasure

palace built here by the slain drug lord Pablo

Escobar — had a following of his own.

The operation to hunt Pepe down, carried

out with the help of environmentalists, has be-

come the focus of a fierce debate over animal

rights and the containment of invasive species

in a country still struggling to address a broad

range of rights violations during four decades

of guerrilla war.

Sixteen years after the infamous Mr. Esco-

bar was gunned down on a Medellín rooftop

in a manhunt, Colombia is still wrestling with

the mess he made.

Wildlife experts brought here from Africa to

study Colombia’s growing numbers of hippos,

a legacy of Mr. Escobar’s excesses, have sup-

ported the government’s plan to prevent them

— by force, if necessary — from spreading into

areas along the nation’s principal river. But

some animal-rights activists oppose the idea

of killing them.

“In Colombia, there is no documented case

of an attack against people or that they dam-

aged any crops,” said Aníbal Vallejo, presi-

dent of the Society for the Protection of Ani-

mals in Medellín, referring to the hippos.

Peter Morkel, a consultant for the Frankfurt

Zoological Society in Tanzania, compared the

potential for the hippos to disrupt Colombian

ecosystems to the agitation caused by alien

species elsewhere, like goats on the Galápa-

gos Islands, cats on Marion Island between

Antarctica and South Africa, or pythons in

Florida.

“As much as I love hippos,” he said, “they

are an alien species and extremely dangerous

to people who disrupt them.”

The uproar has its roots in 1981, when Mr.

Escobar was busy assembling a luxurious

retreat here called Hacienda Nápoles that

included a mansion, swimming pools, a bull

ring and an airstrip. Part of the estate is now a

theme park.

“He needed a tranquil place to unwind

with his family,” said Fernando Montoya,

57, a sculptor from Medellín who built giant

statues here of Tyrannosaurus rex and other

dinosaurs .

But Mr. Escobar was not content with bull-

fights and fake dinosaurs. He also imported

zebras, giraffes, rhinoceroses and, of course,

hippos.

Some of the animals died or were trans-

ferred to zoos around the time Mr. Escobar

was killed. But the hippos largely stayed put,

flourishing in the artificial lakes dug at his

behest.

Carlos Palacio, 54, head of animal husband-

ry at Nápoles, said Mr. Escobar started with

four hippos. Now at least 28 live here. “Some

experts see this herd as a treasure of the natu-

ral world in case Africa’s hippo population suf-

fers a sharp decline,” Mr. Palacio said. “Oth-

ers view our growth as a kind of time bomb.”

More hippos may be on the loose. Mr. Pala-

cio said at least one was lurking at a neighbor-

ing ranch. Mr. Morkel said one or two others

could have wandered off .

On the grounds of Hacienda Nápoles, a sign

warns visitors to the theme park. “Stay in

your vehicle after 6 p.m.,” it reads. “Hippo-

potamuses on the road.”

This time is different.

That’s what people argue every time a bubble

inflates, and what they think every time they

are chastened by its popping. But century after

century, decade after decade and year after

year, human beings let irrational

hopes get the better of them.

Not long ago, the housing

bubble burst, bringing the global

economy to a standstill. Now

economists are on the lookout for

the next market to fizzle. They

say governments, central banks and interna-

tional bodies should scrutinize markets that

look likely to froth over in the next few years,

like capital markets in China, commodities like

gold and oil, and government bonds in heavily

indebted countries like the United States.

“Globally, a lot of money is now seeking higher

returns once again,” said Rachel Ziemba, senior

analyst at RGE Monitor. The steadying of the

economy, liquidity injections by governments

and big returns reaped early this year by invest-

ment banks are encouraging more traders to

return to the market.

“As long as compensation and bonuses are

based on short-term performance in the mar-

ket,” Ms. Ziemba said, “that’s going to encour-

age risk-seeking behavior.”

Bubbles are episodes of collective human

madness — euphoria over investments whose

skyrocketing values are unsustainable.

They tend to arise from perceptions of pend-

ing shortages (as happened last year, with the

oil bubble); from glamorized new technologies

or investment frontiers (like the dot-com bubble

of the 1990s); or from faddish cultural obses-

sions (like the Dutch tulip bubble of the 17th

century).

Often they are based on legitimate expecta-

tions of high growth that are “extrapolated

into the stratosphere,” as the economist Daniel

Yergin, chairman of IHS-Cambridge Energy

Research Associates, put it.

Such is the fear over investment in emerging

markets like China.

When Markets Lose Their Moorings

CARLOS VILLALON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES THE NEW YORK TIMES

DORADAL JOURNAL

A Drug Lord’s Legacy:

Hippos on the Loose

Jenny Carolina González contributed report-ing from Bogotá.

CATHERINE

RAMPELL

ESSAY

“I’m a long-term bull on Asia, but right now

it’s premature to be celebrating the ‘Asian Cen-

tury,’ like some investors seem to be doing,”

said Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stan-

ley Asia.

The Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite

Index, for example, nearly doubled from No-

vember to July before pulling back last month.

“People seem to believe the baton of global

economic leadership is being seamlessly passed

from the West to the East,” Mr. Roach said.

“That’s going to happen,

but not for another 5 to 10

years at least.”

Similar premature

excitement inflated the

South Sea bubble, an 18th

century mania over Brit-

ish trade with emerging

Latin American markets.

(Even the brilliant Sir

Isaac Newton lost a lot in

the South Sea bubble —

which is ironic, given his

famous recognition that

what goes up must come

down.)

Economists also worry

that commodity bubbles,

which tend to be more cy-

clical, may strike again.

Oil and gold prices are

rising, and though both of

those commodities have

boomed and busted many

times in the last cen-

tury, investors may bet on unrealistically high

growth once more. Gold prices have risen more

than 30 percent from a year ago.

In each of these markets, the inflation and

deflation of prices would be painful to investors

but may not have as far-reaching consequences

as the recent housing and credit collapses.

But a sovereign debt bubble — which many

argue is driving the acceleration in gold prices

— could prove far more dangerous.

So many countries, like the United States,

are running up such large national debts that

they could risk eventual default. Even without

outright default on their obligations, the value of

government bonds sold to finance these deficits

could plunge, costing investors a lot.

The pain of the housing bust has led political

leaders and central bankers to reconsider their

duties to pre-empt, rather than just respond to,

bubbles.

China has started to tighten monetary policy

to lower high expectations about its stocks. Oth-

er measures under discussion around the world

include additional regulation, guidelines for

financial compensation and possibly require-

ments for more market transparency.

But however stringent new rules may be,

economists say, they cannot defeat human na-

ture.

“Ultimately, bubbles are a human phenom-

enon,” said Robert Shiller, a Yale University

economics professor who warned of the current

crisis. “People just get a little crazy.”

Colombia is debating the fate of hipposfrom the estate of the drug lord PabloEscobar, where a theme park nowstands. Scientists say the hippos must becontained to avert ecological damage.

Repubblica NewYork

W O R L D T R E N D S

IV MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2009

think about using that route,” Verena

Beckhusen, a spokeswoman for the

shipping company, the Beluga Group

of Bremen, Germany, said in a tele-

phone interview.

