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View the calendar of US primaries and caucuses at this website: http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P04/events.phtml?format=chronological

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Week 8, 2004
THE REGULARS: Summary
A) Song of the week: "Can't help falling in love" performed by Elvis Presley
B) Penguin Readers: It's Carnival Time! [Reportage de 2001 sur le Carnaval]
C) The New York Times/Vows: A Honeymoon Before the Wedding
[Histoires de mariages : Enterrer sa vie de jeune fille en faisant une croisière avec ses copines.]
D) The New York Times/The Ethicist [Conseils sur l'éthique et la déontologie : Puis-je utiliser l'accès internet sans fil de mon voisin ? / Je travaille dans la marine marchande, et le nouveau capitaine me donne des consignes dangereuses. Puis-je continuer à les contourner ?]
E) Slate/Dear Prudence: When To Run and Not Eat [Conseils sur la vie sentimentale et la vie tout court : Les cousins nous ont pas annulé un dîner chez eux alors qu'is avaient la gastro que nous avons attrapée de leur faute. / J'ai 14 ans et je n'ai envie de rien faire. / Depuis que j'ai commencé à sortir avec cette femme, un ami à elle se découvre une vocation de prétendant rival. Dois-je supporter les tergiversations de la belle ? / Mon nouveau petit ami est jaloux de ma famille.]
F) Miss Manners: Talking Heads [Conseils sur les bonnes manières : Mon incident avec des voisins bavards à l'opéra. / Comment ma fille peut-elle répondre aux questions indiscrètes ? / Mes amies ne respectent pas mon temps libre.]
G) WYNC On the Media radio show: Primetime Primary [Une nouvelle émission de téléréalité : devenir candidat à la présidentielle américaine.]
H) The Economist/Risk series: Living dangerously [Une série d'articles sur le risque : introduction sur la difficulté d'évaluer les risques.]
I) Demotivator® of the week: Achievement [Les messages hélas trop vrais qui vont vous démotiver dans votre vie personnelle et professionnelle. Cette semaine, "La réalisation"]

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A) Song of the week: "Can't help falling in love" performed by Elvis Presley
(words & music by George Weiss - Hugo Peretti - Luigi Creatore)

Wise men say only fools rush in
but I can't help falling in love with you
Shall I stay
would it be a sin
If I can't help falling in love with you

Like a river flows surely to the sea
Darling so it goes
some things are meant to be
take my hand, take my whole life too
for I can't help falling in love with you

Like a river flows surely to the sea
Darling so it goes
some things are meant to be
take my hand, take my whole life too
for I can't help falling in love with you
for I can't help falling in love with you

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At this time of year, in cities as different as Venice and Rio de Janeiro, men and women are putting on masks and unusual costumes. Why? Because it's carnival time! The carnival tradition began two thousand years ago, with the Roman winter festival of Saturnalia. During the festival, people from different classes ate together, drank together and sometimes slept together! With the arrival of the Christian religion, the Roman festival became a Christian one. The word 'carnival' means 'goodbye to meat'. For Christians, Carnival was a time when they ate well and had fun before 'Lent' – a time when Christians tried to eat less. Carnival always ended on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent began.

Carnival mostly takes place in countries like Spain, Italy and South America, countries with a strong Roman Catholic tradition. The most famous carnivals take place in Venice, Rio de Janeiro, and New Orleans. Today, the main idea of carnival is to wear costumes that change how you look and enjoy the fun. In Rio de Janeiro and New Orleans, there are exciting street parties with music and dancing. Thousands of people fill the streets, many in costume. In Rio it's traditional for men to dress as women at carnival time. In both cities, wonderful floats carrying people dressed in colourful costumes pass slowly through the streets. Musicians and dancers follow them. It's something that once you see, you don't forget!

In Europe, there are fancy dress dances and masked dances. People spend months making their costumes. The ten-day Venice carnival is probably the most famous European festival. The beautiful old houses and the green waters of the city make it an excellent place to have a carnival. It always begins in the famous Piazza San Marco, probably the most beautiful city square in the whole world. Thousands come to the carnival and sometimes Venice is so full of people that the entrance to the city has to be closed. The narrow streets are full of people in beautiful costumes. In the many squares of Venice, musicians play, and the theatres are always full.

All you need to become part of the carnival in Venice is a mask, and you can find these in every shop. You can buy the masks already painted if you want, but many people buy a simple white mask and paint it themselves. Once you have your mask, you should go to a masked dance. Or, if you're wearing a costume, you could win a fancy dress competition. In Venice the best masked dances are private, but there are many dances that are open to everyone, and they're great fun too.

In the last days of the carnival, there are parties by the side of the canals. Then on Shrove Tuesday there's always a big masked dance in the Piazza San Marco again. Above the square, fireworks light up the night sky. At midnight the bells ring above the square to tell you that it's the end of the festival. Then it's time to go home and become your ordinary self again . . .

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Like many other brides, Lisa Rus took a three-day Royal Caribbean cruise to the Bahamas as part of her wedding plans in November. Ms. Rus, a teacher from Pikesville, Md., basked in the sun, went snorkeling and danced until 3 a.m.

It was not, however, her honeymoon. The trip, which she took three weeks before her wedding, was a bachelorette party for her and four members of her bridal party. Richard Gerber, the bridegroom, was left behind. The Rus party was, in fact, one of three such gatherings on that cruise — a sign of the growing popularity of what some are calling destination bachelorette parties.

In place of the traditional alcohol-besotted evening at a club like Chippendales, travel agents, hotel representatives and couples about to marry report that a growing number of brides in their late 20's or in their 30's are being whisked away by their girlfriends on prewedding cruises, or on long spa weekends in distant resort cities.

Ms. Rus, 35, was looking for some prewedding stress relief, but not a hangover. "I am too old to go to a string of bars and wear a veil and run around," she said. Jodi Sacki, one of her bridesmaids, added, "It was the girls' last hurrah before entering the circle of marrieds and the circle of babies."

The parties are typically organized and paid for by the bride's friends. In Ms. Rus's case, each woman paid her own way and together split the cost of the bride's fare. The trip, booked by phone, cost $624 each, including airfare and two shared inside cabins.

"It's definitely a trend," said Roz Resnick, a vice president of Austin Travel in Melville, N.Y. (www.austinvacations.com). "Everything chan ges when one in the group gets married. They want this time for themselves as women, partially getting away from their responsibilities and things they have in their daily lives."

Women are also increasingly making their way to Las Vegas, long the desination of choice for bachelor parties. "Just a few years ago, there was one bachelorette party for every 10 bachelor parties," said Rob Powers, a spokesman for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (www.lasvegas24hours.com). "Now the number is almost even." About 100 bachelorette parties a month come to Las Vegas, he noted, staying three to four days, mixing clubgoing with a spa visit.

The Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa in Atlantic City and the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Conn., also report increases in bookings for bachelorette parties.

