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Week 22, 2004
THE REGULARS: Summary
A) Song of the week: "With every step" as sung by Jonatan Cerrada (French entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 2004)
B) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Kidzworld: The Meaning of Dreams [L'interprétation des rêves.]
C) CNN/Global Office: Cold comfort for sick employees [Il vaudrait peut être mieux pour les entreprises que leurs salariés restent chez eux lorsqu'ils sont malades.]
D) The New York Times/The Ethicist: Hiring Help [Conseils sur l'éthique et la déontologie : Puis-je débaucher des salariés d'autres entreprises ? / Puis-je virer la fille qui garde mes enfants puisque j'ai appris qu'elle cherche un boulot à plein temps ? /J'ai décidé qu'il est immoral de pratiquer la pêche à la mouche, mais puis-je faire don de mon matériel à un ami pêcheur ?]
E) Slate/Dear Prudence: BYOF (bring your own food) [Conseils sur la vie sentimentale et la vie tout court : Je ne veux être invité chez des gens qui imposent d'apporter à manger. /J'étais homo mais j'ai décidé de ne plus l'être. / J'ai 17 ans et je ne supporte pas mes parents (quelle nouveauté !) / Je ne supporte pas l'expression "l'amour de ma vie".]
F) Washington Post/Miss Manners: Mixed bag [Conseils sur les bonnes manières : Comment réagir lorsqu'on est dans une voiture dont le conducteur se comporte de manière dangereuse ? / Mes tentatives de demander pardon du mauvais comportement de mes enfants au restaurant n'ont pas convaincu.]
G) WNYC/On the Media: The Wizard of Lizard [Un conseiller (français) en marketing fait appel à notre cerveau reptilien. Vous pouvez écouter l'entretien en ligne.]
H) The Entente Cordiale series: I'm a journalist, get me out of here! [Une série d'articles publiés dans Libé et The Guardian à l'occasion de la commémoration de l'Entente Cordiale. Ici, l'avis plutôt défavorable d'un journaliste anglais sur la campagne française. Voir ci-après l' adaptation française parue dans Libé.]

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A) Song of the week: "With every step" as sung by Jonatan Cerrada (French entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 2004)

WITH EVERY STEP

There are wounds
That will have to be forgotten
So many scratch-outs
That will have to be erased

Blow very hard so that resentment may fly from our hearts
And then bring down the barriers one by one…

With every step we take
With every deed we offer
It will be the start of another tomorrow
In every word we say
In this future we shall build
It is Love that will be drawn by our hands

There are insults
That will have to be pardoned
Cries against the walls
That will make them fall

Let us place our arms down at our feet, let us abandon our armour
And may our conflicts be no more than a murmur

With every step we take
With every deed we offer
It will be the start of another tomorrow
In every word we say
In this future we shall build
It is Love that will be drawn by our hands

The battle will be long
But you know it is worth the trouble
The child in us will find the way

There are cracks
That will remain broken
Rather hard blows
Marked forever

With every step we take
With every deed we offer
Se que al final lograras encontrar
La paz y la felicitad
En tu camino hallaras
Todo lo que deseas alcanzar

It is Love that will be drawn by our hands

^RETURN TO TOP^

Dreaming Baby: The Meaning of Dreams

You're drenched in sweat. Your heart is pounding. You have a very strong feeling you are being chased by a T-Rex. Are you crazy? Have you been teleported back in time? No, your brain is just interpreting some random electrical firings. In other words, you're dreaming.

What is a Dream?
There is a little disagreement on exactly what dreams are about, but most scientists agree on this basic explanation: Your brain pieces together images and stories (AKA dreams) from random electrical pulses it receives from the brain stem. These pulses are sent out every hour and a half or so, while you are sleeping. They are 100 percent random, which means they come in no set order. Your forebrain (the front part of your brain) tries to make sense of the signals, like you would try to make sense of an abstract painting. The way your brain interprets these signals determines what you dream about.

What Do Dreams Mean?
It's hard to know exactly what dreams mean - or if they mean anything at all. Some sleep experts think the way your brain interprets the electrical pulses may tell you about yourself - in the same way an ink blot test can. One of the most famous modern psychiatrists, Carl Jung, thought that images in dreams (monsters, masks, 'rents, whatever), represent the same things to all people. He called it our "collective unconscious." This kind of thinking that has inspired dream dictionaries, which attach specific meanings to major symbols that may show up in your dreams. Others believe that the meanings behind your dreams are more personal than that and may be shaped by past experiences. For example, to one person, dreaming about a clown is a positive experience that represents happiness. To another person who is afraid of clowns, the dream may symbolize fear and anxiety.

Deciphering Your Dreams
Here are some possible meanings behind major symbols that might pop up in your dreams. An alternate way of analyzing your dreams would be to write down all the major symbols from your dreams and brainstorm what those symbols mean to you.

Being Chased - Chase dreams usually reflect how you are dealing with anxiety in your waking life.
Cartoons - Cartoons can symbolize disguised identity. Dreams with cartoons in them often represent unknown or deceptive people or situations.
A Crush - Usually dreaming about your crush has to do with the feelings of warmth and affection you have towards the person. If you're crushing on someone whose face you can't see, it may mean that you feel ready for a BF/GF but don't have anyone in particular in mind.
Dad - Depending on the situation, dreaming of your father can represent authority or protection.
Dinosaur - Dreaming of a dinosaur probably represents something that you feel is too big to handle or scary because it is unknown.
Falling - Falling dreams are not considered to be very meaningful psychologically. Scientist believe that when we are falling asleep our sense of balance changes, which leads us to feel like we're falling. This phenomenon even has a fancy name - it's called a myoclonic jerk.
Mom - Usually dreaming of your mother represents nurturing, protection and comfort.
Monster - Monsters can represent parts of yourself that you find uncivilized or ugly. They can also represent fear of the unknown.
Pet - Dreaming of a pet is a lot like dreaming of a baby. These dreams often symbolize fragility and dependence.
School - School is a natural setting in kids' dreams, so it usually doesn't have any symbolic significance.

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http://edition.cnn.com/2004/BUSINESS/05/11/go.sick.workers/index.html

Cold comfort for sick employees
By Nick Easen for CNN

(CNN) -- Workers who go to the office when they are sick may think it is the right thing to do, but it could be a significant cost to employers. A "martyr culture" -- where staff who are sick yet feel compelled to go to work -- can increase the amount of germs in the office. And when sickness spreads to co-workers this can affect the productivity of the whole workforce.

