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Week 6, 2004
THE REGULARS: Summary
A) Song of the week: "Call Me" performed by Blondie
B) Penguin Readers: Christina Ricci - An Unusual Star [Portrait de 2001 de la comédienne américaine.]
C) The New York Times/Vows: Allison Charney and Adam Epstein http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/fashion/weddings/25VOWS.html
[Histoires de mariages : elle est chanteuse, elle passe tout le temps en tournée, comment trouver un mec ? Sa copine va lui trouver.]
D) The New York Times/The Ethicist [Conseils sur l'éthique et la déontologie : Puis-je épouser mon coloc gay pour qu'il bénéficie de mon assurance maladie ? Avais-je raison de refuser un cadeau d'une des parties d'un litige que j'ai entendu en tant que médiateur ?]
E) Slate/Dear Prudence: Alcohol-Induced Emotions [Conseils sur la vie sentimentale et la vie tout court : Comment faire alors que j'ai couché avec un collègue qui sort déjà avec une autre collègue ? Suis-je en train de tromper mon mari en acceptant les appels téléphoniques d'un ex ? Mon compagnon plus âgé et plus riche que moi dirige tout dans notre relation. Mon petit ami et moi n'avons rien à nous dire.]
F) Miss Manners: A Little Too Plain-Spoken [Conseils sur les bonnes manières : Pourquoi faire preuve de respect dans sa façon de parler aux autres ? Comment dois-je appeller mes beaux parents ?]

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A) Song of the week: "Call Me" performed by Blondie 

"Call Me" performed by Blondie

Colour me your colour, baby
Colour me your car
Colour me your colour, darling
I know who you are
Come up off your colour chart
I know where you're coming from
Call me on the line
Call me call me any anytime
Call me my love you can call me any day or night
Call me
Cover me with kisses, baby
Cover me with love
Roll me in designer sheets
I'll never get enough
Emotions come I don't know why
Cover up love's alibi
Call me on the line
Call me call me any anytime
Call me oh my love
When you're ready we can share the wine
Call me
Ooh, he speaks the languages of love
Ooh, amore, chiamami chiamami.
Oo, appelle-moi mon cherie, appelle-moi
Anytime anyplace anywhere anyway
Anytime anyplace anywhere any day, anyway
Call me my life
Call me call me any anytime
Call me for a ride
Call me call me for some overtime
Take me out and show me off
Put me on the scene
Dress Me in the fashions of the nineteen nighties
You're the man no in between
I know what you words can mean
Call me call me any anytime
Call me for a ride
Call me call me for some overtime
Call me in my life
Call me call me in a sweet design
Call me call me for your lover's lover's alibi
Call me on the line
Call me call me any anytime
Call me
Oh, call me, ooh ooh ah.
Call me my love.
Call me, call me any anytime.

^RETURN TO TOP^

Christina Ricci is an unusual film star. She has short legs and a round face. When she smiles, she is very pretty. But when she is serious, her eyes seem strange and frightening. She is only 20 years old, but she has already been in 29 films. What is the secret of her success? And is she really as strange as she looks?

Christina was born in 1980 in California, USA, the youngest of four children. 'I had a strange childhood,' Christina remembers. 'I was never close to my mother or father. But I loved acting. I was lucky. A Hollywood agent saw me in a school play when I was six years old...'

Christina's first film was Mermaids (1990) with the famous singer and actress Cher. She became famous as Wednesday – the serious-looking girl in The Addams Family (1991) and The Addams Family Values (1993). 'The director told me to show no feelings,' Christina remembers. 'That was easy.' After Casper (1995), Christina disappeared from films for a short time. She tried to get parts in Romeo and Juliet, Jurassic Park and Titanic, but without success. Slowly, she began to be successful again. She was in The Ice Storm (1997), with Kevin Kline. In Buffalo 66 (1998), she was very good – as a girl who shows no feelings again! In the same year, she played a pregnant teenager who destroys her family’s lives in The Opposite of Sex, and a girl called Lucy in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Then, in 1999, she was in Sleepy Hollow with her good friend, Johnny Depp. It was a big success. In this film she was a princess. 'At last, I played a woman who is not strange,' Christina laughs. 'Film-makers usually ask me to play strange, mysterious people. But I'm not strange in real life.'

Christina tries to live an ordinary life in New York, away from Hollywood. But she is becoming one of the busiest actors in America. She acted with Johnny Depp again in The Man Who Cried (2000). People can now see her in Bless the Child. She plays . . . another strange girl with a dark, mysterious side!

Not many famous child actors become successful adult stars. But, like Jodie Foster, Christina has succeeded. What is her secret? 'I'm not interested in my characters' feelings,' Christina explains. 'I'm completely different to my father. He was a psychiatrist. He understood people's feelings, but he left home when I was 13. I haven't seen him for five years. Maybe that's why I'm not interested in my characters' feelings. I just try to play reality.'

Christina is making a new film now – Pumpkin. In this film, she plays a cheerleader. 'But a cheerleader with a dark side,' she jokes . . .