Before Maja Russer's wedding in Copper Mountain, Colo., in September 2002, Mrs. Russer, 29, had a traditional bachelorette party — which included manicures, pedicures and a lingerie shower — and a weekend road trip to the Paris Las Vegas hotel with five girlfriends. They lounged by the pool sipping bloody marys by day and went gambling and dancing in the evenings.

Since January of last year, 132 spa bachelorette parties have been held at the Paris's Spa by Mandara (www.mandaraspa.com), said Rebecca Livingstone, the spa's sales and marketing coordinator.

Laurel Krome, 26, who is to be married to Drew Thimme, 28, in Chicago in August, said that bachelorette parties in bars had become "very tacky." Instead, Ms. Krome and her sister and maid of honor, Katie Krome, are planning a "girls' weekend" of pontoon boating, waterskiing and other activities for 15 friends over Memorial Day at a rented cabin at Lake Geneva in Wisconsin.

"We will be bringing in manicurists and pedicurists so we can pamper ourselves while watching `Sex and the City' reruns," said Katie Krome, who estimates it will run $200 a person for the weekend. "We are modeling this event after our fond memories of a lazy weekend in college where we had no concerns, lots of girlfriends and a refrigerator full of margarita mix. It is a true testament to the last days of the single life."

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D) The New York Times/The Ethicist [Conseils sur l'éthique et la déontologie : Puis-je utiliser l'accès internet sans fil de mon voisin ? / Je travaille dans la marine marchande, et le nouveau capitaine me donne des consignes dangereuses. Puis-je continuer à les contourner ?]
http://www.nytimes.com
February 8, 2004
THE ETHICIST: Wi-Fi Fairness
By RANDY COHEN

Q:
I accidentally discovered that the wireless Internet (Wi-Fi) card in my laptop lets me access the Web in my apartment. Clearly a neighbor has set up an access point with a signal strong enough to reach my kitchen. I use the Internet at home only to check e-mail, which will not affect my neighbor's usage. Can I use his signal? Should I offer to pay part of his monthly charge? Siona Listokin, Berkeley, Calif.

A:
If you can easily ID your neighbor and you regularly use his signal, you should ask his consent and offer to share the costs of this shared resource. But what about the more common situation, when you can't identify those whose wireless access points you encounter? ''If you're driving around town and someone's left a node open and you pop on and use it just to download some e-mail, feel free,'' advises Mike Godwin, senior technology counsel for Public Knowledge, a public interest group in Washington concerned with technology and intellectual property.

Godwin is persuasive. The person who opened up access to you is unlikely even to know, let alone mind, that you've used it. If he does object, there's easy recourse: nearly all wireless setups offer password protection. And while the failure to lock a door may indicate carelessness, not consent, in this case it does suggest indifference. Godwin does warn of the tragedy of the commons, however, which here means you have an obligation not to use too much bandwidth -- by downloading massive music files, for example, which would inconvenience other users.

But do you cheat the service provider, if not an individual consumer? Is there a free-rider problem? Time Warner Cable says there is, and it has taken action against those who have touted the availability of an open Wi-Fi node on computer bulletin boards. The company argues, in effect, that while you may have a glass of water at a neighbor's, you may not run a pipe from his place to yours.

Property rights, as understood by Time Warner Cable, say, are worthy of consideration, but overemphasizing them may stifle the development of the public good that is universally available wireless Internet access. Consider the Interstate highway system or any public library: enormously useful institutions whose costs and benefits we all share. Cellphone service offers another approach, enabling anyone who pays a monthly fee to make a call from anyplace in the world (until he stumbles into a dead zone).

''This is a period of transition, and the natural reaction of some institutions is to clamp down,'' Godwin concludes. He's right. But that does not create a moral imperative to defer to those who do. Rather, you may use but not overuse Wi-Fi hot spots you encounter.
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Q:
I am the chief mate of a merchant ship. My company hired a captain inexperienced in the work we do and disinclined to consider my concerns. Some nights, I know his decisions are unsafe, so I instant-message the off-duty captain or other mariner friends. If the consensus is that the command is unsafe, I defer it until the captain wakes up in the morning. I often must lie about why the task wasn't done (or he would fire me). Is deception in the interest of safety ethical? Anonymous

A:
A one-time deception might be necessary in an emergency, but a continuing pattern of deceit is not an honorable (or efficacious) solution to this problem. If your captain is a danger to his ship and crew, you should alert your company. If it does not respond, you should contact the appropriate regulatory agencies. Incidentally, your captain's name? It isn't Ahab, is it?

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E) Slate/Dear Prudence: When To Run and Not Eat [Conseils sur la vie sentimentale et la vie tout court : Les cousins nous ont pas annulé un dîner chez eux alors qu'is avaient la gastro que nous avons attrapée de leur faute. / J'ai 14 ans et je n'ai envie de rien faire. / Depuis que j'ai commencé à sortir avec cette femme, un ami à elle se découvre une vocation de prétendant rival. Dois-je supporter les tergiversations de la belle ? / Mon nouveau petit ami est jaloux de ma famille.]
http://slate.msn.com/id/2094575/
dear prudence: When To Run and Not Eat
Can you tell your hosts to stuff it when they're contagious?
Posted Thursday, Feb. 12, 2004, at 4:27 AM PT

Dear Prudence,
I'm still so ticked off at my husband's relatives that I don't know what to say to them when I see them again. We went to my husband's cousin's house for dinner on New Year's Day to see him and his wife and some out-of-town relatives. We arrived at the house to shouts from the out-of-towners of: "Don't kiss us!! We've all got the flu!!" Great. The host or hostess could have called and told us to stay home. Two days later my husband, my daughter, and I spent the entire day throwing up. We had to cancel our plans to go out with friends for dinner and a symphony concert—an evening we'd been looking forward to for months. It gets worse. My husband's cousin is an M.D. and his wife an R.N. They stood in their kitchen after dinner (the rest of the relatives were draped on couches and chairs looking wan) telling us how hard it is to prevent the spread of gastrointestinal illnesses. They said the G-I viruses are the most contagious of any, which is why hospitals and cruise ships are hotbeds of G-I transmission. I'm thoroughly disgusted with them, and I hope that they caught the bug themselves. What should we have done on New Year's Day? Should we have handed over the pies I made for dessert and fled the house as soon as we realized most of the people in it were ill? Should we let them know how unhappy we are that they didn't warn us and tell us to stay home?

—Queasy

Dear Queas,
Prudie might not be the most dispassionate person to ask, having been called the female Howard Hughes for being so germ-phobic and for having her hand sanitizer ever at the ready. Having stated this bias, Prudie thinks that handing over the pies and fleeing would have been the rational choice. There is no need for social niceties when someone's bad judgment puts you in a position of risk. Should the cousin and his wife ever mention that day, you need not feel shy about reporting on the aftermath of their hospitality.