Lawson W. Brigham, a professor of

geography at the University of Fair-

banks who led the writing of an inter-

national report on Arctic commerce,

confirmed that the passage of the two

German ships appeared to be the first

true commercial transit of the entire

Northeast Passage from Asia to the

West. He credited Beluga for taking on

both the summertime Arctic waters,

which still pose threats despite the sea-

ice retreats, and Russian bureaucracy,

a maze of permits and regulations.

“This may be as much of a test run

for the bureaucracy as for the ice,” said

Dr. Brigham, an oceanographer. But

he also said it would be a long while be-

fore Arctic shipping routes took busi-

ness from the Suez or Panama Canal.

Sheets of pack ice still descend in

100-kilometer-long tongues off the

northern ice cap, and glaciers on the

archipelagos off the coast shed ice-

bergs that now drift more dangerously

in the otherwise ice-free summer seas.

But the route is rarely wholly impass-

able these days, according to the Rus-

sian Transport Ministry.

The pair of ice-hardened, 11,500-met-

ric-ton ships, the Beluga Fraternity

and Beluga Foresight, were accompa-

nied for most of the trip by one or two

Russian nuclear icebreakers as a pre-

caution, although they encountered

only scattered small floes.

At the most perilous leg of the jour-

ney, the passage around the northern-

most tip of Siberia, the Vilkitsky Strait,

ice covered about half the sea.

“Apart from the stress, it is an eco-

nomically and ecologically beneficial

shortcut between Europe and Asia,”

Valery Durov, captain of the Beluga

Foresight, wrote in response to e-

mailed questions about the treacher-

ous stretch.

Sailors and shipping companies

have dreamed of a Northeast Passage

since 1553, when the British explorer

Hugh Willoughby died with his crew

while trying to navigate the route.

But as the Arctic has warmed and

sea ice in summers has retreated from

coasts, countries and companies have

become ever more focused on the re-

sources, trade routes and security

issues that are surfacing in what was

once an ice-locked backwater.

Neils Stolberg, the president of the

Beluga Group, said this month that the

Arctic transit was not an experiment

but the beginning of opening the route

to outside traffic.

The passage requires a permit be-

cause it crosses Russian territorial wa-

ters. Aleksandr N. Olshevsky, director

of the Federal Agency for Marine and

River Transport, said he and others in

the agency favored lowering the fees

as a means to increase traffic and gen-

erate revenue for maintaining the ice-

breakers. “The ice conditions were far

more severe 20 years ago,” he said.

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

LOKORI, Kenya — As Philip Lolua

waits under a tree for a scoop of food,

heat waves dance up from the desert

floor, blurring the dead animal car-

casses sprawled in front of him.

So much of his green pasture land

has turned to dust. His once mighty

herd of goats, sheep and camels have

died of thirst. He says his 3-year-old

son recently died of hunger. And Mr.

Lolua does not look to be far from

death himself.

“If nobody comes to help us, I will

die here, right here,” he said, emphati-

cally patting the earth.

A devastating drought is sweeping

across Kenya, killing livestock, crops

and children. It is stirring up tensions

in the ramshackle slums where the

water taps have run dry, and spawn-

ing ethnic conflict in the hinterland

as communities fight over the last re-

maining pieces of fertile grazing land.

The twin hearts of Kenya’s economy,

agriculture and tourism, are especial-

ly imperiled. The fabled game animals

that safari-goers fly thousands of ki-

lometers to see are keeling over from

hunger and the picturesque savanna is

now littered with sun-bleached bones.

Ethiopia. Sudan. Somalia. Maybe

even Niger and Chad. These countries

have become almost synonymous with

drought and famine. But Kenya? This

nation is one of the most developed

in Africa, home to a typically robust

economy, countless United Nations

offices and thousands of aid workers.

The aid community here has been

predicting a disaster for months,

saying that the rains had failed once

again and that this could be the worst

drought in more than a decade. But the

Kenyan government, paralyzed by in-

fighting and political maneuvering,

seemed to shrug off the warnings.

Some government officials have

even been implicated in a scandal to

illegally sell off thousands of metric

tons of the nation’s grain reserves as

a famine was looming.

So far, a huge, international aid op-

eration to avert mass hunger has not

kicked in, or at least not to the degree

needed. The United Nations World

Food Program recently said that

nearly four million Kenyans — about

a tenth of the population — urgently

needed food. “Red lights are flashing

across the country,” the agency said.

But donor nations have been slow

to respond, and a United Nations-led

emergency appeal for $576 million is

less than half financed.

Part of the reason may be the grow-

ing disappointment with Kenya’s lead-

ers. They have been poked and prod-

ded by Western ambassadors — and

their own citizens — to overhaul the

justice system, the police force and

the electoral commission. The outcry

followed a widely discredited election

in 2007 that set off a wave of violence,

claiming more than 1,000 lives.

But Kenyan politicians seem more

preoccupied with positioning them-

selves for the next election in 2012

than with cleaning up the mess from

A Lush Land Dries Up,Withering Kenya’s Hopes

A Coveted Passage OpensAs the Arctic Ice Retreats

As Rivals RaceTo Go Electric,Toyota Waits

From Page I

JEHAD NGA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A woman from the Turkana tribe received water. Life in Lokori is precarious even when rains are plentiful.

the last one. Few reforms have been

accomplished and corruption contin-

ues to flourish.

“At a time like this, we need donor

confidence,” said Nicholas Wasunna,

a humanitarian adviser for the aid

group World Vision. But he said that

donors might be put off by “the politics

of what’s happening in the country.”

The arid lands of northern Kenya

have been the hardest hit. In some vil-

lages, it has not rained in years. But

the drought has become a problem

nationwide.

In Baringo, in the Rift Valley, people

are eating cactus because corn and

wheat have gotten so expensive. In

Nyeri, in central Kenya, some have

turned to pig feed. In Nairobi, the capi-

tal, even the fanciest neighborhoods

often go without running water for a

week. Kenya relies on hydropower for

electricity, so less rainfall means less

power.

The Kenyan government has begun

to respond, organizing some highly

publicized food deliveries to famine-

prone areas. But many Kenyan offi-

cials almost seem in denial.

Chaunga Mwachaunga is the acting

district officer in Lokori, an especially

parched town in northern Kenya. He

bristled when presented with reports

that dozens of children in his area had

recently died of hunger.

“Hunger? How do we know they died

of hunger?” he said. “I know there’s

not enough food for people, but we can

be sure that nobody will die of hunger

while the Kenyan government is here.

Show me the death certificates.”

It is hard to find any death certifi-

cates when there are few hospitals.

Entering this area is like stepping

back in time.

Turkana children are hiking 30 ki-

lometers for three liters of water. Tur-

kana men are abandoning families

because they cannot face the shame of

being unable to feed their children.

World Vision is distributing emer-

gency rations to the worst-off areas.

Meteorologists predict rains will be

coming by October, and they may even

bring the other extreme from present

conditions. Another El Niño cycle is

forecast, which after years of drought

and earth baked to a rock-hard crust

could bring the opposite problem:

floods.

By HIROKO TABUCHI

TOKYO — Despite Toyota’s image

as the world’s greenest automaker,

the company that brought us the Pri-

us — totem of the environmentally

conscious — has fallen behind in the

race for the all-electric car.

Mitsubishi Motors started leasing

its all-electric vehicle, the i-MiEV, in

June. Next year, Nissan Motor is set

to release its electric car, the Leaf.