Penguin Dossiers © Copyright Pearson Education Ltd 2001

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In January 2002, over dinner with her friend Judy Evnin in Manhattan, she lamented that while she had dated seriously, touring got in the way of marriage. Ms. Evnin, now the chairwoman of the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, N.Y., asked Ms. Charney to describe the man she was looking for. "Smart, funny and Jewish," was the reply. Ms. Evnin immediately thought of Adam Jonathan Fain Epstein, who was unattached, a Harvard graduate, like Ms. Charney, living in Manhattan and the son of her best friend from high school. Then she hesitated. She also knew he was more analytical than artistic. Mr. Epstein, 37, is a consultant on store locations for retailers and prefers Andrew Lloyd Webber and the Rolling Stones to Puccini. But then, thinking of the law of opposites, Ms. Evnin suggested him anyway.

When Mr. Epstein phoned that week, the conversation flowed. Ms. Charney, however, was headed to Memphis to perform, and Mr. Epstein was leaving for India. By the time both were back in Manhattan, he was dating someone else.

On the theory, he said, "that you can never have too many friends in New York," he invited Ms. Charney to lunch, but made it clear his intentions were only friendly. She agreed to this "nondate," as she called it, but then had a premonition: "If he takes me to Café Luxembourg, we're going to get married," she remembered thinking. When he left a message on her cellphone suggesting they meet there, she shrieked.

Over lunch Ms. Charney, who excels at games like Scrabble and Boggle, applied her dating test to the nondate: counting the minutes it took before the man asked a question with "you" as the subject. Mr. Epstein aced it.

Not long after, Mr. Epstein called to say that his relationship was over and to invite her on a real first date: a trip to the track to see the 2002 Belmont Stakes. They spent 11 hours together, at the end of which Mr. Epstein sang to her the score of Lloyd Webber's "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" — unaware that singing show tunes is a favorite Charney family pastime. "It was perfect to be sung to in this enthusiastic, passionate, yet talentless way," Ms. Charney remembered. Within weeks they were inseparable.

Visiting Ms. Charney at the Utah Opera Festival last June, Mr. Epstein suggested a hike. On it, he proposed. "The last 55 weeks with you have just been amazing," he told her with characteristic precision. "I hope the next 55 years of my life can be this great."

Their wedding on Jan. 18 at the University Club was a Broadway-style, jewel-toned affair, led by Cantor Melvin Luterman and choreographed by the bride's mother, Nancy Cooperstein Charney, the director and producer of the play "Talley's Folly." At one point the couple's college friends put on a skit. To the tune of "Sunrise, Sunset" from "Fiddler on the Roof," they sang:

When did she turn her mind to baseball?
When did he learn `Butterfly' by heart?
These are the things you do for true love
When you're smart.

"I can't believe you're all here and I don't have to sing," said the bride, who wore a cap-sleeved ivory ball gown. She glided on the dance floor like Violetta in "La Traviata," holding the hand of her father, the actor Jordan Charney, who plays a judge on "Law and Order."

After the ceremony, Ms. Charney said, "You never know when you can turn the corner and bump into the rest of your life."

^RETURN TO TOP^

We live in a country where more than 40 million people lack health insurance and thus reliable access to medical care. The solution to this problem is political reform, and so I hope you are working for that (if only by supporting candidates for public office who are). However, while awaiting utopia, your roommate might want to do something about that hacking cough (or whatever). If marriage is his best means to decent medical care, I see no ethical objections to you two kids' tying the knot. Nor would you be deceiving the university if you did.

It requires only marriage, not love. If it demanded the latter, many a married couple would lose their insurance. (And their privacy, when it came to the impossible task of verification.)

That said, what ethics doesn't proscribe, practicality might. Should you and your groom-to-maybe-be ever wish to part -- perhaps one of you falls in love in Massachusetts -- divorcing could be more complicated and expensive than getting married.
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Q:
I am a state-certified mediator and arbitrator. Recently I mediated a serious dispute to the satisfaction of both parties. One of them, an American-born Japanese businessman, offered to send me a special fish, prepared for eating, as a token of appreciation. I humbly refused the gift as a violation of my code of ethics. He was hurt by my rejection of his Japanese custom, meant only to express appreciation. Was I wrong? Abraham Best, Lauderhill, Fla.

A:
You were right. Acceptable business practices vary from culture to culture, and you could argue that when in Tokyo do as the Tokyovians (Tokyoites? Tokyoons?) do. However, you are not in Tokyo; you are in Florida and are bound by the mores of that state (insert presidential-election joke here) and the ethics appropriate to your profession. What's more, from the American perspective, that code is reasonable. Your case is already resolved and you cannot be corrupted by that fish gift, but it would be unwise to promote the idea that in future cases (perhaps even involving this man), a gift is expected in exchange for a satisfactory decision.

While your duty is clear, that Japanese businessman's hurt feelings are worthy of consideration. (Why does our concern with conflicts of interest trump the Japanese business ethics of gratitude and strengthened social ties?) And so you must assure him that your actions reflect local custom; they do not imply cultural superiority and certainly not a personal criticism.