—Prudie, microbially
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Dear Prudence,
I really don't know how to begin. My life has always had its up and downs, and I am only 14. I am very active in sports and love to write and sing. But lately, everything is just, how do I put this, blah, if you know what I mean. I feel tired, not wanting to push myself on the basketball court, and I am starting to get mad easier. My coach told me I need to stop being so hard on myself. My school work is fine, I am getting good grades, but I know I can do better. My friends aren't any help because they are a bunch of druggies who don't care what happens to me. I feel like I am screaming at the top of my lungs in the hallway at school, and no one even says anything or even cares. I feel like crawling into a dark hole and never coming out. Just lying there until someone who cares drags me out. Please, give me some answers, and tell me how I can be "me" again.

—Lost

Dear Lost,
You are depressed, which is what all those weird and hopeless feelings are about. But the good news is that you can be "you" again. Your age or family situation could be part of your feeling alone, and Prudie would hazard a guess that your friends are definitely a problem, but you seem to know that. Please go—like now—to your school counselor or your mom or whomever you feel most comfortable talking to and ask for help. That person should get you to a professional, who will most likely use talk therapy and perhaps medication to help you get back on track. Many other kids have had your experience, and Prudie is sure that help is there if you ask for it. Good luck!

—Prudie, confidently
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Dear Prudence,
I've been seeing a lady I like very much for about three months. After we started dating, she announced that she has a "friend" she goes sailing with. This "friend" found out she was starting to date someone and then said he wanted a chance at her affections as well. They have known each other for 10 months, and none of this ever came up before ... at least that is what I am being told. They are going on a 10-day sailing trip, and she has spent the last three weekends on the boat with her "friend" getting ready for the trip. She is working to get her captain's license, and she needs to spend time on the ocean and the boat to achieve that goal. She tells me she likes me and wants to continue dating, but questions keep running through my head. I would like to hear what you think of this situation.

Thanks,
—Dry-Docked

Dear Dry,
This landlubber thinks the captainette is using one of you to reel in the other—though she cannot say for sure which one. (Odds are it's the guy with the boat.) In any case, neither three months nor 10 months is a terribly long period of time, and this girl does not exactly inspire trust, so Prudie suggests you leave her to paddle her own canoe, as it were.

—Prudie, nautically
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Dear Prudence,
I am 19 years old and have been dating the same guy for two years. (He is a year younger than me.) Everything was going pretty well in our relationship until he started to get jealous of my family. It started out small when my grandparents, a cousin, and her boyfriend came for my graduation, and I wanted to spend some time with them. I asked the b.f. if he would be with us, and he said no, he did not want to get in the way. So he purposely went out of town the weekend of my graduation so he wouldn't have to come. Things got worse when he wanted me to love him and only him. He didn't even want me to care about anyone in my family, so I told him I would try. I can't do it, though, because I love my family. It has now gotten to the point where he is saying things like, "If your parents and me were both going to be executed and you could save one, who would you save?" I can't answer questions like that. Please, I need some help. Should a person have to choose between family and a significant other? Or is there a point where you do have to choose and let the other one go? (By the way, we have had sex, and I think that might be complicating things.)

—Leery

Dear Leer,
Prudie won't throw any fancy diagnostic names at you for what is wrong with this guy, but suffice it to say that there is plenty wrong. That kind of jealousy and possessiveness is not normal, and were you to continue with him, he would be controlling your life with some potentially disastrous consequences. A mentally healthy person does not demand that the beloved choose between him/her and family. For future reference, having sex does not turn someone into a suspicious, possessive maniac who makes up scenarios about executions.

—Prudie, normally

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Q:
Dear Miss Manners:

I brought my neighbor, a well-brought-up young man who recently moved here from a small town to attend college, to his very first opera, "La Traviata."

During the first act, the couple in front of us discussed each duet, the costumes and almost everything else. I tried your patented Miss Manners glare, but as they were in front of us, it had little effect. I tried a subtle "harrumph." Then a bit less discreet throat-clearing. Nothing worked.

In desperation, just before the curtain was to rise on the second act, I turned to my guest and -- in a voice loud enough to carry to the row in front -- said, "I can't believe some people are so rude as to speak during the performance. I am glad to see your parents taught you how to behave at a performance."

I then winked and nodded to the folks in front of us.

He caught my meaning. At the end of the second act, the loud man in front stood, turned around, and began to berate me for implying that he and his wife were misbehaving.

He became so nasty and belligerent, I roused myself from my dumbstruck silence and finally interrupted his rant by telling him to either sit down and remain quiet or I would call an usher (the most severe punishment I can possibly imagine at the opera).

The man responded by grabbing my throat. Fortunately, my guest was quickly able to intervene and the man was removed.

These days, I realize people shout to actors on the screen at movie theaters and one may talk on the phone at a concert with near-impunity. However, I thought the opera was the last bastion of civility.

What are we to do? How can we protect our institutions from this plague?

A:
Opera, the last bastion of civility? Miss Manners, who attends alarmingly often, could have disabused you of that fantasy. This is not the first story she has heard of (attempted) murder at the opera in real life.

But there was provocation. The original rudeness did not justify your encouraging further rudeness by denouncing these people in their and others' hearing. The time to call an usher was when he got your goat, not your throat.
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Q:
Dear Miss Manners:

Please advise my daughter on how to respond to adults who ask her nosy and/or personal questions, such as what her dress size is, what she made on the SAT, and what colleges she is applying to.

These individuals have no interest other than to compare my daughter to their children. They would never pose such questions to another adult. They only ask my daughter such things when I am not around. My daughter doesn't want to say, "That's personal." Nor does she want to lie.

I instructed her to say that she did well and, if pressed, to say that she does not remember her scores (they were excellent). Or, to tell them that her mom said that she could not reveal her scores. What does a young lady say to a nosy adult?

A:
Miss Manners believes that young ladies should appear modest and differential to adults. It sets them a good example. You might therefore suggest that she look at the floor for a minute and then fix her interlocutors with a steady eye as she says, "I'm a little shy. You go first. What's your dress size? What was your grade point average?"
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Q:
Dear Miss Manners:

When I quit my job a few years ago my mother gave me some good advice: "Make sure you fill up your time with things YOU want to do, otherwise people will fill up your time for you." I planned a nice schedule that includes all the things I love: keeping my home neat, volunteering at my children's school, studying martial arts, heading the children's organization at my church.

Even with all these activities, I still find myself with at least three or four free hours a day. My friends, neighbors, and family are aware that I have this free time. They all have opinions on how I should use this free time, and are constantly calling to ask me to take someone dinner, serve on this or that committee, teach a lesson in church, baby-sit their children, etc.

I don't want to do these things! I have chosen some wonderful activities for myself, including several that serve the community, and I don't want to take on any more.

Miss Manners, how do I politely tell them "no"? The usual phrase, "I'm afraid I'm not available," is obviously not true -- all these people know that I have lots of free time.

A:
If having free time made a lady available to anyone who asked for a favor, there would be no respectable ladies left. Miss Manners wonders that there are (aren't there?), considering how often even wise mothers, such as yours, neglect to teach the ability to say "no" politely.