But Toyota does not plan to introduce

an all-electric car until 2012. Instead,

later this year, it plans to introduce a

plug-in electric-gasoline hybrid.

“Why is Toyota waiting on elec-

tric cars?” asked Tadashi Tateuchi,

a former race car designer turned

electric-car evangelist.

Electric technology could help de-

termine winners and losers in the au-

to industry of the future, but Toyota

has been highly skeptical of electri-

cal vehicles.

“The time is not here,” Masatami

Takimoto, Toyota’s executive vice

president, said earlier this year.

If Toyota is right, its competitors

will have spent billions on a technolo-

gy that will be slow to take off. If elec-

tric cars win drivers over, Toyota’s

rivals could take the lead.

“In a world where vehicles run on

electrons rather than hydrocarbons,

the automakers will have to reinvent

their businesses,” Russell Hensley,

an analyst at the consulting compa-

ny McKinsey, told clients in a recent

report.

But that world is not here yet. Toy-

ota would like to profit all it can from

the current technology before shift-

ing to a new one, analysts say, espe-

cially because the company is facing

a second down year after a loss last

year of about $4.4 billion.

“At first, electric cars will all be

small, making profit margins small

also,” said Maho Inoue, an automo-

bile analyst at the Daiwa Institute

of Research, a research group in To-

kyo.

Toyota executives list several rea-

sons to be skeptical of electric cars:

They do not travel far enough on a

charge; their batteries are expensive

and unreliable; the electrical infra-

structure is not in place to recharge

them. Even when electric cars are

sold widely, Toyota says, they will be

suitable only for short trips and serve

a decidedly niche market.

Electric-car enthusiasts say Toyo-

ta is being overly cautious. Advances

in batteries, as well as in the strong

magnets needed for motors, have

made electric vehicles viable, auto-

motive analysts say.

“Toyota could launch an electric

car tomorrow if it wanted to,” Mr. Ta-

teuchi, the former race car engineer,

said. “Toyota tells people the age of

electric cars is not yet here. That’s

not true.”

Both Nissan and Mitsubishi have

their own reasons for rushing out an

all-electric car. Having invested lit-

tle in hybrids, they hope to leapfrog

straight to the next technology.

Mitsubishi’s i-MiEV was released

in limited numbers in Japan this year.

Nissan is introducing some hybrids,

but its chief executive, Carlos Ghosn,

said he hoped the Leaf would be the

world’s first mass-produced electric

vehicle. It travels up to 145 kilometers

an hour, goes 160 kilometers between

recharges and carries a price tag of

$25,000 to $33,000.

There is an environmental impera-

tive as well: Though the newest Prius

uses 4.7 liters per 100 kilometers (21

kilometers per liter), as a hybrid it

still burns gasoline and emits car-

bon. Mr. Ghosn, in a gibe at Toyota’s

hybrids, said, “Whether you smoke a

lot or you smoke a little, you’re still a

smoker.”

PHOTOGRAPHS BY YULI WEEKS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A once-elusive Siberianroute may one day rival the Suez Canal.

In one of Africa’s mostdeveloped countries, a devastating drought.

Andrew E. Kramer reported fromMoscow, and Andrew C. Revkin from New York.

Tadashi Tateuchi, who develops electric-car technology, left, saysToyota is moving too slowly.

Repubblica NewYork

W O R L D T R E N D S

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2009 V

KAZAKHSTAN

BELARUS

MOLDOVA

UKRAINE

GEORGIA

ARMENIA

AZERBAIJAN

TAJIKISTAN

KYRGYZSTAN

UZBEKISTAN

ESTONIA

LATVIA

LITHUANIA

TURKMENISTAN

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Estonia An Estonian language test

must be passed to obtain citizenship.

Latvia A Latvian language test must

be passed to obtain citizenship.

Lithuania Russian is banned from

government offices; the government

maintains a language inspection service.

Ukraine Russian is widely spoken by

both Ukrainians and a sizeable minority

of ethnic Russians, but government

is mandating use of Ukrainian in

schools and other areas.

Georgia Russian-language

programs are banned from

many television channels

and radio stations.

Turkmenistan Russian-language

schools and newspapers shut down.

Belarus Russian is

an official language,

along with

Belarusian.

KazakhstanRussian is an official

language, along

with Kazakh.

Kyrgyzstan Official

language, although

presidential

candidates must

pass a language

test in Kyrgyz.

Armenia and AzerbaijanRussian is not an official

language, although top officials

and people in large cities speak it.

MoldovaSemi-official

language.

Uzbekistan Russian is not

an official language, but

some schools use it as a

primary language.

Tajikistan Russian is still used,

but a recently proposed law would

require government documents to

be written only in Tajik.

NYET!

DA! NYET!

DA!

Russia’s Shrinking Linguistic Empire

FORMER SOVIET REPUBLICS HOSTILE TO RUSSIAN

MIXED FEELINGS

FRIENDLY TO RUSSIAN

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

WASHINGTON — American poli-

tics has been defined by gender gaps,

racial gaps, geographic gaps and the

gap between the religious and the

secular.

Now comes the geriatric gap. As the

population ages and the United States

faces intense battles over rapidly ris-

ing health care and retirement costs,

American politics seems increasingly

divided along generational lines.

The question is how defining this

gap is going to be.

As distasteful as the notion of inter-

generational conflict may seem, the

fight over health care suggests that

something is going on. Older Ameri-

cans are more likely to oppose Presi-

dent Obama’s initiative than any

other age group. The White House

views this dynamic as one of the big-

gest obstacles to assembling a legis-

lative coalition to get a bill passed in

Congress.

Older voters were one of the few

groups Mr. Obama did not win in the

presidential election last year, leav-

ing him and his party particularly

reliant on younger voters, who do

not show up at the polls as reliably as

older people do. They have a dimmer

view of his presidency than the rest of

the nation.

Americans are living longer and

staying healthier longer. With that

has come a more active approach to

life in retirement. Older Americans

are more engaged. They are more

likely to watch television news, show

up at town hall meetings and call

their members of Congress. That has

proven especially true when it comes

to health care.

Certainly, the friction is driving

the strategies of both sides in the

health care battle. The Republican

National Committee has financed

an advertising campaign directed at

older Americans, asserting that what

the Democrats propose would ration

health care and would involve the

government in end-of-life decisions.

Democrats have responded by at-

tacking Republicans for past efforts

to cut Medicare, the government-run

health plan that covers Americans

over 65 that conservatives say poses

a threat to the deficit.

David Axelrod, a senior adviser to

Mr. Obama, acknowledged the obsta-

cle the president faces as Republicans

argue that his proposal to cut Medi-

care spending to help expand overall

health coverage would result in cut-

ting services to Medicare recipients.

“Older Americans all have cover-

age,” he said. “I’m not saying they

don’t care about anybody else. But

it’s a natural impulse to want to keep

that. It doesn’t take great strategic

insight to say, ‘Let’s go rattle older

voters and make them oppose this.’ ”

There is no evidence that this de-

mographic votes as a bloc or bases

voting decisions primarily on issues

of concern to older Americans, said

Robert H. Binstock, a professor of

aging at Case Western Reserve Uni-

versity in Ohio. Mr. Binstock said that

older voters favored Senator John

McCain over Mr. Obama in the elec-

tion last year — 53 percent to 45 per-

cent — because, in part, it is a popula-

tion that tends to be more Republican.