^RETURN TO TOP^

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E) Slate/Dear Prudence: Alcohol-Induced Emotions [Conseils sur la vie sentimentale et la vie tout court : Comment faire alors que j'ai couché avec un collègue qui sort déjà avec une autre collègue ? Suis-je en train de tromper mon mari en acceptant les appels téléphoniques d'un ex ? Mon compagnon plus âgé et plus riche que moi dirige tout dans notre relation. Mon petit ami et moi n'avons rien à nous dire.]
http://slate.msn.com/id/2093842/
Dear Prudence: Alcohol-Induced Emotions
booze + co-workers = trouble.
Posted Thursday, Jan. 29, 2004, at 8:57 AM PT

Dear Prudie,
Two days ago I hooked up with a co-worker after I had had a lot to drink. The problem is that he has a new girlfriend who also happens to be a co-worker of mine. While we are not really friends, she is a sweet girl, and I see her almost every day. I feel awful for the way I behaved. I have no feelings for this man, and there had been no previous flirting. My instincts tell me to leave matters as they are, but then again it was my instincts (or failure to control them) that got me into this mess to begin with. I do not think it my place to confess to this girl, nor do I think it necessary to break up what seems to be a happy relationship because of a five–minute, alcohol-induced make-out session. Am I wrong? She has even expressed concern for the "worried" and "troubled" look on my face. I am having such a hard time deciding what is the right thing to do. What do you think Prudie?

—Repenting at Leisure

Dear Re,
It's a good thing Prudie just spoke to a twentysomething who confirmed that "hooking up" is the newest replacement for the euphemistic "dating." In any case, the first thing to do is lose the "worried and troubled" expression. Not that this necessarily applies to you, but facial cues are sometimes unconscious bids to have people ask, "What's wrong?" And why are you in such turmoil? It's not all that hard to keep something to yourself. Prudie's feeling about confessing is that the transgressor may feel relieved, but the injured party receiving the information feels only betrayal and angst. Instead of laying this hurtful information on your co-worker, let your penance be to feel guilty in silence and, of course, go and hook up no more ... particularly if you've had a snootful.

—Prudie, soberly
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Dear Prudence,
I am in a seven-year relationship (married five years). I have two wonderful little girls. Recently an old boyfriend contacted my parents looking for me. It has been 15 years since I have seen him. He continued to call my parents' home, asking for my number, even though my mom told him I was married. I finally had to call him and ask him to stop calling them. He was my first love and the love of my life. He's recently fallen on hard times and has also been ill. He and I now speak almost every day when my husband is at work. He calls me; I do not call him. I don't have many friends and enjoy speaking with him. We do not discuss anything sexual or make plans to meet. I have no wish to cheat on my husband, but he doesn't give me the time of day sometimes. He would rather be on the computer than spend time with me and/or the children. I admit I feel neglected. We rarely sit down and talk about things anymore, though we do have a good sex life. I don't know if I should stop speaking with my old boyfriend or not. If my husband ever found out, he would have a cow, as he knows how I felt about him. What do you think???

—Confused in Pennsylvania

Dear Con,
This is certainly a tangled state of affairs. You are not cheating, in the way that word is understood, and state you have no intention of doing so. However, your daily phone chats are something you do not want your husband to know about; ergo, you feel the need to be secretive—as though you were doing something illicit. This is probably a case of your guilty feelings providing the answer to whether or not you're doing something "wrong." You probably should decide if you want to fix what's wrong with your marriage as a separate issue from talking on the phone to Mr. First Love. And husbands having cows is never good, even if what you're up to would only warrant a calf.

—Prudie, directionally
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Dear Prudence,
I am in a relationship (for the last three years) with a wonderful man. We live in a beautiful home, have his and his cars, one of which I have kindly been allowed to use. He is quite wealthy, and I am not. I am given "wages," and in return I do everything. I am secretary, partner, nurse, cleaner—all quite normal I suppose. I attend all business meetings; I give him my input, which I believe to be quite helpful. All the power in the relationship, however, is on his side. He says to me he regards me as his wife, except I don't have the privileges of a wife. I feel quite empty. I understand that he made his wealth long before he met me—but I don't see why this means he automatically gets to have all the power. I am not allowed to turn on the air conditioning in 30-plus degree weather without "discussing it" and him agreeing. We work from home, and I feel resentful about being giving instructions all the time. Am I out of line?

—Wondering

Dear Won,
There's a lot Prudie doesn't know about your situation, but one thing she does know, because of your use of Celsius degrees, is that you are most likely not in the United States. What this means is that a cultural difference may be at work here, but whatever arrangement you have does not sound like a marriage. You may very well be regarded as a wife—by him—but the perception is not mutual, and whatever is taking place is clearly unsatisfactory to you. What you describe is really an employer-employee relationship, albeit a live-in one, with all that implies. You call him "wonderful," but you do not state the nature of the business or the level of the "wages." Whereas he sounds content with the way things are, you state that the imbalance of power leaves you resentful and empty. You really only have two choices. Talk openly about your unhappiness, and see if the situation is alterable. If he is willing to make things more comfortable and equitable for you, fine. If not, then the decision is yours whether to go or stay.

—Prudie, decisively
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Dear Prudence,
HELP ME!!! I am 16 years old, and I'm having boyfriend problems. When we just started going out, things were going great, and he always told me he loved me, and he would always just say those little things like, "You're pretty," or, "I love you" like every five seconds, and now it's just down to saying, "What are you doing?" and then complete silence till one of us says something, but now I am the one having to say, "I love you" when we get off the phone with each other. What should I do?