"I'm afraid I'm not available" is true, and you should be saying it with conviction. Stating what you are doing then is unnecessary and unwise, as it opens you to debate. Should anyone be so rude as to inquire, you may truthfully say, "I'm terribly busy then," without specifying that you will be busy relaxing.

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January 30, 2004

BOB GARFIELD: Starting this month, you can go on line to check your email, pay your bills, ***** or -- begin your own presidential candidacy. Showtime Television has officially launched its American Candidate Website and is accepting applications. Those applications will be narrowed down to 12 contestants who will compete reality television-style to be the first American Candidate. In Showtime's 10-episode primary, nobody will have to start fires or eat bugs, but contestants will nonetheless have to run the humiliating and degrading gauntlet called candidacy. Emmy Award-winning and Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker R. J. Cutler, maker of The War Room and American High is behind this operation. He joins me now from the NPR studios in Los Angeles. R. J., welcome back to On the Media.

R. J. CUTLER: Well, thanks for having me. It's good to be here.

BOB GARFIELD: Tell me the eureka moment -- presidential race as reality television. Where did this idea come from?

R. J. CUTLER: In the wake of the 2000 presidential election, I was approached by my executive producing partners, Jay Roche and Tom LaSalle who were responding to this sense that you have a lot of people in this country who are simply not participating in the process. Well, why is that? There was a eureka moment, [LAUGHS] kind of, in the wake of the success of American Idol when we were all sitting around with Kevin Reilly who was then the head of the cable network FX, and Kevin said "Have you ever thought about doing it American Idol style where people voted on a weekly basis and eliminated one person after another?" And that kind of triggered the current form of the show which is a weekly show. Now the show is very much not going to be like American Idol. It's meant really to be a giant simulation of a presidential election, and it will be.

BOB GARFIELD: Well I want to talk about that moment though. When Kevin Reilly uttered those words, [LAUGHTER] did everybody laugh?

R. J. CUTLER: Oh, of course.

BOB GARFIELD: But then you got thinking, didn't you? [LAUGHS]

R. J. CUTLER: Of course! Well, quite frankly, in that moment, I had the same reaction that I think we've seen replicated, you know, every time the show has been announced or spoken about in the press or wherever. There is something about the nexus of presidential politics, television, a competition culture, reality television -- all of those things that are --when you put them together, it's surprisingly revelatory. It touches a nerve. Very early on, when we first announced we were working on the show, I was doing an interview with somebody on television, and the first question she asked was "Do you mean to tell me that television is going to be involved in the selection of the next president of the United States?" And of course my reaction was, of--yes, television will be involved.

BOB GARFIELD: When wasn't it? [LAUGHS]

R. J. CUTLER: That's right.

BOB GARFIELD: Let me borrow her righteous indignation, [LAUGHTER] if not her literal question by asking you why isn't this a trivialization of the democratic process?

R. J. CUTLER: Well, certainly it could be. Or you could say, look we're going to take everything we do very, very seriously, and we're going to draw the curtain back and show how the process really works. We're going to show just how challenging it is to run for president. We're going to show the difficult decisions that have to be made between your convictions and what is politically expedient. We're going to show how polling works. We're going to show how opposition research works. We're going to show all of those things. We also want to have a perspective on presidential politics. We want to be able to illuminate its more absurd qualities, and we want to be able to reflect upon the role that the media plays, and we want to ask questions about what we're looking for in a presidential candidate.

BOB GARFIELD: Tell me mechanically how it's all going to work.

R. J. CUTLER: The mechanics have begun already. We've received thousands of requests for applications. Anybody who qualifies under the Constitution to run for president is eligible to be on our show.

BOB GARFIELD: Well you and your partners are, in effect, the smoke-filled room that's going to determine the pool of candidates. What are you looking for in that pool?

R. J. CUTLER: We want everybody who tunes in to the show to have somebody whose vision resonates with them and excites them, so we will put together a diverse group and introduce them to the viewing public this summer. And then the process will begin, and our candidates will crisscross the country. Each week we'll be in a different town. The process will begin as a retail process where the emphasis is on going door to door and meeting people and caucus-like events, and as the weeks go on and the field is narrowed, the process will be more of a wholesale process, and the emphasis will be more on media and advertising and large-scale debates. The candidates on our show will have access to seasoned political strategists. They'll have access to opposition research, research on themselves. At a certain point they'll have to choose a running mate. In every way our goal is to emulate what happens in an actual presidential campaign.

BOB GARFIELD: Allow me to end, please, with a compound hypothetical. [LAUGHTER] If the winner of American Candidate emerges to actually seek public office, and if that person does wind up eventually in the Oval Office, and if that person turns out to be a nightmare president of the United States, Doctor Frankenstein, what will you do?

R. J. CUTLER: You know, we've elected, we've elected [LAUGHS] all sorts of people to the highest office in this land, and all sorts of people to, to the Congress, to the Senate. I don't fear that we're going to do worse through a process that identifies people outside of the political class.

BOB GARFIELD: R. J. Cutler, thank you very much.

R. J. CUTLER: It's certainly my pleasure.

BOB GARFIELD: Filmmaker R. J. Cutler is creator and executive producer of American Candidate, to air on Showtime this summer. To learn more about American Candidate, click on www.AmericanCandidate.com.

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For businesses, governments and citizens, misjudging risks can be costly.

SINCE September 11th 2001, it has become obvious to all that the world is a risky place. Even before that atrocity, the world had seemed far from safe to many, especially those concerned with business and finance. The end of the dotcom craze and the bursting of the stockmarket bubble had already created huge uncertainty. But those are only the most recent examples of unexpected events that can make a mockery of people's plans.

Today's perception of heightened risk is fostered by more than al-Qaeda. Globalisation, for one, has increased the sense of peril. Natural and man-made disasters, including forest fires, earthquakes, big industrial accidents and various transport calamities, have added to the feeling of being under siege. According to a joint study by Belgium's Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters and A.T. Kearney, a management consultancy, growing globalisation happened to coincide with an increased frequency of both man-made and natural disasters (see chart 1).

Part of this fear is irrational. After all, earthquakes pay no heed to a rise in free trade. What has changed is that telecommunications and media coverage now ensure that such disasters are reported from ever more far-flung places.

But part of the perception of increased risk is justified. Some technologies are indeed making the world a riskier place, creating new potential hazards such as untried drugs and genetically modified crops, as well as innovations that can scupper the best-laid business plans (such as Napster in the music industry). Blow-ups of markets and firms often reflect risks in the real world. Terrorism, or even rumours of it, can send fortunes sinking. A new epidemic such as SARS can ravage an entire industry (in this instance, world travel).

Despite such perils, for most people in rich countries life has become much safer in a number of important ways. Over the past century their life expectancy has risen by around two-thirds. Workplaces, the wider environment and many diseases have become less hazardous. Democracy has spread. Wars in the rich world have become less likely. Even terrorism has become less of a worry in some places, such as Northern Ireland, Italy and Germany.