A recent online CNN poll found that, out of 268 voters, 80 percent feel obliged to go to work even when they are ill. (View QuickVote). However, few firms appear to be in favor of employees keeping their germs at home. A new survey of 110 human resources managers found that 88 percent believe that even a heavy cold is not a good enough reason to be off sick -- contrary to the advice of doctors.

For a rapid recovery, the medical profession advises that people suffering from a bad cold should stay in bed, not go to work. This view also has the backing of the British Trade Union Congress (TUC) which has branded sick employees in the workplace as "mucus troopers." "If employees are bringing their germs to the office, they are inevitably risking their colleagues becoming ill," says Richard Smith of Croner business consulting, who conducted the survey. "This has greater consequences for productivity than if the employee had taken a day or two off to recover".

Fear of taking sick leave, even when employees are actually unwell, could also be fueling stress and anxiety in the workplace. "Taking time off for having a cold can be viewed as a weakness," explains Smith. However, there is a fine line between when people are sick of work, rather than actually being simply too sick to be in the office. "Staff illness is a difficult area for employers to manage, as there will always be some employees who take advantage of the system," says Smith.

Croner advises monitoring employee sickness against an average office benchmark. This could help companies identify potential offenders. And businesses should consider creating contracts of employment that give clear guidelines on sickness. Making staff feel comfortable about taking time off, if they are genuinely ill, may also have a positive effect on the health and well being of workers, as well as boost productivity, believes Smith.

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E) Slate/Dear Prudence: BYOF (bring your own food) [Conseils sur la vie sentimentale et la vie tout court : Je ne veux être invité chez des gens qui imposent d'apporter à manger. /J'étais homo mais j'ai décidé de ne plus l'être. / J'ai 17 ans et je ne supporte pas mes parents (quelle nouveauté !) / Je ne supporte pas l'expression "l'amour de ma vie".]
h ttp://slate.msn.com/id/2099545/

dear prudence: BYOF
When friends throw a dinner party and expect you to cook.
Posted Thursday, May 13, 2004, at 8:31 AM PT

Dear Prudence,
Perhaps this is a bit irrational or old-fashioned of me, but when I am invited to someone's home for dinner (or any meal), I don't expect to actually provide the food. Yet this happens to me more and more often and with several people I know. I have one friend in particular who actually has regular events called "dinner parties" where she asks each guest to bring a dish to pass! In the beginning, we brought casserole dishes filled with chicken or pasta, but to the last dinner party she held, we brought only a small bowl of rice. Surprisingly, there wasn't much more to eat for several people—just a small green salad, soda, and a few cookies. Don't misunderstand; many times I've attended pot luck suppers at friends' homes and various churches. Each time, the host/hostess has provided the main course, and guests bring side dishes or desserts. But the attendees at a pot luck supper know what to expect, and at every one I've ever attended, there were massive amounts of food left over. Please help me to know what to do the next time this situation arises.

—Feeling Used

Dear Feel,
The next time the situation arises, decline. If this person can't even organize things so there's a proper meal (no matter how many people have to bring it), you do not have to grace her evenings with your presence. It would only take one "dinner party" with a green salad, soda, and a few cookies for Prudie to figure out that the hostess was a few quarts low. There is nothing irrational or old-fashioned about you. The problem is that the hostess is just this side of addlebrained.

—Prudie, customarily

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Dear Prudie,
Until I was 17 years old, I was gay, but I wasn't happy like I am now. I was always depressed and lonely and had the typical issues of growing up gay. I even acted the part. Instead of creating the stereotype, I let the stereotype create me—right down to talking effeminately. My parents caught on to this and cornered me in my room and told me I wasn't allowed to be gay. My mother's reasoning was that she wanted grandchildren because my brother has learning disabilities and because she takes pride in me being the good son. I didn't say much, just sort of wanted the awkward situation to pass, then afterward was mad at them. But, as I thought about it, I wanted to be straight. I wanted that "perfect" life with a wife and children produced from a loving relationship. Also, I loved my friendships with girls, one in particular I had been talking to for hours every night, often waking up with the phone still next to my ear in the morning. So, I effectively stopped checking guys out and stopped myself from finding any male attractive, and then I started dating one of my best friends. She had a crush on me, and I fell in love, and through that love, I became sexually attracted to her. It was amazing. For the first time ever in my life, I actually liked who I was. The aspects of her body are what I find attractive, whereas before, if I turned my head to look at a girl walking by, it was because I liked her outfit. I look back at that part of my life and don't even understand who I was or what I was missing. I'm still with this girl (three years now; we're at different colleges), and I love her deeply and find her sexually attractive. I mean, I still occasionally look at gay porn or have sexual dreams involving men, but I don't consider myself to be gay anymore. I'm happy and I like where my life is going now, but what I'd like to know is whether changing my sexual attraction was a good thing.

—Happily Straight Now

Dear Hap,
Prudie has long felt that whatever works for people in the romance department is OK with her, provided it's not against the law and doesn't scare the horses. She has also long felt that the situation you describe is next to impossible. People do not DECIDE to change their sexuality; sexual preference just is. Parents cannot stop by for a chat and convince a gay son to switch his interest from lats and pecs to T&A. It is possible that your letter could be about having a little josh with Prudie. (Also odd to read that your brother's learning disabilities would preclude his having children ... though maybe this just depends on what it is he has trouble learning.) In any case, if what you wrote is actually what is happening, you are, at the very least, confused and conflicted about trying to will something to happen. Your best bet would be talking things through with a professional, and it's a must that you level with the woman about your, um, other feelings. You need to pay attention to what you feel as well as what you want. Good luck.

—Prudie, warily

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Dear Prudence,
How do I shorten pages worth into a paragraph? I'm 17 years old, and I've lived with my father since I was 12. Before that I lived with my mom and stepdad, seeing my dad every other weekend. He paid child support regularly. Me and my dad do not have a normal father-daughter relationship. With him I come and go as I please, speak my mind, and we don't bother each other much. He has no "fatherlike" protective tendencies, etc. My mother is the opposite, very controlling, threatening, makes me work, punishes me if I slip below a B in school, and tries to keep a leash on me, which is ludacris [sic] because 1) I do not get any sort of child support from her, 2) I do not live with her, and 3) we have never had or will ever have a good relationship. If I had my way, I'd move far from both my parents. I am not a bad person. My teachers, mentors, and friends like me, but I'm very depressed, and my parents don't help. They're selfish people. There is more to this, this is just the main problem. My question: How do I confront my mother about no child support, being too controlling, rude, and down right unloving? Basically, I've never been happy with my parents, ever. I'm an "oh no" baby and feel reminded of that in some way everyday. Not a good feeling. Thank you for listening.