Sincerely,
—Ashley

Dear Ash,
Prudie supposes there could be two answers to your dilemma. One would be to say that many grown-up romances follow this pattern ... or that you are too young (or at least one of you is) for what is happening. Prudie will go with the second answer in this case. Obviously the two of you are not on the same page, and the relationship is unsatisfactory for you, so cool it with this particular fellow and wait for a time when the words spoken have a little more meaning. When people do not exactly know what the words mean, they are ... well, meaningless.

—Prudie, patiently

^RETURN TO TOP^

In European languages that have two forms of direct address, the informal one was once used only with intimates, children and servants. Now it is the formal form that is becoming a rarity, at least among the chic. In Japan, which has a grammatically intricate honorific language, business policies and generational changes in attitude have arisen to oppose its use.

In America, any language that confers a modicum of honor has been hooted out of common use. Surnames are omitted, even in introductions, and where they are still necessary -- on letters, for example -- they appear baldly, with no preceding honorific titles.

You guys have a problem with this? Miss Manners does, even though she knows that, as with so many disimprovements in modern life, this change arises from noble intentions.

The noblest of these is egalitarianism. A hierarchal language presumes superiors and inferiors, which is not as popular a concept as it was when only the superiors' opinion was counted. Women, employees and African Americans who used to be routinely addressed in the familiar by people to whom they were expected to use honorifics didn't care for it. For that matter, medical patients who are so addressed by those who expect to be addressed as "doctor" still don't. But couldn't the solution have been to accord such respect to everyone, instead of to no one?

The answer comes back that respect must be earned by the individual. Miss Manners disagrees even with that. There is a basic respect we are all due as human beings, and beyond that, respect due to age, relationship and position. Grandparents should not have to be tested on their ideology and deeds to enjoy family deference. Government officials should have the respect due the offices they hold, even though the people who put them in office have become disillusioned with them.

Related to this is the idea that it is not honest to pretend to respect someone one does not. This quickly grows into a grandstand denunciation of etiquette as an enemy of free speech, whose forms inhibit people from saying exactly what they think.

Well, of course. If everyone went around telling others exactly what they thought of them, we would have a society . . . very much like the one we have now. Where people casually give one another the finger in the street, and "Here's what's wrong with you" talks at home.

Etiquette couldn't and doesn't squelch free speech. It just suggests that a reflection on the consequences might head off some of that speech -- and couldn't you put the rest a bit more gently?

A more winsome argument is that this way of speaking is "just being friendly." To treat all other people as if they were intimates must surely warm their lonely hearts. It also deprives them of choosing their friends, and distinguishing them from strangers, acquaintances and enemies. Because Miss Manners would like to see respect enter our routine language, she hesitates to mention the only really valid arguments: that we all got good and sick of those squabbles about Miss, Mrs. and Ms., and that it is so hard to remember names.
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Q:
Dear Miss Manners:

I have been with my boyfriend for 9-1/2 years. We have been living together for four years. I was only 16 when we started dating so I called his parents "Mr. and Mrs. surname." They have never referred to themselves by their first names to me. So I don't feel comfortable calling them by those names. They always refer to themselves as his mother or his father. Although I don't feel comfortable calling them by their first names, I also feel that I am too old and have known them too long to call them Mr. and Mrs. What is the proper way to handle this? When is it correct to call them by their first names?

A:
By Miss Manners' calculation, the gentleman's parents are aging at the same rate you are, and have known you just as long. Therefore, they retain the senior privilege of deciding when or whether they want you to address them less formally -- which is not to say that you cannot press their son to press them to do so.

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The family of Joynal Abedin worried for more than two weeks after the father of four failed to return home from work the week before Christmas. Then, on Jan. 5, Abedin's wife, Razia Begum, received a $17,000 bill from Washington Hospital Center in the mail. She rushed to the hospital with family friends to see whether it had anything to do with her husband. Because of federal privacy laws, Begum had to wait one more day before her fear was confirmed: Her husband had been killed in a hit-and-run accident in Prince George's County.

He was just a two-minute walk from their home in Silver Spring. Although he was carrying identification, some of it contained a previous address, and Prince George's County police had been unable to locate his family, police officials said. Cpl. Diane Richardson said yesterday that an officer had gone to the Hyattsville address listed on Abedin's driver's license but did not find the family there. At the time, Abedin was still alive.

But Abedin's family and friends are asking why police could not find the family when the hospital could find the correct address to send a bill, and why police did not match the victim's identity with a missing person's report the family filed with Montgomery County police. It is not clear whether police continued to check on Abedin's condition or whether the hospital notified police of Abedin's death. Police said they do not routinely match unidentified adult victims with computerized missing person's reports.

Family friends said that Abedin's youngest child, Zakir, 13, called a Montgomery County detective every day to ask whether officers had found his father, who moved to the Washington area from Bangladesh 10 years ago.

LeRoy Tillman, a spokesman for Washington Hospital Center, said it was not the role of hospital officials to notify the family. "It is the responsibility of the authorities investigating the incident to identify the injured person and to notify their family members or next of kin," Tillman said. "We could not legally release any information about the patient's identity because of federal confidentiality laws. It would have been inappropriate."

The saga of Abedin's death, first reported on Fox 5 News, has angered many in the Bangladeshi community. The Embassy of Bangladesh and others in the community donated money to help pay for Abedin's family to accompany his body to Bangladesh for burial. Wasim Ashraf, head of the embassy's consular section, said Abedin had a green card and was an "excellent worker" who had previously served as a domestic aide in the homes of several ambassadors. "That really hurt us," Ashraf said. "Anyone who came across him was impressed with his work, and they really liked him."