So it is not strictly true to say that life has become more risky; instead, some risks have become smaller, others have shifted to different people, and new ones have sprung up to take their place. This survey will review some of these shifts in the burden of risk and explore an extraordinary phenomenon: that when people confront risk, whether they are running governments, businesses or their own affairs, they tend to mismanage it.

LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE

Risk is different from uncertainty, which is unquantifiable. It is more of an educated gamble based on the odds. Taking such educated punts has become easier, thanks mostly to two factors.

The first is information technology, which has made it easier for people to study many past risks in the hope of learning from them. For example, life-insurance companies have looked back at records of births and deaths to estimate lifespans, create actuarial tables and set insurance premiums. Thanks to computer models, the odds on a freakish storm or earthquake are better known, epidemiologists are more successful at tracking diseases, and even man-made crises such as banking debacles and stockmarket crashes can be catalogued and studied to produce better (though, as we shall see, still far from perfect) forecasts. Such technology is also providing better information on the costs of such mishaps when they do occur.

The second factor that has made it easier to quantify risks is the growing use of markets. Markets are especially good at shifting risks from a party that does not want to bear them to one that does. Insurance, for example, can move the cost of a house burning down from a home owner to the insurance company and its shareholders. A stockmarket listing can shift business risks from a single family to thousands of investors worldwide. Risks, though, are not as easy to trade as bananas or cars. People vary in their view of risk, and of how to value it.

For all the progress in using such tools, perhaps the biggest obstacle to dealing effectively with risk remains human beings' perceptions and misperceptions of it. People tend to get risk wrong in a variety of ways, often consistently. A growing awareness of this has been revolutionising economics. It has also been changing the way corporations, governments and citizens deal with the risks they face. This survey will argue that the largest gains will arise from coming to terms with this softer side of risk.

More and more of the world's risks these days are taken on in financial markets. Stockmarkets, which on one view are simply an estimate of the future rewards of all firms discounted by their risks, have become more volatile in recent years. This is partly because technology has made financial markets more efficient, which makes them swing more quickly as the economic outlook changes.

But not all of the volatility in the markets is a response to real changes in fortune. In their eagerness to minimise the risks of financial markets, investors sometimes exacerbate their wobbles. The sheer sophistication of the instruments to manage the risks of market moves may, paradoxically, have made them riskier. Perhaps the biggest risk of all remains a very human emotion: panic, which can cause markets to seize up completely because they are insufficiently liquid, as nearly happened during the LTCM hedge-fund debacle in 1998.

Those wobbles in financial markets have led to a boom in derivatives (meaning financial contracts—such as futures, options and swaps—derived from the prices of other securities). The chairman of America's Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, thinks that this kind of financial innovation is good for the global economy. It makes the financial system more flexible, increases the potential rate of economic growth and allows banks and businesses to control the level of risk they take.

Yet many disagree. Last year, Warren Buffett, America's most famous investor, called them “financial weapons of mass destruction”. Certainly the new market for credit derivatives, in effect a type of insurance against bond defaults, is causing worries. And America's Freddie Mac, a quasi-governmental mortgage underwriter, had to restate billions of dollars in profits because of improper valuations of its massive derivatives portfolio. Around 90% of the world's 500 biggest companies now use derivatives, according to a poll last year. This survey will argue that some of the worries over derivatives stem not from any inherent evil, but from their power to disguise the intentions of their users.

Companies used to concentrate on the more easily spotted risks, such as financial ones. Now, just as bosses have learned to use sophisticated tools to manage financial risks, they are facing a whole array of new hazards. Increased scrutiny of corporate governance after the scandals in America and Europe has complicated their life. Increased regulation makes managing a company a minefield. Globalisation has intensified competition. Instant communications and heightened media interest mean that a company's reputation can be quickly and easily tarnished.

Governments have the most to learn about risk. Without a better grasp of the costs and benefits of the rules they create to control it, they can do more harm than good. In most rich countries they are still expected to take on risks when markets fail. Yet they have been making bad choices: banning some activities that carry low risks and potentially high benefits, and encouraging others that are highly risky without offering much return.

One of the trickiest problems in dealing with an uncertain future is people's seemingly irrational response to it. But advances in psychology have given us a much better understanding of the way people behave in the face of risk. The results are striking, as the next article will explain.

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I) Demotivator® of the week: Achievement [Les messages trop, trop vrais qui vont vous démotiver dans votre vie personnelle et professionnelle. Cette semaine, "La réalisation"]
http://www.despair.com

"You can do anything you set your mind to when you have vision, determination, and an endless supply of expendable labor."

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NASHVILLE, Jan. 24 -- The school honor roll, a time-honored system for rewarding A students, has become an apparent source of embarrassment for some underachievers. As a result, all Nashville schools have stopped posting honor rolls, and some are also considering a ban on hanging good work in the hallways -- on the advice of school lawyers.

After a few parents complained that their children might be ridiculed for not making the list, lawyers for the Nashville school system warned that state privacy laws forbid releasing any academic information, good or bad, without permission.

Some schools have since put a stop to academic pep rallies. Others think they may have to cancel spelling bees. And now schools across the state may follow Nashville's lead. The change has upset many parents who want their children to be recognized for hard work. "This is as backward as it gets," said Miriam Mimms, who has a son at Meigs Magnet School and helps run the parent-teacher association. "There has to be a way to come back from the rigidity."

The problem appears unique to Tennessee, because most states follow federal student privacy guidelines, which allow the release of such things as honor rolls, U.S. Department of Education officials said. "It's the first time I've heard of schools doing that," said department spokesman Jim Bradshaw. But Nashville school lawyers based their decision last month on a state privacy law dating to 1970 -- a law that is not always followed because no one challenged the honor-roll status quo.

School officials are developing permission slips to give parents of the Nashville district's 69,000 students the option of having their children's work recognized. They hope to get clearance before the next grading cycle -- in about six weeks at some schools. Until then, school principals are left trying to figure out what they can and cannot do. Sandy Johnson, chief instructional officer for the Nashville schools, says the restrictions go "far beyond the honor roll." "It's for anything having to do with grades and attendance or anything normally reserved just for the student or parent," she said.

Getting parents to sign permission slips will not help protect students from being left out, but at least it will comply with the law, school officials said. Christy Ballard, general counsel for the state Education Department, said she has received "a lot of calls" since the Nashville decision and will recommend that all Tennessee public schools get honor-roll permission slips from parents.

In Knoxville, school district spokesman Russ Oaks said officials do not think posting good information about a student violates state law. He said they put such information in the same category as sports statistics. But some school systems already get parents to sign a release before student information is made public. Others think it might be a good idea to get rid of the honor roll altogether, as Principal Steven Baum did at Julia Green Elementary in Nashville. "The rationale was, if there are some children that always make it and others that always don't make it, there is a very subtle message that was sent," he said. "I also understand right to privacy is the legal issue for the new century."