It may also be harder for some older

voters to adjust to the novelty of the

first African-American president.

Meredith Minkler, a professor of

health and social behavior at the

University of California at Berkeley,

contends that the whole notion of

generational warfare has been exag-

gerated anyway: polling suggests

that on issues other than health care

reform, older Americans are no dif-

ferent from the rest of the country in

how they divide on issues.

“This whole business of intergener-

ational conflict has been blown out of

proportion,” Professor Minkler said.

Yet it is hard to blame politicians,

who are reading these same polls

and watching their offices get over-

whelmed by telephone calls, e-mail

messages and faxes, for not taking

comfort in that history. Their fear, as

Mr. Binstock put it, is of inadvertently

“mobilizing a sleeping giant.”

No matter how they vote, older

voters turn out in heavy numbers in

midterm elections, like the one loom-

ing next year.

NEWS ANALYSIS

Politics, Health Care and the Age Gap

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine — In a

corner of Bukvatoriya, a bookstore

here in the capital of the Crimean

Peninsula, are some stacks of litera-

ture that may be as provocative to the

Kremlin as any battal-

ion of NATO soldiers

or wily oligarch.

The books are clas-

sics — by Oscar Wilde,

Victor Hugo, Mark

Twain, and Shake-

speare — that have been translated

into Ukrainian, in editions aimed at

teenagers. A Harry Potter who casts

spells in Ukrainian also inhabits the

shelves.

Two decades ago, there would have

been little if any demand for such

works, given that most people in this

region are ethnic Russians. But the

Ukrainian government is increas-

ingly requiring that the Ukrainian

language be used in all facets of soci-

ety, especially schools, as it seeks to

ensure that the next generation is ori-

ented toward Kiev, not Moscow. Chil-

dren can even read Pushkin, Russia’s

most revered author, in translation.

The Ukrainian policy has become

a flashpoint in relations between

the two countries and reflects the

diminishing status of the Russian

language in not just the former Soviet

Union, but the old Communist bloc as

a whole.

The Kremlin has tried to halt the

decline by setting up foundations to

promote the study of Russian abroad

and by castigating neighbors who

push the language from public life.

In some nations, a backlash against

Russian has stirred its own backlash

in the language’s defense.

Still, the challenge is considerable.

At stake is more than just words on a

page.

Language imparts power and

influence, binding the colonized to

the colonizers, altering how native

populations interact with the world.

Long after they gave up their terri-

tories, Britain and France and Spain

have retained a certain authority in

far-flung outposts because of the lan-

guages that they seeded.

Czars and Soviet leaders spread

Russian in the lands that they con-

quered, using it as a kind of glue to

unite disparate nationalities, a so-

called second mother tongue, and

connect them to their rulers. That leg-

acy endures today, as exemplified by

the close relationship between Russia

and Germany, which stems in part

from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s

ability to speak Russian. She learned

it growing up in Communist East

Germany.

For the Kremlin, could there be a

more bitter reminder of how history

has turned than the sight of young Es-

tonians or Georgians or Uzbeks (not

to mention Czechs or Hungarians)

flocking to classes in English instead

of Russian?

“The drop in Russian language

usage is a great blow to Moscow, in

the economic and social spheres, and

many other respects,” said Aleksei V.

Vorontsov, chairman of the sociology

department at the Herzen State Peda-

gogical University in St. Petersburg.

“It has severed links, and made Russia

more isolated.”

Russian is one of the few major lan-

guages to be losing speakers, and by

rough estimates, that total will fall to

150 million by 2025, from 300 million in

1990. It will probably remain one of the

10 most popular languages, but barely.

Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish,

Arabic and Hindi head the list.

The situation has not been helped

by the demographic crisis in Russia

itself, which is expected to shed as

much as 20 percent of its population

by 2050.

The fall in Russian speakers has

not been uniform across the former

Soviet Union, and Russian officials

praise former Soviet republics like

Kyrgyzstan where Russian is em-

braced.

But countries that felt subjugated

by Soviet power, like the Baltic States,

have taken vengeance by mandating

knowledge of the native language to

obtain citizenship or other benefits.

Ukraine’s pro-Western president,

Viktor A. Yushchenko, indicated this

month that a deepening understand-

ing of the Ukrainian language is one

key to keeping Moscow at bay. “With

our native language, we preserve

our culture,” Mr. Yushchenko told

the German magazine Spiegel. “That

greatly contributes to preserving our

independence. If a nation loses its lan-

guage, it loses its memory, its history

and its identity.”

CLIFFORD J.

LEVY

ESSAY

The Waning Influence of the Tongue of the Czars

Moscow’s power ebbs when Pushkin is readin Ukrainian.

ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES

Support for President Obama is stronger among younger Americans, who vote less often than the elderly.

Repubblica NewYork

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

VI MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2009

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

BILLUND, Denmark — Five years

after a near-death experience, Lego

has emerged as an unlikely winner in

an industry threatened by the likes of

video games, iPods, the Internet and

other digital diversions.

Even as other toymakers struggle,

this Danish maker of toy bricks is en-

joying double-digit sales gains and

swelling earnings. In recent years,

Lego has increasingly focused on

toys that many parents wouldn’t rec-

ognize from their own childhood.

Hollywood themes are command-

ing more shelf space, a far cry from

the idealistic, purely imagination-

oriented play that drove Lego for

years and was as much a religion as a

business strategy in Billund.

Just as the toys are changing, so is

the company. Jorgen Vig Knudstorp,

40, a father of four and a McKinsey &

Company alumnus who took over as

Lego’s chief executive in 2004, made

it clear that results, not simply feel-

ing good about making the best toys,

would be essential if Lego was to suc-

ceed.

“We needed to build a mind-set

where nonperformance wasn’t ac-

cepted,” Mr. Knudstorp says. Now,

“there’s no place to hide if perfor-

mance is poor,” he says. “You will be

embarrassed, and embarrassment is

stronger than fear.”

Last month, Lego opened its first

“concept store” in Concord, North

Carolina, where parents can bring

children for birthday parties and

classes with master builders. It’s all

part of a broader retail expansion

that will give Lego 47 retail stores

worldwide by year-end, up from 27

in 2007.

Founded in 1932 by a local car-

penter, Ole Kirk Christiansen, this

privately held company had a very

Scandinavian aversion to talking

about profits, much less orienting the

company around them.

Before Mr. Knudstorp’s arrival,

deadlines came and went, and de-

velopment time for new toys could

stretch out for years; in 2004, the

company lost $344 million.

Now, employee pay is tied to mea-

suring up to management’s key per-

formance indicators. And cost-sav-

ing touches are encouraged when it

comes to designing new toys. That

has helped to lower development

time by 50 percent.

Nevertheless, Lego hasn’t entirely

shed its Scandinavian sense of so-

cial mission. It kept quality high and

never moved any manufacturing to

China, avoiding the lead paint scare

and grabbing market share when ri-

vals stumbled amid multiple recalls.

Now, with profits swelling and the

turnaround firmly in place, Lego is

preparing for a future that moves

well beyond the basic brick but car-

ries big risks as well.