Abedin, 50, a chef at an Adelphi Indian restaurant, was hit about 10:30 p.m. Dec. 18 while crossing the street after getting off the bus at New Hampshire Avenue and Metzerott Road in Adelphi, according to Prince George's police. He was taken to Washington Hospital Center, where he died just after midnight. His body was sent to the D.C. medical examiner's office, according to hospital officials.

Kazi Arif Hossain, 38, a longtime friend of Abedin's, said: "I'm really, really upset about how they handled this, the hospital and the police, especially the police, because he had a phone book in his pocket" with family information. "He had a wallet with his ID." Hossain said he was troubled that the family learned of Abedin's fate only after receiving the hospital bill. Because Abedin's wife does not speak English, Hossain went with her to the hospital.

Hospital officials told Hossain that federal law prohibited them from releasing any information on the patient. For the next 16 hours, they pleaded with police and hospital officials to tell them whether they knew the whereabouts of Abedin. "Can you tell me what happened to this person?" Hossain said he asked repeatedly of hospital officials. "Is he still alive or dead?" On Jan. 6, Hossain was finally told to go to the D.C. medical examiner's office, where it was confirmed that Abedin was dead. "I said, 'It can't be true. He's been missing almost two weeks. He died on Dec. 19, and nobody contacted us,' " Hossain recalled saying. "If we hadn't got a hospital bill, we may not have found my friend."

Staff writer Lisa Rein contributed to this report.

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4) The New York Times Magazine: Civil Disobedience Against Affirmative Action [Idée : dénoncer le racisme de la discrimination positive en s'engageant à mentir sur son ethnie]
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/14/magazine/14CIVIL.html
December 14, 2003
Civil Disobedience Against Affirmative Action
By MARK EDMUNDSON

The idea of using ''civil disobedience'' to protest affirmative action began with a letter sent this year to Jay Nordlinger, managing editor of National Review, and quoted by Nordlinger in his Aug. 11 column. ''Jay,'' the letter began, ''what would happen to affirmative-action programs if a significant portion of college applicants intentionally misrepresented their races?'' The author of the letter speculated that even if only a few white students identified themselves as minorities (or vice versa) on their college applications, such ''civil disobedience'' might ''introduce just enough margin of error to bring out the pure intellectual chaos and moral repugnance of affirmative action.'' 

There followed a vision of a university dean standing before Fox News cameras, turning away a white student who lied on her application. Imagine: a liberal, standing in front of a classroom door, keeping out a student on the basis of her race -- shades of Southern governors in the 1950's blocking school entranceways! 

Nordlinger loved the idea. ''To what lengths would admissions officers go to verify the race or ethnicity of an applicant?'' he wrote. ''Would there be a medical unit at the ready, prepared to examine blood and to assess DNA?'' 

The upshot was a Web site, NoRace.org, and a plan for action. The site encourages students to take the following pledge: ''I, the undersigned, am a prospective college student and pledge to specify my race incorrectly on my college entrance applications as an act of civil disobedience in protest of the use of racial preferences in college admissions.'' 

Though you may disagree with Nordlinger and his followers over affirmative action, you have to admire their opportunistic wit. Confronted with this summer's Supreme Court opinions upholding the core principles of affirmative action, conservatives have resorted to a provocative sort of guerrilla theater to make their case. 

But does lying about your race on a college application really qualify as an act of civil disobedience? The followers of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi put their lives on the line to protest injustice; because of them, we associate the words ''civil disobedience'' with extreme courage against ruthless state power. Lying about your race on a college application, on the other hand, looks a little more like self-interested scheming. 

^RETURN TO TOP^

Perri Hankins, a volleyball coach at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, recently flew to Laguna Beach to spend 12 days with friends. It was her first vacation in 15 years. "I'm not so sure I can relax," she said. "Right now there's all that pressure with what [work] I'm missing." She planned to keep tethered to her job by cell phone and e-mail.

Hankins' is an extreme case of a larger phenomenon: the disappearing American vacation. U.S. employees work longer hours and get less time off than their counterparts in Europe and many other industrialized nations, statistics show. Recent surveys suggest even more erosion. Some U.S. companies have stopped paying for vacations, and many workers don't use the time they have. This year 87% of employers are providing paid vacations, down from 95% in 1999, according to an annual survey released last month by the Society for Human Resource Management, a professional association of more than 175,000 members based in Alexandria, Va.

Americans plan to take 10% less vacation time this year than last, according to a survey released in May by online travel seller Expedia Inc. Twelve percent of 1,000 randomly selected U.S. respondents don't plan to take any vacation. On average, Americans get 16 days of vacation a year but take only 14 days, the survey showed. By contrast, workers in Italy average 42 annual days of vacation, the French get 37, Germans get 35 and Britons get 28, according to 2001 statistics from the World Tourism Organization.

Even the famously industrious Japanese get 25 annual paid vacation days and, according to the International Labour Organization, work about 100 fewer hours per year than Americans do. Only a handful of nationals in the labor organization's 50-country survey, including Czechs and South Koreans, work more hours than Americans.