—Giving Up

Dear Giv,
It must be an exceptionally unhappy situation not to feel love from your folks, even if it's there. What is interesting is that you find one parent too permissive and the other too controlling. It is, moreover, unusual to equate discipline or affection with child support payments. Because, in most states, you are one year from achieving your independence, it would be good for you to resolve your depression and your alienation before you are on your own. Prudie would suggest you table, for now, confronting your mother about anything (since you don't live with her) and instead confront your difficulties and your unhappiness. Ask one of your teachers or mentors to help you get into therapy. Don't give up hope. Frequently teenagers are successful in moving beyond a difficult childhood and less-than-wonderful parents. And maybe it's a good omen that, meaning to write "ludicrous," you wrote "ludacris," the name of the rapper—and Prudie knew who it was!

—Prudie, optimistically

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Dear Pru,
I could be the only one, but I may lose my lunch if I hear one more person make reference to "the love of my life." I have a friend (a male) who has identified his last three wives this way! Don't people know that words have meaning? Is there anything I can say the next time someone says this?

—Shirley, Harrumphing

Dear Shirl,
You are not the only one who considers "the love of my life" a frayed tribute. Prudie is right there with you. (And aren't you good and sick of "soul mate?") What is happening is that people are simply trying to pay a compliment to the romantic partner—the CURRENT romantic partner—and unfortunately they land on the phrase they feel is the ne plus ultra. As with any cliché, the meaning is diluted when every Tom, Dick, and the milkman is saying it. As for responding the next time you hear this stab at a superlative, Prudie thinks it best you say nothing ... because what, after all, my dear, is there to say?

—Prudie, knowingly

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F) Washington Post/Miss Manners: Mixed bag [Conseils sur les bonnes manières : Comment réagir lorsqu'on est dans une voiture dont le conducteur se comporte de manière dangereuse ? / Mes tentatives de demander pardon du mauvais comportement de mes enfants au restaurant n'ont pas convaincu.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11333-2004May8.html
Mixed bag
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page C11

Q:
Dear Miss Manners:

Is there any way to inoffensively and effectively address dangerous driving when riding as passenger in a car? I would be grateful for just the right words to use when the driver insists on maintaining eye contact with passengers (rather than watching the road) and/or tailgates at high speed. The situation is especially difficult when the driver is a boss, colleague or customer.

A:
Words are not what is required here. Miss Manners trusts that cries of warning ("Watch out!") and relief ("That was a close one!") arise from you spontaneously, but they tend not to affect the general driving level.

She recommends the technique perfected by mothers of new drivers: noisy intakes of breath and foot stamping on a phantom brake at the passenger seat.

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Q:
Dear Miss Manners:

One evening out with my wife and four young children at a family restaurant, the children were less than well-behaved. As we were preparing to leave, my wife went to the childless couple at the table next to ours and said, "I want to apologize for my children's behavior." The man's reply (without the courtesy of even looking at her) was, "You ought to."

How does one politely react to this?

A:
By saying graciously, "And I'm sure your mother, if she were here, would do the same for you."

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G) WNYC/On the Media: The Wizard of Lizard [Un conseiller (français) en marketing fait appel à notre cerveau reptilien. Vous pouvez écouter l'entretien en ligne.]

http://www.wnyc.org/onthemedia/transcripts/transcripts_050704_wizard.html
The Wizard of Lizard
M ay 7, 2004

BROOKE GLADSTONE: John Kerry may well be on course, but it's never too early to sharpen a candidate's image. And so we learned that earlier this year, medical anthropologist and marketing consultant Clotaire Rapaille sat down with an unpaid Kerry adviser to talk shop. Rapaille is originally from France, so he may seem an odd choice to advise a candidate maligned for his Gallic family ties, but some of the Fortune 500's biggest companies have tapped Rapaille for tips on how to appeal to American consumers. We spoke to him last about GM's ad campaign for the Hummer. Rapaille bases his approach on the theory of the Triune Brain, which postulates that our minds work on three levels. They are, in order of evolutionary development, the reptilian - responsible for basic survival behaviors like fight or flight -- the limbic, which governs our emotions -- and the neocortex, control center for language and rational thinking.

CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: The one that always wins is the reptilian brain, so you know, every candidate is interested in trying to connect with the collective reptilian brain.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is the part of the brain that isn't beset by ethical considerations.

CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: The reptilian is very much into survival, instinct, reproduction. But you see, I was born and, and raised in Europe, and I chose to become an American. But there are two different ways of thinking. The European way is always everything is subtle. There are a lot of nuances. The gray color is everywhere. We're not sure of this; we're not sure of that; and we try this and-- okay. The reptilian brain is different. At the reptilian, you're not a little bit pregnant. You are pregnant or you're not pregnant. You're not a little bit dead. You're either dead or not dead. And some people, when we live in a world of a lot of confusion, they want to be re-assured; they want to be re-connected with the reptilian. Senator Kerry might be a very intelligent guy, and I'm sure he is, very full of nuance and understanding all the different subtlety of everything. I am not sure this is what America needs right now. You know--

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So what would you tell Kerry to do?

CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: Buy a ranch.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Buy a ranch. Okay.

CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: A pickup truck. I'd put a gun on the back, and a six-pack of beer and go speak with real people in Middle West.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: But the suggestions you just had for Kerry to improve his image with the American voters is to turn himself into George W. Bush. I mean right now the country is divided almost exactly in half. Why should he turn into Bush?

CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: No, no - I don't want him to turn into Bush. I think that the both candidates should be connected with the reptilian, and, and right now maybe Bush is more reptilian because he is less cortex. And this is clear.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: All right.

CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: But Americans don't like intellectuals. We're afraid of intellectual people. To think too much is dangerous. We want people to have the gut feeling about what I need. If I had the possibility to give an advice to Senator Kerry, I would say he has to really learn to give simple answers to simple questions. He has to stick with one or two words -- not 25, not 35 - because you lose people very quickly.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: The New Yorker recently observed that Kerry has suddenly stopped speaking to French reporters in their native language. Is he merely shedding his associations with France here, or does the fact that he's no longer speaking French suggest that being educated is somehow a turnoff.

CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: For some people absolutely. You know, I want my mother to have a gut feeling about when she's going to take me to the hospital or not. It doesn't matter how many books she read. You know, it's okay, when you're a good reptilian person. Then you have the limbic and the cortic - it's fine. But when you are cortex and there is a risk that you are only cortex, that's what people really resent.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So we're on to something here: Clinton appealed both to the reptilian and to the cortex.

CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: Absolutely. I mean he was always reptilian. His, his saga, his story was fantastic. Always a girl under the table. He was a genius in providing material to all the comedians of the nation.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Is packaging a candidate to sell to the American people the same as, say, package the Hummer? Are you going for the same basic thing?

CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: Well, knowing the power of a brand and the, the connection we have with these brands is, is powerful. A candidate is a brand, and a candidate should know what he stands for. For example, when you say Volvo, you say safety. This is one word. Okay? When you say Kerry -- what do you say? Kerry need to do a better job in defining who he is, because so far, the Bush campaign is trying to labelize John Kerry as flip-flop. Well this is not a good brand. It's like if a car maker was labeling his competitors "rollover," and so immediately when you see a Range Rover, you say oh, rollover - this car is not safe.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: If the candidates -- now I'm going to sound a little like Barbara Walters, [LAUGHTER] but if you were to assign car makes to candidates, would Bush be the Hummer?

CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: Yes.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And what would Kerry be?

CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: Hybrid. [LAUGHTER]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Clotaire Rapaille, thank you very much.

CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: My pleasure. Always a pleasure to be with you.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Clotaire Rapaille is a medical anthropologist and author of the new book, Archetyping the Presidency, which hits store shelves this summer.

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H) The Entente Cordiale series: I'm a journalist, get me out of here! [Une série d'articles publiés dans Libé et The Guardian à l'occasion de la commémoration de l'Entente Cordiale. Ici, l'avis plutôt défavorable d'un journaliste anglais sur la campagne française. Voir ci-après l' adaptation française parue dans Libé.]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1185734,00.html

I'm a journalist ... get me out of here: Apart from the lying, the gun-waving peasants, the aged drink-drivers and the suicides, rural France is just awful

Colin Wilson, Monday April 5, 2004
The Guardian

The French are a charming, loveable bunch, really they are. They're delightful to live among, they're friendly, helpful and only a sense of humour short of being great people. Living in a French city is as much fun as living in any other European city, except you get fresher bread and more poodles.

Unfortunately, I don't live in a city. I live in deep, deep French countryside. It's awful.
There is a myth that living in rural France is like being in paradise. The wine, the food, the crusty but loveable peasants and all that guff. Wrong. Living in the French countryside is like being transported back to the 14th century without any of the good bits of that era. The people are suspicious, lack social skills and dislike anyone who is not a white Catholic.

Another myth is that it's charming to be lied to by the peasants or workmen in blue overalls. It's not. With great cunning, our peasant neighbour managed to steal our water supply and with the connivance of the solicitor and the mayor (who works for the private water company) made sure that we have to pay for the cost of digging up the village to lay the pipes. That's not charming.

Then there's the saying "no". As in the famous, "You're a restaurant, can we come in and eat?" type of "no". Apparently it's all part of them not wanting to be seen to be servile. There's a view among the peasants that working in the service industry isn't about serving people. So whenever they can, they like to say no just so you have to plead with them so they don't feel so servile. Which puts me in the irritating position of having to beg someone to come and quote for digging up the village to put in pipes that I've been tricked into needing in the first place.

Then there's the lying. I sort of admire the peasants for their ability to lie through their teeth, but none does it better than the hunter who nearly killed me recently. I was out for my Sunday morning constitutional when buckshot sliced the foliage at my feet. I alerted my assailant with a cheery cry and he instantly emerged from the woods disguised as a Bosnian ethnic cleanser. His shotgun barrels were broken open, a spent cartridge at his feet and smoke trickled from the business end. He looked me in the eye and denied he had fired a shot. Now that's advanced lying.

One of the most fantastic things about France is that even people who have lost their driving licence because they might be too old or dangerous can still legally get behind the wheel of a car. It was one of these electric vehicles that nearly did for me. It's a sort of stealth car that you can use to sneak up behind people and in an eerie echo of the Diana/Dodi assassination, I was struck with a glancing blow while crossing a bridge on foot. The word "glancing" doesn't sound so bad, but trust me, it has a different connotation when it's used to describe contact between a car and a pedestrian.

Saved only by the high level of training I received while watching TV programmes about the SAS, I avoided the drop. Then I realised that the peasant driver mustn't have noticed how close he came to killing me. With public spirit coursing through my veins, I hurried after the car so I could apologise for any damage my iron physique might have done to his puny chassis.

When I eventually caught up after a hard 20-metre zig-zag chase, I had to pull my trembling new friend out of his car. He was a charming senior citizen wearing a cute beret who, despite it being only 9am, smelled as though he had been drinking heavily.

Before we could get down to discussing the finer points of road safety, however, I was grabbed by a small crowd and prevented from expressing my views. They simply put Gaston back in the car and sent him on his way, clipping bollards as he went.

Now they might not actually be trying to kill me, but after the past few months, I could be forgiven the consumption of a few happy pills. I would be in good company. Apart from just looking miserable, the French take the highest number of anti-depressants in Europe - but the drugs don't work.

One third of the children at the local primary school have had a close family member commit suicide. Several of them even discovered the bodies. Our neighbour's wife threw herself down our well and drowned. We need our own chapter of The Samaritans round here. That and a Starbucks. Get me back to the city.

· Colin Wilson is a freelance TV writer and journalist who has lived in deepest France for three years

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http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=191689

Pourquoi je hais la campagne française

Ces Français sont charmants, adorables. Vraiment. Il est délicieux de vivre parmi eux. Ils sont amicaux, serviables, et il ne leur manque que le sens de l'humour pour être absolument géniaux. Habiter dans une ville française est aussi amusant que d'habiter dans n'importe quelle autre ville européenne, si ce n'est que le pain est meilleur et qu'on y trouve plus de caniches. Malheureusement je ne réside pas en ville. Je vis dans la campagne très, très profonde. Et c'est abominable.

Il est un mythe voulant faire croire que la vie dans la France rurale est le paradis. Le vin, la nourriture, les paysans grincheux mais adorables... Ce genre de sornettes. C'est faux. Vivre à la campagne en France, c'est comme revenir brutalement au XIVe siècle, sans les bons côtés. Les gens sont soupçonneux, ne savent pas se conduire en société et n'aiment pas tout ce qui n'est pas blanc et catholique.