Video games are increasingly im-

portant to the company, as are Lego’s

legions of adult fans, who can now

buy kits to build architect-designed

models of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fall-

ingwater and the Guggenheim Mu-

seum. What’s more, the company is

in talks with Warner Brothers about

a mixed live-action and animation

Lego-themed movie.

“Developing a movie doesn’t come

cheap,” says Soren Torp Laursen, a

23-year Lego employee who heads

its North American operations. “But

five years ago, we were in the midst

of a crisis, and now we’re in a growth

phase. We are definitely taking big-

ger risks than we previously did.”

While that shift has disappointed

purists and prompted worries from

experts that some of what has long

made Lego special may be in jeopar-

dy, it’s paying off, at least in the short

term.

Amid a 5 percent drop in total

United States toy sales last year and

the industry’s worst holiday season

in three decades, according to Sean

McGowan, an analyst at Needham

& Company, Lego’s sales surged 18.7

percent in 2008. And despite a wors-

ening global recession, Lego pow-

ered through the first half of 2009,

with a 23 percent sales increase over

the period a year earlier.

“In the end, you’ve got to go where

your consumer is going,” says John

Barbour, a former top executive of

the Toys “R” Us chain. “And the re-

ality is that themes and movies are

what kids want. There’s no point in

developing the best product in the

world if you can’t put it on the shelf.”

For Americans, failure tends to be

accepted as an intrinsic feature of

an economic system in which risk-

taking often brings great reward.

In Japan, by contrast, failure tra-

ditionally carries a

deeper stigma, an en-

during shame that lim-

its the appetite for risk,

in the view of many of

the nation’s cultural

observers. This makes

the Japanese far less comfortable

with choices that increase the pros-

pect of failure, even if they promise

greater potential gains.

Recent Japanese governments

have sought to inculcate greater tol-

erance for failure — often at the urg-

ing of American officials — to inject

new life in a long-stagnant economy.

The Tokyo government even char-

tered an Association for the Study of

Failure, which aimed to “turn failure

experience into knowledge at the

society, corporation and individual

levels.”

But on August 30, the differing

cultural conceptions of the United

States and Japan snapped into view,

as Japanese voters emphatically

dismissed the party that had ruled

almost uninterrupted for more than

half a century. The results offered up

a palpable message: Enough with the

failure.

In the two decades since Japan

devolved from a supposedly indomi-

table economic juggernaut in the

1980s into a stagnant economy mired

in a Lost Decade, the country tried

myriad reforms in the name of rein-

vigorating its economy. It made at-

tempts at rooting out bad loans from

the banking system and ending the

inside dealing that had long defined

Japanese business culture. It sought

to pare down government-financed

public works projects, a major source

of jobs.

Yet all the while, Japan remained

an economic laggard, a shadow of

the nation that had previously occa-

sioned overheated talk of Japanese

global dominance. Despite the pain

of reform, Japan never seemed to get

the benefit.

Many economists argue that Ja-

pan never shook off the hangover of

speculative excesses on real estate

that fueled the 1980s because it never

genuinely reformed. Money-losing

“zombie” companies were allowed

to keep drawing fresh credit and sur-

vive. Insolvent banks were spared

from collapse because they were

deemed “too big to fail.”

Regardless, among ordinary

people, the sense took hold that the

reforms were both harsh and inef-

fective. Amid the attempts to rein in

government spending and pressure

banks to cut off money-losing clients,

Japanese workers learned the humili-

ation of unemployment; Japanese

companies confronted the embar-

rassment of going out of business.

More than an economic event, this

tore at the fabric of Japanese life.

Many Japanese seemed perplexed

by the dire talk that accompanied

the push for reform. In Nagano, a city

that had boomed with construction

during the 1980s, suspicions about

the reform trajectory were intense

as Japan’s reformist prime minister,

Junichiro Koizumi, pushed to cleanse

the banks of bad loans. Newspapers

and television were full of grim talk

about the corporate failures this

would entail.

“I don’t really see how the economy

will get better if you just close a big

company and fire people,” said a

37-year-old housewife whose hus-

band worked at the electronics giant

Fujitsu. His pay had been cut by one-

fifth. The local work force had been

slashed by half.

By the time Japanese voters went

to the polls, they did not appear to be

approving a coherent economic poli-

cy so much as rejecting a seemingly

bankrupt one. The new ruling Demo-

cratic Party of Japan gained votes

with vague promises of subsidies and

job protections.

Ultimately, the vote seemed to sig-

nal Japan’s verdict that the embrace

of failure had, in the end, proven a

failure, opting instead for the comfort

of trying to muddle through.

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

Alarmed that genetically engi-

neered crops may be finding their way

into organic and natural foods, an in-

dustry group has begun a campaign to

test products and label those that are

largely free of biotech ingredients.

With farmers using gene-altered

seeds to grow much of North Ameri-

ca’s corn, soybeans, canola and sugar,

ingredients derived from biotech crops

have become hard for food companies

to avoid. But many makers of organic

and natural foods are convinced that

their credibility in the marketplace

requires them to do so.

The industry group, the Non-GMO

Project, says its new label is aimed

at reassuring consumers and will be

backed by rigorous testing.

The initials GMO stand for geneti-

cally modified organism. The project

will try to guarantee the same thresh-

old used in Europe, where labeling

is required if products contain more

than 0.9 percent of biotech material.

The project will not try to guarantee

that foods are entirely free of geneti-

cally modified ingredients, but rather

that manufacturers have followed pro-

cedures and undergone testing.

“There’s a vulnerability here that

the industry is addressing,” said

Michael J. Potter, the founder and

president of Eden Foods and a board

member of the Non-GMO Project, the

organization responsible for the test-

ing and labeling campaign.

As plantings of conventional crops

with genetic modifications soared in

recent years, Mr. Potter put in place

stringent safeguards to ensure that

the organic soybeans he bought for

tofu, soy milk and other products did

not come from genetically engineered

plants. He even supplies the seed that

farmers use to grow his soybeans.

But many other companies have not

been so careful, and as a result, Mr.

Potter said, the organic and natural

foods industry is like “a dirty room” in

need of cleaning.

“What I’ve heard, what I know, what

I’ve seen, what’s been tested and the

test results that have been shared with

me, clearly indicate that the room is

very dirty,” Mr. Potter said.

Hundreds of products already claim

on their packaging that they do not

contain genetically modified ingredi-

ents, but with little consistency in the

labeling and little assurance that the

products have actually been tested.

The new labeling campaign hopes to

clear up such confusion.

Dag Falck, a project board member,

said testing and labeling were needed

to protect the industry from the steady

spread of biotech ingredients. His

company has been testing for such

ingredients for several years and is

strengthening those measures.

“The thing is, if we have a contami-

nation problem that’s growing in or-

ganics, what will happen one day when

someone tests something and finds

out that organics is contaminated be-

yond a reasonable amount, say 5 or 10

percent?” he said. “Consumers would

lose all faith in organics.”

The Non-GMO project works with

companies to test their ingredients

and improve manufacturing pro-

cesses. It will also spot test products

in stores.

Sandra Kepler, the chief executive

of Food Chain Global Advisors, a con-

sulting company that administers the

project, said that it was too early to

draw conclusions and that much of the

testing had been done on ingredients

used by companies with safeguards

already in place.