You could write a book about why Americans take so little time off. In fact, someone has. Joe Robinson, a Santa Monica resident and former magazine editor, wrote "Work to Live: The Guide to Getting a Life," which was released in January. He has also organized a petition campaign urging Congress to mandate three weeks of paid vacation per year. Robinson and other experts note that in European nations, the law generally requires companies to offer paid vacations. The U.S. has no such federal law. So Europeans feel entitled to vacations, and Americans don't, Robinson said.

Combine that feeling with Americans' "overwork ethic," by which we define ourselves by our jobs, and technology that makes for 24-7 schedules, and you have a recipe for what he calls "vacation starvation." Hankins, for instance, figured she was allowed at least two to three weeks of annual vacation, but until this year she didn't take it. "People have to work too hard," she said. She was already dreading the pileup of work when she returned.

Then there are the guilt and fear factors. A fifth of Americans say they feel guilty about taking a vacation, the Expedia survey showed. "Employees feel guilty asking for the time, even if it's on the books, and particularly when times are tough, since they know the boss would rather have a root canal than give it to them," Robinson said. Even if no threat is made, workers may worry that they'll be laid off or passed over for promotions if they take vacations, he added.

The prolonged recession has further cut into time off. "When it's an employers' market, they're in a position to eliminate or decrease benefits," said Jennifer Schramm, manager of workplace trends and forecasting for the Society for Human Resource Management. With U.S. unemployment hitting a nine-year high of 6.4% in June, it's not hard to figure out what type of market exists now.

Vacation starvation can result in disgruntled employees, stress-related illnesses and family tensions, experts say. Balancing life and work issues is regularly one of the top five factors in job satisfaction, Schramm's surveys show. When pursuing his vacation campaign, Robinson said, "I hear from 35-year-olds with heart attacks and families breaking apart" because of overwork.

Some employees are coping by taking frequent but shorter vacations. More than half of Americans' leisure trips - a growing number - are four nights or fewer, according to Peter Yesawich, managing partner of Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown & Russell, a marketing firm based in Orlando, Fla.

Others are fighting back by faking illness. About 20% of Americans say they have planned on calling in sick on a Friday or Monday to create a long weekend, according to a survey of 1,024 adults conducted in May for online travel seller Orbitz. That tactic is losing its effectiveness, however, because more than two-thirds of employers now lump sick days, vacation days and personal days into a single "paid time off" plan - nearly double the number in 1999, Schramm's survey showed. In other words, the days you call in sick are subtracted from your allotted vacation time.

There are other signs that workers are getting weary of the treadmill. More than half of Americans say they don't get enough time off, and 29% say they'd trade a pay raise for more vacation time, according to a recent survey by Yesawich's firm.

In what Yesawich sees as a "basic shift in social values," younger people are even more eager for time off. Thirty-seven percent of adults younger than 35 in the survey said they would take more vacation over more pay, versus 15% of the 55-plus set. Schramm's surveys also suggest younger adults put a high value on vacations. In the long run, that is a source of hope for the overworked.

If the U.S. economy improves, which would give workers more clout, "I see employees asking for and getting more time off," she said.

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Robert Zangrando has had it up to his chest, nose and eyes with his neighbor's smoking and he's taking her to court to get her to quit. Zangrando, a retired University of Akron history professor who lives in Stow, was in Summit County court Thursday with his wife and lawyer. Together they are seeking a restraining order against his next-door neighbor, Nicole Kuder, 28, that would prohibit her from smoking outdoors within 30 feet of her condominium.

Zangrando, 71, and his wife, UA instructor Lisa A. Pace, contend the smoking affects their health and has become a nuisance.

Before the hearing, Kuder said, ``I have tried to accommodate them, and this is the result.''

The couple's attorney, Ed Gilbert, called the situation an emergency and wanted Common Pleas Judge Marvin Shapiro to rule immediately on the restraining order request. Shapiro declined because Kuder came to court without an attorney. Akron attorney Tom Adgate was retained by Kuder just before the hearing and was unable to attend. Shapiro delayed ruling until the hearing resumes Tuesday with Kuder and her attorney.

Kuder and Zangrando have been neighbors in a condominium complex on Higby Drive for about two years. Their two-story units are separated only by a shared wall. They share a front porch, and a wooden fence separates their back doors.

Zangrando said his neighbor's cigarette smoking is apparent whenever he opens a window or steps outside his home. He said the fumes compromise his health, causing him to wheeze and cough. He said he suffers from lung problems, including emphysema, and has had asthma in the past. He said the smoking is such that he is reluctant to let his dog or two cats outside. ``It hits you right away, the minute you walk out the door. It catches me, I start coughing, I know she's smoking, I can see she's smoking visually, and I can get the effects of the smoke when I inhale what should be fresh air in my own back patio,'' Zangrando told the judge.

Kuder rents the condo she and her family live in and is not permitted to smoke inside the unit. Zangrando and Pace have owned their unit since marrying in 1996. ``It's a constant reality. She's out there smoking, and I have been appealing to her since she first moved: Please, if you're going smoke, would you move away from the house because the fumes come in our house, and we no longer have discretionary use of our house,'' Zangrando told the judge. He said he has tried for more than a year to convince Kuder to smoke elsewhere, to no avail. He said he tried to reach an agreement in October, but Kuder and her husband, who does not smoke, refused to sign.