Baum thinks spelling bees and other publicly graded events are leftovers from the days of ranking and sorting students. "I discourage competitive games at school," he said. "They just don't fit my worldview of what a school should be."

Parents at most schools, though, have been close to outrage over the new rule. "So far, what we've heard parents say is 'This is crazy. Spend your time doing other things,' " said Teresa Dennis, principal at Percy Priest Elementary School. "It does seem really silly."

A similar issue over student privacy went to the U.S. Supreme Court two years ago, when some parents objected to students grading one another's work. The court sided with tradition in that case, ruling the long-standing practice of teachers asking students to swap papers and grade them in class does not violate federal privacy law. "It's not always clear what falls into" privacy laws, said Naomi E. Gittins, a lawyer with the National School Boards Association. "Schools often take a more cautious route."

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4) The Associated Press: Hotel Criticized for Charging for Water [Un hôtelier anglais critiqué pour avoir fait payer un verre d'eau à une cliente.]
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=817&ncid=757&e=10&u=
/ap/20040206/ap_on_fe_st/britain_tap_water
Hotel Criticized for Charging for Water
Fri Feb 6, 9:46 AM ET Add Strange News - AP to My Yahoo!

LONDON - Shades of Basil Fawlty. A hotelier who wrote to a client explaing why she couldn't have a free glass of tap water was showered with bad publicity Friday, being compared in some British newspapers to John Cleese's ill-tempered hotel keeper. Sally Burchell, a guest at the Atlantic Hotel in Newquay, southwest England, complained to managing director Anthony Cobley that she was refused a glass of tap water with her 18-pound (US$32) meal. Staff told her she would have to pay 80 pence (US$1.40) for a small bottle of mineral water or 2 pounds (US$3.60) for 1 liter.

Cobley wrote back: "I buy water from the South West Water company. I buy the glasses that the water is served in. I buy the ice that goes into the water and I buy the labor to serve the water. "I provide the luxury surroundings for the water to be drunk in and again pay for the labor and washing materials to wash the glass after you have used it, and you think that I should provide all of this free of charge!

"As regards your comment that you will not be returning to the Atlantic Hotel ever again, leaves me to say that customers who only drink water and complain about paying for it, I can certainly do without."

"This is like a letter from Basil Fawlty," The Daily Telegraph quoted Burchell as saying. "There were a lot of us there and we spent a lot of money on drinks between us. Some people were even staying the night so it seemed a little tight to charge me for water."

Martin Couchman, deputy chief executive of the British Hospitality Association, said Cobley was wrong. "Looking after customers and making them feel happy is a major part of hospitality. One hopes that as part of customer after-care people who write letters do so in such a way as to make customers feel as happy as possible," he said. Debbie Smith, head of marketing at the Cornwall Tourist Board, said complaints "ought to be an opportunity to review service and to see what improvements can be made. "This is certainly not an approach to customer care that I would advocate."

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I've spent most of my 20 years in journalism writing about the struggles of the less fortunate. The notion that many hardworking people don't have an easy life in my city is hardly a huge revelation. But living on $206 a week - minimum wage for 40 hours of work - was a sobering and enlightening experience. I recommend it to Gov. Pataki, Joe Bruno, Sheldon Silver and every politician in the state as they consider their vote to increase the state's paltry minimum wage in the weeks ahead. First, she cried. "I don't want to be a hobo," my 9-year-old daughter told me.

That was her reaction when she learned that the Daily News wanted us to experience and write about life on minimum wage - $5.15 an hour, or $206 before taxes for a 40-hour workweek in New York City. Without knowing much, she intuitively was on to something that 700,000 working-poor New Yorkers know: It is impossible to live on $206 a week, or $892 a month — if you like living indoors, or want to put in a full day's work but can't afford to pay a baby-sitter from 3 to 6 p.m. during the school week. Or if you have grown weary of begging and borrowing from every friend, relative and credit card each week just to survive.

The basic facts are enough to make a grown person cry. The average weekly wage in New York State is $887, or $46,124 a year, which is more than four times the minimum weekly wage of $206 or $10,712 a year, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute. People who labor for minimum wage — including fast-food restaurant workers, busboys, security guards, retail clerks - are living below the poverty line, which the government puts at $233 a week, or $12,116 for an adult with one child. You don't have to be Einstein to see instantly that trying to make ends meet on minimum wage is not about being a better budgeter. You can't squeeze something more from a dollar if you don't have the dollar in the first place.

"It may not seem like a lot to people making a decent wage, but to go from $206 to $280 a week makes all the difference in the world," said Dan Cantor, executive director of the Working Families Party, which is spearheading the campaign to raise the minimum wage in Albany. "It means better nutrition, more time with your kids and simple decency. It's also good economics. People who earn slightly higher wages are spending every penny. "Living on $5.15 an hour in New York is a brutal struggle," added Cantor.

When you do the math, you see that is no exaggeration. For example, in order for me to work full-time, from 9 to 5, I need a baby-sitter to pick up my child from school at 3 p.m. and watch her for three hours until I get home at 6 p.m. At $10 an hour in Manhattan, that is $30 a day, $150 a week. That leaves us with $56 in cash plus $46 in food stamps for the week.

It gets worse. Deduct another $17.50 toward a $70 monthly Metro pass, which leaves us with $38.50 for everything else. Laundry, phone and Con Ed bill, clothes, school supplies, haircuts and who knows what else I haven't even thought of. What if Alex loses her winter gloves and hat on the bus? What if she gets strep throat or I get the flu and I have to buy antibiotics? Or the vacuum cleaner breaks? And what about the extras that every child deserves?

Instead, there would be the humiliation of showing up at friends' birthday parties without a gift, or having to pass on the class trip because the $8 the teacher asked of each family would pay for eight cans of soup. No allowance this week either. I couldn't afford giving her the $5 she saves in her little cash register. "I would be so sad about missing class trips, Mom," said Alex, a fourth-grader. "And if I had no present to bring to Sarah's party, I would worry she would get mad at me."

I had brought her on some assignments before to expose her to the lives of kids and people less fortunate than ourselves. She never forgot the time she brought her toys and snacks to homeless children waiting for a shelter bed late one rainy night in the Bronx and watched wide-eyed as a school bus took them away at 11 p.m. hugging their pillows. She could now picture herself in their shoes.

With the state Legislature now about to take up the issue of raising New York's minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.10, The News decided to see what it takes for a mother and child to live on $206 for the week, with a few caveats. I didn't get a job at McDonald's, and we didn't move out of our two-bedroom upper West Side apartment for a $686 two-bedroom apartment, which the federal government says is median rate in "Upper Manhattan." And while in principle I'd be eligible to get an apartment in public housing, the waiting list is years long. Same for city daycare and after-school programs.