The executives of several compa-

nies participating in the project said

their products had come up clean in

the tests. But several executives also

said they were aware of positive tests

for other companies, which they would

not identify.

“People are going to be reluctant

to say, ‘My brand of cereal, we found

some contaminated products and we

changed sources,’ ” said Michael S.

Funk, a project board member who

is co-founder and chairman of United

Natural Foods, a major distributor.

“Nobody wants to have that informa-

tion out there.”

LegoIs MovingBeyond Blocks

Failure Offers Lessons That Japan Would Rather Forget

HIROKO MASUIKE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

ILLUSTRATION BY THE NEW YORK TIMES

Peter S. Goodman, a reporter for The Times, spent nearly a decade report-ing from Asia.

A toy icon rebuildsitself. (Some risks included.)

Organic Food MakersMake a Pitch for Purity

LEGO

Ineffective reforms led Japanesevoters to switch loyalties toDemocratic Party candidates, in these posters, in the election.

PETER S.

GOODMAN

NEWSANALYSIS

Lego kitsnow feature

popularHollywoodthemes like

Indiana Jones.

Repubblica NewYork

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

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2009 VII

By CARL ZIMMER

If you could travel back 130 million

years, you might not be impressed

with the flowers of that time. They

were small and rare, living in the shad-

ows of far more successful nonflower-

ing plants.

Around 120 million years ago, a new

line of flowers evolved that came to

dominate many forests. Today, flower-

ing plants make up the majority of liv-

ing plant species. Out of flowers come

most of the calories humans consume,

in the form of foods like corn, rice and

wheat. Flowers are also impressive in

their diversity of forms and colors, from

lush, full-bodied roses to spiderlike or-

chids to calla lilies shaped like urns.

But for centuries, the history of

flowers has vexed scientists. Charles

Darwin, who surrounded himself with

flowers and experimented on them un-

til his death, once wrote that their evo-

lution was “an abominable mystery.”

Today, experts sound a note of

guarded optimism. The discovery of

new fossils is one reason. Scientists

are also finding

clues in living flow-

ers and their genes.

DNA studies

show that a handful

of species represent

the oldest lineages

alive today. The

oldest branch of all

is represented by

just one species: a

shrub called Amborella that is found

only on New Caledonia in the South

Pacific.

All flowers, from Amborella on, have

the same basic anatomy. Just about all

of them have petals or petal-like struc-

tures that surround male and female

organs. Over time, flowers became

more complicated. They evolved an

inner ring of petals that became big

and showy, and an outer ring of leaf-

like growths called sepals.

In the 1980s, scientists discovered

genes that guide development of flow-

ers. They observed that mutations in

a plant called Arabidopsis could set

off grotesque changes. Some caused

petals to grow where there should

have been stamens, the flower’s male

organs. Others turned sepals into

leaves.

The discovery echoed ideas first put

forward by the German poet Goethe,

who not only wrote “Faust” but was al-

so a careful observer of plants. In 1790

he wrote a visionary essay called “The

Morphology of Plants,” in which he ar-

gued that all plant organs, including

flowers, had begun as leaves. “From

first to last,” he wrote, “the plant is

nothing but a leaf.”

Two centuries later, scientists dis-

covered that mutations to genes could

cause radical changes like those

Goethe envisioned. Together, the

genes can set off the development of a

petal or any other part of an Arabidop-

sis flower.

Vivian Irish, an evolutionary bi-

ologist at Yale, and her colleagues are

learning how to manipulate poppy

genes. They have identified flower-

building genes by shutting some of

them down and producing monstrous

flowers as a result.

Their findings suggest that flowers

evolved in much the same way our

own anatomy evolved. Our legs, for

example, evolved independently from

the legs of flies, but many of the same

ancient appendage-building genes

were enlisted to build those limbs.

“I think it is pretty cool that animals

and plants have used similar strate-

gies,” Dr. Irish said.

When a pollen

grain fertilizes a

plant’s egg, it pro-

vides two sets of

DNA. While one

set fertilizes the

egg, the other is

destined for the sac

that surrounds the

egg. The sac fills

with endosperm, a

starchy material that fuels the growth

of an egg into a seed. It also fuels our

own growth when we eat grains.

In the first flowers, the endosperm

had one set of genes from the male par-

ent and another from the female. But

after early lineages branched off, flow-

ers bulked up their endosperm with

two sets of genes from the mother and

one from the father.

William Friedman, an evolutionary

biologist at the University of Colorado,

Boulder, does not think it was a coin-

cidence that flowering plants under-

went an evolutionary explosion after

gaining an extra set of genes in their

endosperm. “It’s like having a bigger

engine,” he said.

As he has studied how the extra set

of genes evolved in flowers, he has

once again been drawn to Goethe’s

vision .

“Nature just doesn’t invent things

out of whole cloth,” Dr. Friedman

said. “It creates novelty in very simple

ways. They’re not radical or mysteri-

ous. Goethe already had this figured

out.”

By TARA PARKER-POPE

This flu season is going to be stress-

ful for parents. Every sniffle and ev-

ery cough is going to be scrutinized,

awakening fears of the ominously

named swine flu virus. Here are some

answers to questions that will arise

during what experts predict will be a

very busy flu season:

Q.How worried should we be?A.When this new strain of H1N1 in-

fluenza emerged in spring, experts

feared it might follow the pattern

of the 1918 flu, the world’s deadliest

epidemic. That strain also showed up

as a relatively mild spring virus but

re-emerged in a more virulent form

in the fall.

The new strain of H1N1 is not follow-

ing that pattern. While it has account-

ed for about 90 percent of the flu virus

circulating in the Southern Hemi-

sphere, the strain is behaving a lot like

seasonal flu, said Dr. Neil O. Fishman,

an infectious-disease specialist at the

University of Pennsylvania.

“There is a sigh of relief that the

virus hasn’t mutated,” Dr. Fishman

told me. “Fortunately, the swine flu

that we’re seeing still is a moderate

disease that is behaving very much

like ordinary seasonal influenza.”

That said, Dr. Fishman noted that

the virus was unpredictable and

could still mutate. So people need

to be vigilant about washing their

hands, and if they develop symptoms

they need to stay home. And “ordi-

nary” flu is not to be taken lightly.

Each year in the United States, about

200,000 people are hospitalized with

severe flu symptoms, and 36,000 die.

Q.Are children at higher risk for swine flu?A.A main difference between swine

flu and seasonal flu is that people over

60 appear to have some immunity to

swine flu, while younger people seem

not to. And because children and

young adults are more likely to gather

in groups — at school and colleges —

they are more vulnerable to catching

all types of flu. So while the disease

does not appear to be more severe

than seasonal flu, a disproportionate

number of young people will probably

get it.

As with seasonal flu, some people

will get very sick and some of them

will die. Federal health officials report

that at least 36 children in the United

States have died of swine flu; most had

nervous system disorders like cere-

bral palsy or developmental delays.

Some, however, had been healthy;

they died of bacterial infections that

set in after the flu. Doctors speculate

that children with nerve and muscle

disorders can’t cough hard enough

to clear the airways, putting them at

higher risk for complications.

Q.What are the symptoms of swine flu? When does it become an emer-

The older girl was smart, neat

and perfectly behaved in school.

At every checkup, her mother

would tell me what a good girl she

was. She is the oldest, her mother

would say, so she

gets lots of atten-

tion, and she works

very hard.