Un autre mythe prétend que c'est drôle, tous ces paysans et ces ouvriers en bleu de travail qui vous roulent. Mais ça aussi c'est faux. Avec une extrême fourberie, le paysan qui est notre voisin s'est arrangé pour détourner notre alimentation en eau et, avec la complicité du notaire et du maire (qui, comme par hasard, travaille pour la Compagnie des eaux), il s'est assuré que c'est nous qui paierions les frais des tranchées de raccordement au village. Ça n'a rien de drôle.

Et il y a aussi leur fameux «NON». Comme lorsque vous demandez : «C'est un restaurant, on peut entrer et déjeuner ?» «NON !» Apparemment, c'est leur manière à eux de ne pas avoir l'air serviles. Chez les ruraux, ils aiment bien dire «NON !» Juste pour vous obliger à les implorer. C'est comme ça que je me suis retrouvé dans la situation irritante de devoir supplier pour qu'on vienne m'établir un devis de raccordement de tuyaux jusqu'au village, dont j'avais été malhonnêtement privé en premier lieu.

Et il y a aussi le mensonge. J'ai beaucoup d'admiration pour les paysans qui mentent comme des arracheurs de dents, mais aucun n'arrive à la cheville du chasseur qui a failli me tuer. Je faisais ma promenade de santé dominicale au petit matin, lorsque des chevrotines ont haché menu le feuillage à mes pieds. J'alertai mon assaillant d'un cri non moins alerte et il jaillit des fourrés, déguisé en nettoyeur ethnique bosniaque. Son fusil était ouvert, il y avait une cartouche à ses pieds et les canons fumaient encore. Il me regarda droit dans les yeux et me certifia qu'il n'avait pas tiré. Ça, c'est du mensonge !

Une des choses les plus fantastiques en France, c'est que même les gens à qui on a retiré le permis de conduire - parce qu'ils sont trop vieux ou trop dangereux - peuvent légalement se glisser derrière un volant. C'est une de ces voitures électriques qui a failli avoir ma peau. Une sorte de voiture furtive qu'on utilise pour approcher sans bruit des gens. Je traversais un pont, et comme dans un remake angoissant de l'assassinat de Diana et Dodie, je fus heurté de biais et j'eus le côté éraflé. Se faire érafler, ça n'a pas l'air bien grave, mais croyez-moi le mot prend une connotation très différente quand il s'agit du choc entre une voiture et un piéton. Je n'ai dû mon salut qu'à mon haut niveau d'entraînement acquis en regardant les séries télé sur le SAS (1). Mon sang de citoyen ne fit qu'un tour et je fonçai vers la voiture, pour m'excuser des dégâts que mon corps d'airain aurait pu causer à son châssis fragile. Quand je réussis enfin à le rattraper après 20 mètres de course en zigzag, je dus extirper mon nouvel ami tout tremblotant de sa voiture. C'était un charmant vieillard coiffé d'un mignon béret. Et, bien qu'il ne soit que 9 heures du matin, il sentait l'alcool à plein nez. Mais c'est sans doute mon imagination qui me jouait un tour !

Avant même de pouvoir entamer avec lui une discussion sur les subtilités de la sécurité routière, je fus neutralisé par un groupuscule qui m'empêcha d'exprimer mon point de vue. Puis ils ont tout simplement remis Gaston dans sa voiture, et vogue la galère ! Il est reparti en heurtant les poteaux télégraphiques du chemin.

Bien sûr ils n'ont peut-être pas réellement l'intention de me tuer, mais après les derniers mois que je viens de passer, on comprendrait que j'aie recours à des euphorisants. Je serais en bonne compagnie. Les paysans, eux non plus, ne sont pas heureux ici. Outre leur air malheureux, les Français sont les premiers consommateurs d'antidépresseurs en Europe. Mais ça ne leur fait aucun effet. Un tiers des enfants de l'école primaire du coin ont eu un suicide dans leur famille. Plusieurs d'entre eux ont même découvert le corps. La femme du voisin s'est jetée dans notre puits et s'est noyée. On aurait bien besoin d'une antenne locale de SOS Déprime par ici. Ramenez-moi à la ville.

(Traduit de l'anglais par Jean-Charles Burou)

(1) SAS : Special Air Service (services spéciaux aéroportés pour les missions secrètes et dangereuses).

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European newspapers seemed to take glee in their derision of the annual Eurovision Song Contest, held Saturday night in Istanbul and beamed to hundreds of millions of TV viewers across Europe and as far away as Australia. "As ever, a seemingly endless string of sparkly young people came on and sang instantly forgettable songs with collective lyrics that went something like: Our love is true, let's dance forever/ You are the only one, I feel your pain," the television reviewer of the Guardian wrote.

The contest, which was won by Ruslana, a leather-clad Ukrainian performer described as "Xena-like" by more than one paper, was created in 1956 to foster European unity in the aftermath of World War II. Since then, it has grown into a huge production that this year drew an all-time record 36 countries.

With some notable exceptions (ABBA won the contest in 1974, and the French Canadian Celine Dion actually took up residence in Switzerland in order to represent that country—and win—in 1988), taking top honors at Eurovision doesn't generally correlate with greatness or even stardom. The Sydney Morning Herald noted that "very few of the acts have gone on to truly international careers. More typically they're like Australia's Gina G, who sang Ooh Aah, Just a Little Bit for Britain in 1996, fading into obscurity after one hit."

After years of dismal showings (The Times of London included two Turkish entries in its list of the five worst Eurovision entries of all time), Turkey won the contest last year. That earned the Turks the honor of hosting this year's show. Given the huge opportunity for exposure to all those hundreds of millions of viewers, nations hosting Eurovision see it as a potential boon for tourism and international understanding. The Times reported that an entire section of Istanbul was painted in the national colors, and special care was taken to wash the streets each day during the lead-up to Saturday's live broadcast.

"For two nights [about a billion] people will see short films about Turkey and watch a broadcast organized here," the paper quoted the event's Turkish executive producer as saying. "The value of this is absolutely immeasurable."

Although it's called a song festival, many observers viewed Eurovision as an ode to the European Union more than an effort to choose the Continent's best music. The Scotsman posited that the contest was "like watching a session at the European Parliament set to music. Okay, it was a tad more interesting than that—thanks to the winning ways of the Ukraine's hollering, leathered-up warrior princesses—but never before has Eurovision so closely mirrored what goes on in the corridors of Brussels."