Kuder said Zangrando wanted her to walk to a nearby parking lot to smoke. She said he snoops on her, photographs her movements and has yelled at her to ``go, kill my family'' with her cigarettes. ``I tried to be nice and go out back and compromise, but they constantly harass us,'' Kuder said outside court. ``There have been times when I've had friends over, and he comes out screaming at us. It bothers me, but at the same time, I try to be a respectful smoker.''

Phil Trexler can be reached at 330-996-3717 or ptrexler@thebeaconjournal.com

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ANOTHER election year, another recount fiasco in Florida. On January 6th, a local election was held for a seat covering parts of Broward and Palm Beach Counties. A total of 10,844 votes were cast, and Ellyn Bogdanoff won by a margin of just 12 votes. There were also 137 undervotes, in which voters' choices failed to register. Under state law, there must be a manual recount of all undervotes and overvotes (ballots marked more than once) in any election where the winning margin is less than 0.25%. But no recount is possible, because the votes were cast using touch-screen voting machines whose only paper output is the final tally.

The machines can be asked to print out the same result again, of course. But as Robert Wexler, a Democratic congressman, likes to point out, “a reprint is not a recount”. He has just filed a suit arguing that the machines violate state law, and asking a judge to order that they be equipped with printers, so that voters can verify their decisions on paper. The paper copies would then be placed in a ballot box, for recounting if necessary.

This case has highlighted a growing debate about the merits of high-tech voting machines. Touch-screen machines are particularly controversial, since they generally do not produce paper output, cause confusion among voters, and seem to go wrong rather often. It is (just) possible that the 137 undervotes in the Florida case were all cast by voters who deliberately chose to go to the polls, stepped up to the machines, and then decided to abstain. It seems more likely that they pressed the wrong button, or that the machine failed to register their votes properly. But without a paper trail, it is impossible to say.

Machines that do not produce bits of paper verified by voters are also open to the charge that their software is full of bugs, or has been rigged to favour a particular candidate. Stories abound of voting machines producing dodgy results. In one case in Indiana, 5,352 voters somehow cast 144,000 votes. In Virginia, machines subtracted votes rather than adding them to a candidate's total in some cases. Machines have broken down and been taken away, only to reappear with their seals broken; memory cards (on which votes are recorded) have gone missing.

Conspiracy theories have been fuelled by damning memos leaked from Diebold, one of the leading makers of touch-screen voting machines. The firm's voting-machine software, which also leaked on to the internet, was found to contain numerous security flaws.

The Help America Vote Act (HAVA), passed in 2002 in the wake of the Florida fiasco of 2000, was supposed to sort things out by replacing old-fashioned punch-card machines (and their infamous “hanging chads”) with more modern voting equipment. But HAVA has only served to confuse matters further.

The federal government, for good reason, is not allowed to tell the states how to run their elections. Instead HAVA offered $3.8 billion, which the states could apply for in order to purchase HAVA-compliant voting machinery. But the technical committee that is supposed to decide on the HAVA standard has not even been appointed. In the meantime, the money is being doled out to the states anyway. Some of the new equipment purchased meets only the now-obsolete 1990 standard; other machines meet the 2002 standard, which experts also regard as flawed. The result is a mess. Even the regulations surrounding gambling machines are tighter.

Yet there is surely a simple answer: new voting machines should be required to produce a paper output that voters can check. Any funny business, whether accidental or deliberate, could then be exposed by a hand recount if necessary. In November, California became the first state to require that all voting machines must produce a paper trail by 2006. But the debate is far from over.

To begin with, some electoral officials oppose the idea of paper trails on the basis that printers will be too expensive, or they might jam. This strikes Rebecca Mercuri, an electronic-voting expert at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, as an odd argument: after all Diebold and other voting-machine manufacturers also make cash registers and ATMs, and they seem to work.

Another objection is that voters might walk off with the paper ballots. Dr Mercuri's preferred solution is that voters should be able to see the paper ballot under glass to verify it, after which it drops into the ballot box. Another option would be to use paper forms that voters place under optical readers, which would confirm their choice before the form is placed in the ballot box. The counting is automated, in other words, but not the voting.

It is hardly rocket science. But it is too late to sort out the mess before November, when perhaps 20% of the votes will be cast using paperless touch-screen machines. Worries over their reliability and security, and the lack of a common standard, mean the new machines may have made a Florida-like fiasco more rather than less likely. “We're going to have digital hanging chads,” says Dr Mercuri.

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8) The Economist: French driving [Réflexions sur l'installation des radars automatiques en France.]
http://www.economist.com/World/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2374298
French driving: Speed, rules and psychology
Jan 22nd 2004 | PARIS
A revolution: speed cameras cut speed

AT A time of high unemployment and religious tensions, one issue grips the French: speed cameras. According to one poll, they are the top subject of conversation, put there by 82% of respondents. To the indignation of drivers who had so far escaped these devious devices and their fines, some 100 cameras were installed last autumn. A further 900 are coming in the next two years. For people used to speeding with impunity, the shocking thing is that they work.

Last year, for the first time in 30 years, the number of deaths on French roads fell below 6,000—a drop of 21% from 2002. Ministers have fallen over themselves to claim credit. Reducing road deaths was one of Jacques Chirac's election pledges. And with reason: every year, more than twice as many people die on the roads in France as in Britain.