When her

younger sister

turned out to be an

equally good student, the proud

mother explained that naturally

she wanted to be just like her older

sister.

Then a boy was born. When he

was a toddler, I began to worry

that his speech seemed a little

slow in coming. His mother was

perfectly calm about it. He is the

only boy, she said, so he gets lots

of attention, and he doesn’t have

to work very hard.

Everyone takes it personally

when it comes to birth order. After

all, everyone is an oldest or a mid-

dle or a youngest or an only child.

But that doesn’t mean the ef-

fects of birth order are as clear or

straightforward as we sometimes

make them sound. Indeed, birth

order can be used to explain ev-

ery trait and its precise opposite.

I’m competitive, driven — typi-

cal oldest child! My brother, two

years younger, is even more

competitive, more driven — typi-

cal second child, always trying to

catch up!

I surveyed pediatricians about

when parents are likely to bring

up birth order. Many cited the is-

sue of speech, especially when a

second child doesn’t talk as well

or as early as the first.

And parents are likely to talk

about mistakes they think they

made the first time around. This

time, we’re going to get it right

with toilet training. This time,

we’re going to sign the child up for

soccer.

“Too many parents are haunted

by experiences both good and bad

that they identify with their birth

order,” said Dr. Peter A. Gorski,

a professor of pediatrics, public

health and psychiatry at the Uni-

versity of South Florida.

That might lead them to clas-

sify their own children according

to birth order, he added, which

in turn can lead to “self-fulfilling

prophecies.”

Frank J. Sulloway, a visiting

scholar at the University of Cali-

fornia, Berkeley, and the author of

“Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Fam-

ily Dynamics and Creative Lives”

(Pantheon, 1996), points out that

second-born children tend to be

exposed to less language than el-

dest children. “The best environ-

ment to grow up in is basically two

parents who are chattering away

at you with fancy words,” Dr. Sul-

loway said.

He cited a Norwegian study,

published in 2007, which found

that eldest siblings’ intelligence

quotients averaged about three

points higher than their younger

brothers’.

Those differences in verbal

stimulation, like the differences

in I.Q., are “relatively modest,”

Dr. Sulloway said. But in a child

who is already vulnerable, a child

who may be temperamentally

less likely to attract adults’ atten-

tion or a child growing up in a less

stimulating home, being the sec-

ond child might be the added risk

that makes the difference, he said.

“Birth order doesn’t cause

anything,” Dr. Sulloway said.

“It’s simply a proxy for the actual

mechanisms that go on in family

dynamics that shape character

and personality.”

The MysteryOf Flowers

SANGTAE KIM/UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

SUSAN WALSH/ASSOCIATED PRESS

ESSAY

PERRIKLASS, M.D.

From obscure origins, astonishing biodiversity.

Firstborn,

Middle

Or Last?

Preparing Families for an Unusually Stressful Flu Season

Amborella trichopoda, found only on a South Pacific island,represents the oldest living lineage of flowering plants.

gency?A. In children, warning signs include

fast or troubled breathing, bluish or

gray skin, and persistent or severe

vomiting.

If a child isn’t drinking enough

fluids, is unusually hard to wake up,

is not interacting or is so irritable he

or she doesn’t want to be held, you

should call your doctor.

Adults with severe symptoms may

also complain about pain or pressure

in the chest or abdomen, sudden diz-

ziness and confusion.

Children with underlying neuro-

logical problems should be quickly

seen by a doctor if they run a fever. In

otherwise healthy children, the main

warning sign is that the child seems

to feel better, then appears to relapse

with a high fever.

This signals a bacterial infection

that must be treated with antibiot-

ics. Even though such infections are

seldom severe, the child should be

seen by a pediatrician as quickly as

possible.

Q.Should I bother getting a seasonalflu shot?A.Yes. Seasonal flu is as much of a

concern as it has always been. Given

that swine flu shots won’t be available

until late in the season, a regular shot

will protect you and your family from

the body aches, cough and misery of

seasonal flu, and allow you to cross

one worry from your list.

The new strain of H1N1 flu isbehaving a lot like seasonalflu, except that younger peopleseem morevulnerable to it.

Repubblica NewYork

FA S H I O N

VIII MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2009

By RUTH LA FERLA

Maya Yogev has a thing for leather

— her lambskin coats and jackets are

as malleable as wax. Her designs ex-

press a sensibility that is “on the dark-

er side,” she acknowledged, with their

somber colors, cascading lapels and

droopy shapes. They also bear more

than a passing resemblance to the de-

signs of Rick Owens, a fellow Califor-

nian whose brooding aesthetic is the

talk of the runways.

“I’ve been told it’s kind of copycat,”

Ms. Yogev said of her work. “That can

be kind of frustrating at times.” But

comparisons to Mr. Owens “can also

be useful,” she added. “Once you men-

tion his name, everyone is automati-

cally drawn.”

Her affinity for washed-out, goth-

tinged leathers and stretched-out

shapes is understandable: Ms. Yogev,

the designer of Grai, based in Los An-

geles, apprenticed with Mr. Owens at

a formative stage in her career. But

she is far from the only fashion maker

indebted to that designer’s particular

brand of urban decay.

In recent months, a veritable indus-

try has sprung up around Mr. Owens,

who may be fashion’s most imitated

designer. Rival houses are racing to

produce their own distillations of his

angular flaps, zigzagging zippers,

gossamer T-shirts and biker jackets

pliant as second skins.

In the tradition of Giorgio Armani,

Vivienne Westwood and Tom Ford, Mr.

Owens’s ideas are absorbed or copied

outright in collections as diverse as

those of Alexander Wang and Rag &

Bone, or on a more patently commer-

cial level, by Topshop and American

Apparel.

“He has certainly captured the mo-

ment,” said Kathryn Deane, president

of the Tobé Report, a retail newslet-

By ERIC WILSON

Ten years ago, when Amy Astley,

then the beauty director of Vogue, be-

gan working on a prototype of a spinoff

magazine for teenagers, the question

she was most commonly asked by po-

tential readers was this: “How can I

become a fashion model?”

“It was really depressing,” said Ms.

Astley, now the editor of Teen Vogue.

Now they ask how they can get her

job.

What changed, Ms. Astley said, is

that teenagers around the world have

become interested in all sorts of ca-

reers in fashion as a result of the indus-

try’s increasingly outsize place in pop-

ular culture. “Project Runway,” the de-

signer competition on television origi-

nally set at Parsons the New School for

Design in New York, has alone been

credited with causing a spike in appli-

cations to fashion schools. At Parsons,

applications have gone up 41 percent

over the last five years.

But this wave of designers and edi-

tors in training is coming at a moment

when the industry is shrinking; retail-

ers are collapsing; several magazines

within Teen Vogue’s parent company,

Condé Nast, have closed; and jobs, of

any sort, are scarce.

The situation is not entirely grim for

new fashion graduates in the United

States, even though the National Asso-

ciation of Colleges and Employers said

in March that employers expected to

hire 22 percent fewer seniors gradu-

ating in 2009 for entry level positions.

Normally about 90 percent of Parsons

seniors find jobs, but that figure dipped

by only 10 percent.

So what is a young person trying to

break into fashion supposed to do?