On the plus side, as a mother with one school-age child, I learned I would qualify for certain benefits. We would be entitled to $184 monthly in food stamps, free school lunch for Alex and, mercifully, health coverage under the Family and Child Health Plus program, which would have cost me $550 a month I didn't have.

Here, I detail the daily struggle of a week living on the minimum wage.

MONDAY: I went to the giant Fairway supermarket in Harlem to buy a week's worth of groceries. The Ben and Jerry's cookie dough ice cream for $3.49 looked tempting but Alex had put it on her "No Way!" list for this week. I bought lots of pasta - three boxes for $1.89 - rice, chicken, lots of salad, cheap vegetables and canned soups, something I would never eat usually. The bill came to $72.

TUESDAY: I did comparison food shopping in my neighborhood stores, something I never had time or thought to do. I got plenty mad to see all the money I had been throwing away. I had always thought that $2.99 for a quarter-pound of turkey for Alex's lunch seemed reasonable, until I did the math and realized I was paying nearly $12 a pound. A bodega on Amsterdam was selling the same brand of turkey for $6.49, as was Fairway. That and a 99-cent loaf of not-so-healthy white bread and I could make Alex's lunch at home. I felt triumphant that we had avoided lard-laden school lunches for two days. But I lost that battle by Wednesday. The rest of the week she ate peanut butter and jelly and chocolate milk, courtesy of her public school's lunch ladies.

WEDNESDAY: I was beginning to learn what every person living on minimum wage knows. You need creative strategies to cope; you have no choice but to depend on the kindness of strangers and friends. One quickly has to put pride and shame aside. We mooched the small containers of milk from Alex's grandparents' Meals-on-Wheels delivery for her morning cereal. Seeing that our money would never last for seven days, I started calling around to see if Alex could stay over at a friend's for the weekend, since that would cover three meals and maybe they would treat her to the movies or bowling. Bingo! Lisa and Emily Queen invited her. Alex would feel no pain for those two days, much to my relief. I drove back to my childhood neighborhood to shop for additional groceries, since the prices are much cheaper in Queens than Manhattan.

Though we did not live on minimum wage growing up, we didn't have much. Just decent food, an $83-a-month public housing apartment and Spaldings. My parents, sister, brother and me shared 4½ rooms not much bigger than Ralph and Alice Kramden's. The three kids slept in one small bedroom, my parents in the other. Valentino's pizza place was still there on Kissena Blvd. They had a $4.95 special for lunch - chicken parm plus a 16-ounce soda — half of which I ate. I saved half for dinner.

THURSDAY: We were settling into the routine of a quiet week. I went to work and came straight home. Alex went to school, did homework, played in her room. Her piano and singing lesson was canceled ($45 plus $10 taxi fare home when it was freezing outside). Same for ice skating class at Chelsea Piers ($25). There were no theater outings, no restaurants (unless you count the trip to Ray's pizza for $2 a slice), tap water to drink. My husband - whose food and wallet we kept separate from ours that week - had outpatient surgery at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in the morning for two herniated discs in his neck. I had to be there to drive him home because he would be sedated for the procedure. I nudged him out of the recovery area still a little groggy so I wouldn't have to feed the meter another $1 in quarters. "Just hold onto my arm," I told him. "I can't afford another buck, let alone getting a ticket."

FRIDAY: As the week came to a close, the soup-and-salad routine was getting old. I wanted to go out. I needed a change of scenery, a break in the routine. My prayers were answered when Aunt Charlotte said she was coming to visit from Chicago. She took us out to dinner at a neighborhood Greek restaurant. Nothing fancy, but it was free.

SATURDAY: The bitter cold, and our shrinking budget, began taking their toll. I walked to Barnes and Noble and found a book, "NYC For Free." Since there was no way I would or could buy the $12.95 paperback, I sat down on the floor and started to copy down some of the suggestions. It was okay if you like to go to art galleries. Not a whole lot of free fun stuff for kids. "This is depressing," I said to myself. I walked back home and read, listened to the radio.

SUNDAY: It was another freezing day outside. Weather like this in any other city would make you housebound. But not in New York, where you can hop in a cab, or jump on the subway and be at the theater or a concert or museum, even if a blizzard is raging. We might as well have been living in Wyoming on this kind of budget.

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In Suzanne Loudamy's house, the word "like" is under siege.

When her 18-year-old daughter, Sarah, speaks, Ms. Loudamy holds up her hands to count how often the word leaves her mouth.

"My mom talks about how it's not, like, professional and says I'll look stupid," says Sarah Loudamy. "But someday everybody my age will be in the professional world with me. If they're saying 'like' too, I won't stand out."

Two decades after the song "Valley Girl" popularized it, a fresh effort is afoot to stamp out this linguistic quirk. The generation that grew up saying "like" is hitting adulthood -- and the work force. As a result, it is now in the lexicon of investment bankers, doctors and even teachers, where it can sound especially jarring. "I'm sure I say, 'like' a lot," says Liza Sutherland, 28, a sixth-grade humanities teacher in New York. "I don't worry so much about how my students speak."

Like a verbal virus, this usage is also increasingly spreading to other English-speaking countries. British and Canadian kids now grease their sentences with the word. Sali Tagliamonte, professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto who has researched the speech of the elderly in the United Kingdom, found that they, too, have a surprising fondness for "like." "If I showed you a written document of the conversation, you would think they were young women in North America, not 78-year-old ladies from Scotland," she says.

The battle, of course, isn't being waged against traditional uses of "like" -- the ones that express an affinity ("Mikey Likes It") or compare two things ("My love is like a red, red rose"). What's targeted is the repetition of "like" that to critics sounds like nonsense. Example: "Like my mother is like a total space cadet." (From the lyrics to "Valley Girl.")

Linguists say "like" has a growing number of meanings. It can act as a "hedge," to tell the listener that what is being said is an approximation or an exaggeration. (Example: "She has, like, a gazillion shoes.") It can also be a "focuser," to declare that the next bit of information is important. ("He is, like, so hot.") One of its most ubiquitous uses is as a substitute for "said." ("So my mom was like, 'Do your homework.' And then I was like, 'I did it at school.' ")

There is a range of tactics to combat all this. Some parents mimic their kids and "like" them right back. Fed-up English teachers are turning their classrooms into "like"-free zones. Even speech pathologists are being called in to help break the habit, at rates of as much as $100 an hour. One common tactic: tape recording or videotaping the afflicted as a kind of shock therapy to show them how "like"-infused they really are.

In one exercise at Leap Learning Systems, a language school in Chicago that offers after-school and summer programs to help inner-city kids master "standard business English," students are asked to shout "beep beep" whenever a speaker in the class uses "like," among other words, unnecessarily. Katie Schwartz, a speech pathologist in Chattanooga, Tenn., has a more Pavlovian technique. Her "Sense Cues" kit trains speakers to associate the smell of something they don't like with remembering to delete superfluous "likes" from their conversation.