But the efficiency with which these machines have deterred speed-junkies has baffled the French. A critical survival skill in a rule-bound society is to know how to break the rules. The country suffers from what Jean-Louis Debré, president of the National Assembly, calls “legislative inflation”. The yearly statute books have grown in size from 1,020 pages in 1989 to 1,600 in 2002.

In general, the more rules, the more they are broken. No smoking in the office? No dog-poo on the pavement? No double parking? Pouff! Such intrusions into personal liberty are met by a shrug of indifference. The French even have an expression—faire sauter les PV (skipping fines)—for getting speeding fines waived by pulling political strings, a practice that automatic fines have stopped. “Violating legislation”, writes Béatrice Houchard in “Road Delinquency”, a new book, “is a national sport.”

Hence the perplexity over the speed cameras. “It's a small revolution”, commented Le Monde, noting the “incredible fact” that the French seem to be driving more slowly, even on Paris's ring-road. Rémy Heitz, a road-safety minister, calls the change a “veritable psychological rupture”. A case study in the transformation of a national psyche? Or a simple lesson that zero tolerance works?

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9) WYNC On the Media radio show: Snooping in the dark [Pourquoi les médias restent-ils silencieux face à la dernière atteinte du gouvernement Bush aux libertés des Américains ?]
http://www.wnyc.org/onthemedia/transcripts/transcripts_010904_snoop.html
[Il est également possible d'écouter cet entretien en ligne sur le site http://www.onthemedia.org]
Snooping in the Dark
January 9, 2004

BOB GARFIELD: From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. Brooke Gladstone is away. I'm Bob Garfield. When Attorney General John Ashcroft was preparing a second phase of The Patriot Act, the Center for Public Integrity got a hold of a working draft and released it publicly. The ensuing uproar over draconian police powers killed that legislation aborning. Call that the frog jumping into a pot of boiling water, and jumping in a panic right out. But what if you put the frog in warm water and raised the temperature one slow degree at a time? That seems to be the Bush administration's strategy behind a new provision in the Intelligence Re-Authorization Bill signed by the president late last year. Unbundled from the scuttled Patriot Act II and inserted into the routine spending bill, it gives subpoena power to federal investigators for a whole range of information from any broadly-defined financial institution, which means the government can now obtain a terrorist's credit card expenditures -- or yours -- secretly, without a court order. But where were the shouts of warning this time? James Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, says the slow boil method has a lulling effect, and the media are only partly to blame.

JAMES DEMPSEY: Well I think to some extent we all dropped the ball. My office, which I think was the first who discovered it, we didn't realize the import of this provision until after it had passed both houses. We did issue a little press thing at the time, when it was still not finally enacted. We didn't push it. We didn't hype it. We didn't pump it. And it did remain very much below the radar screen. There was a little blowup on the floor, when the conference report, the final form of the bill was brought forth for final passage, but by then it was certainly too late.

BOB GARFIELD: Maybe I'm naive, but it seems to me that when some legislator is trying to bury a particularly sensitive provision in an otherwise mundane piece of legislation, that there's a staffer on the hill will immediately get on the phone and call all the usual suspects in the interest groups and in the press to say, you know, check out paragraph such and such of the omnibus such and such spending bill, because this is a really bad deal. Where were those tip calls during the debate over the Intelligence Authorization Act?

JAMES DEMPSEY: Well, I have to say that to some extent, those staffers are nervous about their own jobs. They -- again, the Intelligence Authorization Bill, although the bill itself is ultimately public, the numbers behind it are secret, and almost all of the debate leading to it is conducted in a cone of silence. And there is a specific case within the past year and a half where a staffer did precisely what you suggested, and that staffer lost his or her job over that. So that has a chilling effect, absolutely. Those folks -- it's a tough job, and they really are very nervous.

BOB GARFIELD: And is there any reason that I shouldn't be terrified by the scenario that you just described?

JAMES DEMPSEY: Well, I think overall, in the past two and a years since 9/11, one of the major themes of concern has been the growth of secrecy, including secrecy, again, that I don't think comes close to protecting the national security, but that does obscure government decision-making from the kind of oversight that the public deserves and the kind of oversight that will actually help us win this war. We need that oversight to win this war on terrorism, but I'm afraid that secrecy has become the byword, not only in the executive branch, but increasing sensitivity in Congress. I think the -- there's a concern that the intelligence committees of the Congress generally are being certainly less publicly questioning of anything that the government is undertaking.

BOB GARFIELD: Well apart from admonishing us to generally be vigilant, how would you advise the press to recognize these end-arounds that -- I don't know if they subvert the process, but they certainly avoid the scrutiny of the media and enable legislation like this to become law.

JAMES DEMPSEY: Well, I think that the press by and large has been pretty good on covering the issues and of recognizing that a lot of what the government is saying just doesn't quite add up and of being prepared to report on that. I'm really looking at this incident from the perspective of what I need to do differently. When I finally said to a reporter, you know, "Why didn't you cover this when it could have made a difference?" He said "Well, why didn't you call me up and stick it in front of my nose?" And he had a point. So, I didn't do that. Next time I'm going to try to.

BOB GARFIELD: Well, Jim, thank you very much.

JAMES DEMPSEY: My pleasure.

BOB GARFIELD: James Dempsey is executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

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