Along these lines, Germany's Die Welt suggested that voting should be done in relation to the population of each of the 36 participating countries, rather than allowing each country to allocate the same number of points. As it is, decisions made by "voters" in each country have equal impact, leading to a situation in which, the paper said, the Belgians "are hated by all of Europe because they gave the French 10 points. … But if the Belgians are only allowed to award four points anyway, they will be spared such hatred." (Translation from the German courtesy of BBC Monitoring.)

The Daily Mirror puts a finer point on the musical merits of the contest: The paper said it has none. Noting that countries tend to give high points to their neighbors or countries with which they are allied politically (Cyprus, for example, gave the top vote—12 points—to Greece), the paper exclaimed, "Don't let anyone fool you into thinking this is a music competition rather than a highly political stitch-up."

The paper noted that Portugal gave 12 points to Spain ("as usual"), and Latvia and Estonia heaped points on Russia. A BBC host who presents the contest to British viewers each year was quoted saying that countries that are well-liked tend to score well. "In recent years Britain, which has invaded everybody, seems to have been lacking in the dependable allies stakes," the Mirror said. (The British entrant scored only 29 points, landing in a dismal 16th place.)

Of course, none of this really matters. It's not just that Ruslana is unlikely to break into the U.S. pop market; if history is any indication, few Europeans will be clamoring for her CDs a few months from now.

Despite its popularity, few people take the contest too seriously. The Sydney Morning Herald quoted one die-hard fan who acknowledged that the contest—with its flamboyant costumes and high camp quotient—has "seen better days." Noting that Eurovision enjoys a large gay following, he added, "It's like a gay world cup. Who else would sit here and watch this load of rubbish?"

Carl Schrag, formerly the editor of the Jerusalem Post, is a writer and lecturer.

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4) Slate/Moneybox: How the other half banks [Les banques "soudure" qui assure les fins de mois des pauvres aux Etats Unis fleurissent malgré des taux d'intérêt usuriers ; les banques de standing regardent celles-ci de haut, mais n'hésitent pas à traiter avec.]
http://slate.msn.com/id/2100276/

moneybox: How the Other Half Banks
The depressing, amazing "payday loan" business.
By Michelle Leder, Posted Monday, May 10, 2004, at 2:37 PM PT

Many Americans—particularly those who don't live paycheck to paycheck—are unfamiliar with the payday-loan industry, one of the nation's fastest-growing and most depressing businesses. Payday advance companies offer tiny, short-term loans—a few hundred bucks for a few weeks—while charging annual interest rates that top 500 percent. Borrow $200 today, pay back $240 or $250 on payday. (Some may think that charging those kinds of rates must be illegal, that it's equivalent to loan sharking by mobsters. In this Slate article, Brendan Koerner explained why loan sharking, which actually charges much lower rates, is against the law and payday loans aren't.)

For millions of Americans, these high-interest short-term loans are a way of life. Just before Christmas last year, more than 10 million people took out a payday loan, according to industry statistics. Between 2000 and 2003, the number of outlets offering these loans more than doubled to 20,000—not counting the many Web sites such as sonicpaydayland.com, mycashnow.com, and so forth that give high-interest quickie loans. Ohio-based Check 'n Go opened 100 new stores last year and anticipates opening another 100 this year. Advance America, a company that only started in 1997, already has more than 2,000 stores. The businesses are thriving in about 35 states. Other states, including New York and Massachusetts, impose interest-rate caps—25 percent in New York—that effectively bar payday loan operations. Stocks of the five publicly traded companies that focus on the payday loan business—four of them are publicly traded pawn shops—all more than doubled in 2003.

The business is booming because of the massive growth in low-wage service-sector workers. People on the edge have turned payday-advance outlets into a kind of alternative banking sector. It's not illogical. The payday loans are safer than dealing with loan sharks—they won't break your legs if you don't pay, only break your credit rating. And, the industry claims, payday loans may end up being cheaper than actual banks. Despite the sky-high rates, the loans may cost less than the $60 to $70 penalty for bouncing a check, or the $30 in late fees, not including interest, that credit card companies extract for missing a payment. "Our customers don't think they're making a bad financial decision," says John L. Rabenold, a spokesman for Check 'n Go.

(Rabenold says that one customer recently contacted the company to thank Check 'n Go for giving her a $200 advance so that she could go shopping with her friends. Still, that $200 advance wound up costing the woman an additional $40, assuming she paid it off within a week. Enduring that kind of penalty may make sense if your car broke down and you need to pay the mechanic. But it's pretty hard to justify it as a form of retail therapy.)

Despite the industry's übergrowth, the three largest payday-advance companies—Advance America, Check 'n Go, and Check into Cash—are all still privately owned. Perhaps that's why Wall Street is so excited about Dollar Financial, one of the remaining prizes. Dollar, based in Berwyn, Pa., a Philadelphia suburb, expects to go public sometime this summer. Dollar operates about 1,100 stores in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada and offers check-cashing, payday loans, and other financial services aimed at those with low incomes. Of its 319 U.S. stores, about 30 percent operate under the name Loan Mart and focus on payday loans.

Wall Street is lining up to support Dollar's offering, which points to the ambivalent relationship it has with the payday-loan business. Despite the huge potential profits, retail banks have shied away from offering payday loans, because they know it would tarnish their reputation. This hurts payday-loan customers, because big banks could turn the business upside down. They have the financial might to cut rates down to much lower levels, but they don't want to be seen as exploiting the poor—after all, they would still charge 10 times the interest rate on a small, short-term loan as on a large, long-term one. "A company like Bank of America knows they're missing out on a multibillion dollar business and they know that if they got into this and charged 60 percent even, it would still be a significant savings for consumers. But they don't want to make their reputation on undercutting a payday lender," says Michael A. Stegman, a professor of public policy and business at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Yet at the same time banks avoid issuing payday loans, they happily accept the payday-loan companies as clients. Citibank won't operate a payday-loan business, but Citigroup is going to be the lead underwriter on Dollar's IPO. And you can be sure that brokers won't be shy about recommending Dollar's stock to investors. Instead of getting its hands dirty, Wall Street will happily settle for being a middleman—nibbling off a small piece of the industry's big profits and avoiding responsibility for how those profits were earned.

Michelle Leder writes a daily blog at www.footnoted.org that looks at SEC filings and is the author of Financial Fine Print: Uncovering a Company's True Value.