Let us take the example of Sang A

Im-Propp, who was a pop star in Ko-

rea before she decided, while on a busi-

ness trip to New York, that she wanted

to be in fashion. Ms. Im-Propp’s com-

mand of English was tenuous, but she

enrolled at Parsons and in short or-

der found herself an internship with

Victoria Bartlett, a noted stylist and

designer whom she admired. Ms. Im-

Propp found it difficult to understand

Ms. Bartlett’s heavy British accent,

and at first she thought she had mis-

understood just what Ms. Bartlett was

asking her to do. Get cupcakes?

Not just any cupcakes, but the

glossy butter-cream confections from

the Cupcake Cafe, which is a long walk

from Ms. Bartlett’s studio through the

garment district in Midtown Manhat-

tan, and it was freezing outside.

“It made me cry a lot,” Ms. Im-Propp

said. “Vicky is an amazing artist, but

she can be difficult.”

But Ms. Im-Propp persisted, and af-

ter many cupcake runs, was entrusted

with the research projects, location

scouting and shopping collections

Ms. Bartlett did not have time to see.

When she decided in 2006 to start her

own collection of handbags, under the

label Sang A, Ms. Bartlett personally

recommended her to a showroom.

Ms. Bartlett admitted she had been

a deliberate taskmaster with interns.

“You can’t be a princess in this busi-

ness,” she said. “People see fashion

from the end result, which is kind of a

false facade. They only see this beauti-

ful, glamorous world, but I don’t think

they realize it is one of the hardest ca-

reers out there.”

Kelly Cutrone, a publicist and re-

ality-show fixture, often starts a job

interview by telling the applicant,

“You’ll be very lucky if you start and

end your career liking clothes.”

Among the current crop of interns at

Teen Vogue, there is little fear that the

future of fashion will happen without

their participation. They tell stories

about 12-hour days of sorting through

piles of shopping bags looking for a sin-

gle skirt; or blisters from running gar-

ment bags around the city; or the dis-

appointment of being sent to a famous

designer’s showroom and glimpsing

only the messenger center. Or the

thrill, in the case of Media Brecher,

who is 20 and a student at Barnard Col-

lege, of seeing a headline she suggest-

ed for a denim story, “Bleach Streak,”

appear in the August issue.

“The truth is,” said the designer

Phillip Lim, “a lot of doors are shut

right now, and no one is going to open

them.” But Mr. Lim cited his own start

as a reason not to give up hope. As a

young salesman at Barneys in Los

Angeles, he was so naïve that he sim-

ply picked up the phone and called the

office of Katayone Adeli and asked for

a job.

Ms. Astley said: “Don’t listen to

other people. If you want to work in

fashion, you should do it.”

By ALEX WILLIAMS

Nearly every morning, Renaud

Dutreil, the chairman of the North

American unit of the luxury and

fashion conglomerate LVMH, rides

to his Manhattan office on a black

Gazelle, a stylish Dutch commuter

bicycle.

From his desk — which sits be-

neath a 1952 Robert Randall photo-

graph of a woman pedaling through

the countryside in gray flannel

Christian Dior — Mr. Dutreil over-

sees the business operations of

LVMH, which has several brands

that have focused on bicycles of

late.

Fendi, for example, recently in-

troduced the Abici Amante Donna,

a handmade $5,900 bicycle with a

front-mounted beauty case and sad-

dlebags in Selleria leather ($9,500

for the version with the optional fur

saddlebags).

At Louis Vuitton, the designer

Paul Helbers evoked bike-messen-

ger style in his line at the Paris run-

way shows in June. Last spring an-

other LVMH brand, DKNY, helped

execute the Bike in Style Challenge,

in which aspiring designers were

asked to create fashionable bike

apparel. And in June, Hublot, the

luxury watchmaker, partnered with

BMC, the Swiss bikemaker, to cre-

ate a sleek black 11-speed, for about

$20,000.

Until recently, bikes were merely

fashionable. Lately, it

seems, they are fashion — and they

don’t have to be ultraexpensive nov-

elty items to qualify. As fashion com-

panies start marketing bicycles and

bike gear, Mr. Dutreil, a supporter of

bicycle-advocacy programs in New

York, said he wants to see more cy-

clists pedaling around in high style,

just like that woman in the Randall

photograph.

“An elegant lady or man,” he said,

“on a bike that is elegant, that’s re-

ally the new art of living.”

Some purists worry that their be-

loved bikes are being turned into a

showy status symbol.

“There is definitely a downside to

biking when bikes become a fashion

fad,” Wendy Booher, 39, a journal-

ist in Somerville, Massachusetts,

wrote in an e-mail message. “If you

unleash a herd of teetering, wobbly

fashionistas into city streets without

any real knowledge of how to ride a

bike in traffic, accidents can (and

likely will) happen.”

There is also the risk of an expen-

sive bike being stolen.

But designers have marketed en-

vironmentally sensitive clothing in

recent years, so it makes sense that

some of them would eventually adopt

the greenest form of transportation.

“The luxury industry has to show a

new way,” said Mr. Dutreil of LVMH.

“It’s very logical to connect the art of

living, and the elegance, to a new du-

ty, which is to respect

our environment.”

With fur saddlebags, the Fendi Abici Amante Donna sells for $9,500.

FRED R. CONRAD/THE NEW YORK TIMES

An Unglamorous PathTo a Career in Fashion

ImitateThat

Zipper!

Urban Cycling, in Style

DUSAN RELJIN

Rick Owens’s much-copied biker jacket. Right, a version

by Helmut Lang.

TONY CENICOLA/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Teen Vogue interns often work 12-hour days running

errands and doing other tedious jobs. Here, they work

in the fashion closet.

ter. Once every decade or so, she said,

“everybody seems to be on the same

wavelength, and for now that wave-

length is Rick Owens.”

Mr. Owens seems to speak most

persuasively to designers on the cut-

ting edge: Alexa Adams and Flora

Gill of Ohne Titel; Haider Ackermann,

whose fall collection was dominated

by supple draped leathers; Gareth

Pugh in London; and Nicole and Mi-

chael Colovos of Helmut Lang, whose

slant-zipper, funnel-newck jackets and

sheepskin and leather coats, cut away

to reveal softly draped underlayers

and scrunched-up leggings, unmis-

takably echo those of Mr. Owens.

The Colovoses, who say that their

style has been shaped by the angular

construction and

complex layering

of the Japanese

vanguard, and by

the ghostly pal-

ette of painters like

Marlene Dumas,

maintain that such

comparisons are in-

evitable. “At times

everyone just seems

to come together,”

Nicole Colovos said.

“We’re respond-

ing to a feeling that

just gets channeled

somehow.”

That “feeling” — a

confluence of rock

star and crypt chic — is one Mr. Ow-

ens has been peddling for years. Since

founding his fashion label in Los An-

geles in 1994, the 47-year-old designer

has rarely strayed from his signature

style.

“Today everyone wants access to

his club,” said Ed Burstell, the buying

director for Liberty of London.

Mr. Owens’s emergence as fashion’s

center of attraction is a paradox. He

was, after all, long a shadowy figure in

the industry, an outsider based in Los

Angeles. In an e-mail message, he re-

sponded with terse resignation to the

suggestion that others were copying

his designs. “When something’s in the

air,” he wrote, “no one can really own

it.”

Repubblica NewYork