When the "likes" start spilling from the mouths of Vickie Bunting's students, she writes their sentences on the blackboard and has them read the words back. "It will click and they'll see it doesn't mean anything," says Ms. Bunting, who teaches high-school English in Lubbock, Texas.

Language watchers offer various theories to explain the spread of "like." Some blame declining emphasis on grammar instruction in schools. Others point to an explosion of slang in music and movies, making nontraditional speech more widespread and acceptable.

Defenders of the practice argue that these usages are just a natural evolution of the English language. Indeed, even some linguists say the word can be downright useful. When dropped into the middle of a sentence, for example, it gives the speaker time to gather his thoughts so he doesn't say the first (sometimes insipid) thing that comes to mind. Studies also show that people who have learned not to use filler words are interrupted more often, and tend to use simpler sentences.

"It really is a wonderful, useful word," says Muffy E.A. Siegel, an associate professor of English at Temple University in Philadelphia, who has studied the use of "like."

Valley Girls weren't the first group to find some other uses for "like." Jazz musicians and beat poets used it as a filler word in the 1950s -- as a substitute for 'um' -- according to linguists. In the late '70s in Southern California, the word for the first time started turning up, in popular form, to introduce a thought or bit of speech.

This form of "like" was unveiled to youth culture with the song "Valley Girl" by Frank Zappa and his then-13-year-old daughter Moon Unit. A decade later, "like" with a form of the verb "to be" was voted the phrase "most likely to succeed" by the American Dialect Society, a group that studies American English.

And succeed it has, judging by the frequency with which it still pops up in conversations. In a University of Alberta study, which involved 30 Americans ranging in age from 14 to 69, a couple of the participants used the word more than 100 times in a half-hour conversation. The study found that, while younger people used it more often, all age groups employed the Valley-girl-type "like."

Indeed, while the stereotypical offender may be a 15-year-old suburban girl who twirls her hair and works at the mall, some studies show that boys are now just as likely to abuse the word.

Some of the "like"-dependent just end up reaching a compromise of sorts. Justin Slay, a 15-year-old in Lubbock, Texas, says whether or not he uses it depends on whom he is with. "Girls say it in almost every sentence," Justin says. "I don't say it when I'm talking to guys."

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EUROPEAN JOURNAL: Cable News with a French Accent
By Stephanie Trastour and Christina Passariello

President Jacques Chirac's government is set to launch its own, low-budget world news channel. Can it hope to compete with the likes of CNN?
Imagine a CNN-like news outlet with a female anchor narrating the headlines while a news ticker runs across the bottom of the screen. But wait -- is that French she's speaking? Mais, oui! Tired of what it sees as a predominantly American spin on global news, France is planning to launch the French International News Channel (CFII), the country's first global cable news network. By the end of 2004, the 24-hour news and information station, 100% financed by the state, will hit the airwaves not only in French but also possibly in English and Arabic.

The idea of a French all-news channel competing with CNN and the BBC is being hotly questioned in France and abroad. The budget and target audience will fall far short of its peers, concedes the French government, whose hands-on role also raises doubt about the network's editorial independence. "Clearly, the creation of the CFII is a political move", says Jean-Marie Charon, a French media analyst. "The problem is that France is in no position to establish itself on the international market at the moment."

FOREIGN VIEWERS. This project may come as news to foreigners, but the idea has been debated in France for almost two decades. The government finally gave the go-ahead on Sept. 30, following the publication of a parliamentary report by senior official Bernard Brochand -- and a big push from French President Jacques Chirac, who campaigned for a French world-news channel during his reelection campaign in 2002. The diplomatic confrontation between France and the U.S. over the war in Iraq also gave the project new urgency.

Now comes the hard part. The channel must clearly define its target audience. To start with, its programs will not be broadcast in France, even though they'll be financed with taxpayers' money. That's because TF1, the private TV network that will run CFII in conjunction with state broadcaster France Televisions, doesn't want the new channel to steal viewers from its existing cable channel, LCI. So only viewers in the rest of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East will be able to watch.

America and Asia will be added, possibly next year. Only one problem, says Charon: "The parliamentary mission seems to think that there's an audience abroad, but they haven't measured the extent of this market."

NO MONEY MACHINE. While enthusiastic about the concept, the government has been miserly with the budget. CFII will have just $82 million a year to work with -- a tiny fraction of CNN's $1.2 billion budget. With that level of funding, points out Brad Adgate, senior vice-president at researcher Horizon Media, "it's unlikely that CFII will be up to the standards set by its competition."

CFII plans to keep costs down by running the entire operation out of its Paris-based headquarters and not spending extra money on bureaus. Instead, the plan is use TF1 and France Television's journalists abroad for footage and reporting on international events.

Even Brochand doesn't have any illusions of the network breaking even. "An international channel cannot be financially viable, but that isn't the point of the operation," he says. That worries some media watchers, who think the channel will be a bullhorn for the French government. With the state putting up 100% of financing, some fear that might threaten editorial independence. Brochand says CFII will have a board of directors that will appoint its own editor. TF1 and France Television will share editorial management.

"DIFFICULT." Meanwhile, competition is getting even stiffer on the international broadcasting scene. CNN is talking about expanding its coverage to include French and Arabic translations of its reports, and Al-Jazeera wants to launch a French version for Arabic and Muslim audiences. Warns Adgate.: "This shows just how difficult it will be for CFII to get some kind of recognition."

Is France worried about the tough job ahead of the upstart news channel? Non. Enough with Gallic bashing and "freedom fries," is the cry. Now, France will have its own voice to the world.

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8) The Economist: Competition [Sur les différences de traitement de l'affaire du sein de Janet Jackson entre l'Europe et les Etats Unis.]
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2405081

COMPETITION, this newspaper believes, has beneficial effects pretty much everywhere. This week's British newspapers may lead higher-minded readers to disagree.

On February 1st, a breast belonging to Janet Jackson, a singer, escaped during Super Bowl half-time. High-brow American papers reported the incident, but with no photo. Low-brow papers pictured the recapture, but not the breast. Michael Powell, head of the Federal Communications Commission, called it a “classless, crass and deplorable stunt”. There is to be an official inquiry.

This seems odd to Britons, whose smaller broadcast channels keep themselves afloat on a sea of smut. Not only tabloid newspapers, but also the Times and even the Daily Telegraph (average age of reader 55) showed the star's spangled nipple, waving joyfully in the wind.

Why the difference? Maybe because secular Britons are no longer shockable, while Americans have clung to their religion and associated puritanism. But the difference does not seem to be one of demand. Miss Jackson's breast topped internet search subjects after the incident was reported.

The structure of the media market seems a likelier explanation. Britain has ten competing national newspapers. Sensationalism jostles with pornography in the pages of the tabloids; softer versions of both infect the broadsheets. America's papers, which tend to be local near-monopolies, can afford a loftier attitude. Newspapers set the tone for television, and the regulators' attitudes.

The Economist, of course, deplores the degradation of the British press. As a service to American readers, who should know how low it has fallen, we publish the picture above.

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