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7) The Economist: Gay divorce [Alors qu'on parle de mariage pour les homosexuels, quid du divorce ?]
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2559058

Gay divorce: Lawyers' delight
Apr 1st 2004

AFTER all the teary, flower-strewn weddings for gays and lesbians in San Francisco, New York, Oregon and elsewhere, what happens if the happy couples want to split? At the moment, nothing. Since no state has yet officially recognised homosexual marriage, the licences granted by renegade ministers and county officials are useless in terms of who gets the property or, if it comes to that, the children. The feuding newly-weds can just walk away from each other.

Not for much longer, perhaps. In May, Massachusetts is due to start granting same-sex marriage licences, though conservatives are trying to stop this through a state constitutional amendment and the courts. The California court system, too, will hear arguments about whether the state is right to define marriage as something that happens between a man and a woman. If California decides that homosexual marriage is legal, says William Hohengarten, a Washington-based partner at Jenner & Block, any break-ups from the recent San Francisco nuptials will probably need to go to the divorce courts.

Unless you are Britney Spears in Las Vegas (who rather conventionally married a man, albeit briefly) marriages do not usually break up right away. Belgium, which legalised same-sex marriages in early 2003 (the Netherlands was first, in 2001), has not yet seen any of those couples divorce, according to Hilde Vanbockrijck of Louvain's Catholic University. But it is anyway hard to get unhitched in Belgium, whether gay or straight, before you have endured two years together.

Still, same-sex divorce is already keeping legal minds busy. Herma Hill Kay, the former dean of the law school at the University of California at Berkeley, argues in a forthcoming article in the King's College Law Journal that American states are not prohibited by federal law from recognising same-sex marriages performed in other states. Therefore, she says, they should be able to grant same-sex divorces—and even states that oppose gay marriage may have an interest in doing so, because they would be ending something they view as a problem in the first place. If conservative states refuse to do so, they will make the marriages even more binding than those between heterosexuals.

Vermont's same-sex civil unions, around since 2000, have already shown how messy inter-state dealings can be. Last year a Texas judge granted a divorce to a homosexual couple unionised in Vermont. But when the state attorney-general weighed in to say that Texas cannot grant a divorce where a marriage never existed, the judge voided his decision. (Texas has no provision for “dissolving” a civil union, which is the proper way to do things in Vermont.) In Iowa last year, a county judge ended a Vermont civil union, apparently without realising it was between two women (it seemed just a routine part of his paperwork stack). He has since stood by his decision, but state lawmakers and conservatives have challenged it in Iowa's Supreme Court.

Of course, couples can always end their civil unions in Vermont. So far, 30 have, out of a total of 6,780 civil unions performed. But it is not always easy for out-of-staters, who account for 85% of all such unions. Vermont requires at least one of the two people wanting to get unhitched to have lived there for a year. Splitting up can be rather more complicated than getting married, or unionised, in the first place.

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It begins with a potted history of the company's legal form in America, noting the key 19th-century legal innovation that led to treating companies as persons under law. By bestowing on them the rights and protections that people enjoy, this legal innovation gave the company the freedom to flourish. So if the corporation is a person, ask the film's three Canadian co-creators, Mark Achbar, Joel Bakan and Jennifer Abbott, what sort of person is it?

The answer, elicited over two-and-a-half hours of interviews with left-wing intellectuals, right-wing captains of industry, economists, psychologists and philosophers, is that the corporation is a psychopath. Like all psychopaths, the firm is singularly self-interested: its purpose is to create wealth for its shareholders. And, like all psychopaths, the firm is irresponsible, because it puts others at risk to satisfy its profit-maximising goal, harming employees and customers, and damaging the environment. The corporation manipulates everything. It is grandiose, always insisting that it is the best, or number one. It has no empathy, refuses to accept responsibility for its actions and feels no remorse. It relates to others only superficially, via make-believe versions of itself manufactured by public-relations consultants and marketing men. In short, if the metaphor of the firm as person is a valid one, then the corporation is clinically insane.

There is a tendency among anti-globalisers to demonise captains of industry. But according to “The Corporation”, the problem with companies does not lie with the people who run them. Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, a former boss of Shell, comes across in the film as a sympathetic and human character. At one point, he and his wife greet protesters camped on the front lawn of their English cottage with offers of a cup of tea and apologies for the lack of soya milk for the vegans among them. The film gives Sam Gibara, boss of Goodyear, time to air his opinions, which are given a reasonably neutral edit. Ray Anderson, boss of Interface (which claims, with psychopathic grandiosity, to be the world's largest commercial carpetmaker) is given the hero treatment. Having experienced an “epiphany” about the destructive and unsustainable nature of modern capitalism, Mr Anderson has donned the preacher's cloth to spread the religion of environmental sustainability among his peers.

The main message of the film is that, through their psychopathic pursuit of profit, firms make good people do bad things. Lucy Hughes of Initiative Media, an advertising consultancy, is shown musing about the ethics of designing marketing strategies that exploit the tendency of children to nag parents to buy things, before comforting herself with the thought that she is merely performing her proper role in society. Mark Barry, a “competitive intelligence professional”, disguises himself as a headhunter to extract information for his corporate clients from rivals, while telling the camera that he would never behave so deceitfully in his private life. Human values and morality survive the onslaught of corporate pathology only via a carefully cultivated schizophrenia: the tobacco boss goes home, hugs his kids and feels a little less bad about spreading cancer. Company executives and foot soldiers alike will identify instantly with this analysis, because it is accurate. But it is also incomplete.

The greater insanity

Although the moviemakers claim ownership of the company-as-psychopath idea, it predates them by a century, and rightfully belongs, in its full form, to Max Weber, the German sociologist. For Weber, the key form of social organisation defining the modern age was bureaucracy. Bureaucracies have flourished because their efficient and rational division and application of labour is powerful. But a cost attends this power. As cogs in a larger, purposeful machine, people become alienated from the traditional morals that guide human relationships as they pursue the goal of the collective organisation. There is, in Weber's famous phrase, a “parcelling-out of the soul”.

For Weber, the greater potential tyranny lay not with the economic bureaucracies of capitalism, but the state bureaucracies of socialism. The psychopathic national socialism of Nazi Germany, communism of Stalinist Soviet rule and fascism of imperial Japan (whose oppressive bureaucratic machinery has survived well into the modern era) surely bear Weber out. Infinitely more powerful than firms and far less accountable for its actions, the modern state has the capacity to behave even in evolved western democracies as a more dangerous psychopath than any corporation can ever hope to become: witness the environmental destruction wreaked by Japan's construction ministry.

The makers of “The Corporation” counter that the state was not the subject of their film. Fair point. But they have done more than produce a thought-provoking account of the firm. Their film also invites its audience to weigh up the benefits of privatisation versus public ownership. It dwells on the familiar problem of the corporate corruption of politics and regulatory agencies that weakens public oversight of privately owned firms charged with delivering public goods. But that is only half the story. The film has nothing to say about the immense damage that can also flow from state ownership. Instead, there is a misty-eyed alignment of the state with the public interest. Run that one past the people of, say, North Korea.

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9) The Economist: Bank regulation [Bâle 2 sur les rails.]

http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2670638
Bank regulation: Now for the hard part

May 13th 2004
Agreement has been reached on new bank-capital rules, but work lies ahead

ON MAY 11th, after almost five years of hard work and negotiation, the Basel Committee of bank supervisors reached agreement on new international rules for bank capital. Called Basel 2, the rules aim to link capital more closely to the riskiness of banks' assets than existing regulations do. Like the old system, Basel 2 requires capital to be at least 8% of “risk-weighted” assets. However, whereas the old system of weighting was pretty crude, the new one will be fiendishly complicated. In addition, national supervisors will have discretion to adjust capital requirements, and banks will be expected to disclose more information to investors.

From the end of 2006, the original deadline, the rules will apply to smaller, less sophisticated banks—but not in America, where only big, international banks will be subject to Basel 2. Such banks won an extra year in which to comply. They are allowed to use their own internal risk-models to calculate their capital requirements. American regulators complained that the rules for these models needed more work.

Even now, it is uncertain that American banks will meet the delayed timetable. John Hawke, head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, one of America's many bank regulators, says that an “extensive process” remains before Basel 2 can be adopted, including input from Congress and a fourth “quantitative impact study” (Europeans made do with three).

In Europe, where it is intended to apply Basel 2 to all banks, no matter how small, implementation will proceed in two phases. Here too, politics might cause delays. The European Parliament must approve the new system, and there are elections in June. Critics worry that those banks that adopt the rules early will be at a competitive disadvantage.

But the biggest challenges likely lie elsewhere. Thus far, most of the work on Basel 2 has focused on “pillar 1”, the complicated formulas used to assign risk weightings to a bank's various assets, from credit-card debts to government bonds. But pillar 2, which allows national regulators the discretion to tweak regulatory capital levels, and pillar 3, which compels banks to disclose much more information to financial markets, are likely to have a much bigger effect on capital requirements and banks' behaviour, says Christian Pederson of Mercer Oliver Wyman, a consultancy. Much of the relevant work lies ahead.

Pillar 2, in particular, is tricky. Big, multinational banks with offices in dozens of countries worry that the latitude given to national regulators could lead to a fiddly patchwork of rules. Others fret that some national regulators are not capable of supervising big banks adequately. “Basel 2 is incredibly complicated, as are big banks' risk models,” says one consultant. “Checking boxes won't be enough.”

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OK, here are the rules:

1. If there's a line, you get at the end of the line, and you wait your turn.

2. You own ONE place in the line. You do NOT have the right to invite friends to join you in the line. This is rude to the people behind you, who got there before your friends, and will now have to wait longer. If you want to be with your friends, you can join them at the back of the line. And, no, it's not enough to ask the person immediately behind you if it's OK for your friends to butt in. This person does not speak for the entire line. Also this person pretty much has to say yes, but only because he or she, being less rude than you, wants to avoid confrontation.

EXCEPTION: You may invite an immediate family member such as your spouse or child to join you in the line. There are no other exceptions.

EXCEPTION: Halle Berry.

3. If you're one of those people who go directly to the front of the line and either pretend you don't see the line, or act as though you somehow KNOW that your situation is more urgent than that of anybody else waiting, and somebody in line objects, and you make some vague apology but remain at the front of the line, you will rot in hell. Also the cashier will hate you, although generally he or she will say nothing, as cashiers don't get paid enough to argue with jerks.

4. If you're in a supermarket checkout line, and you realize that you forgot an item, you're allowed to go get it, provided that (1) you apologize to the people behind you, (2) you know exactly where the item is, and (3) you hurry. If you forgot TWO items, take your cart out of line. You are NOT allowed to leave your cart blocking the line while you wander the aisles trying to recall the ingredients for Beef Tongue Flambeau.

NOTE: Before you serve beef tongue to innocent people, you should think about the kinds of things that cows lick.

5. If you're in the express lane, and the sign says 10 ITEMS OR LESS, then you should have no more than . . . OK, we'll allow 12 items. We're not Nazis here.

EXCEPTION: Halle Berry can have as many items as she wants.

6. At a movie theater, you may save seats for a few people if the theater is not crowded. If the theater is crowded, you may save seats only if the people you're saving them for are on the premises, defined as ''in the building or the parking lot.'' If the previews of coming attractions have started, and the theater is filling up, and you're still defending seats for theoretical people who have not yet arrived, and an actual, physical person attempts to sit down, and you hiss ''That's saved,'' and the person ''accidentally'' trips and spills that stanky movie-theater nacho cheese all over your hair, and you press assault charges, and we get selected to serve on the jury, we're voting for acquittal.

7. Do not talk during the movie unless you have something important to say.

(Example: ''My water just broke.'') You may talk quietly during the previews of coming attractions.

EXCEPTION: Halle Berry.

8. At class plays, music recitals, graduations, etc., you may save a few seats for your IMMEDIATE FAMILY, and then only for a reasonable time. You may not arrive an hour early and squat at the end of a row, or even two rows, and save large blocs of seats for relatives so distant that some of them are not even vertebrates.

NOTE: This rule applies even if you have turned the seating area into an indoor yard sale by marking each ''saved'' seat with a personal item such as a sweater, purse, sock, brassiere, etc.

EXCEPTION: If we see a seat marked by dentures, we're sitting somewhere else.

9. If you're talking on your cell phone in public, and people keep glancing at you, it's not because they're impressed by the fact that you are a busy, productive person. It's because YOU'RE TALKING TOO LOUD.

10. (This rule was suggested by our Research Department, Judi Smith, who one day will open fire with a machine gun in a public restroom:) If you're a woman using a toilet, and, because you are dainty and fastidious, you elect not to sit on the seat, but instead hover over it like a UFO from the Planet Weewee, and as a result you spatter the seat, do NOT just leave your mess, as if no human will ever use this toilet again. CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF.

EXCEPTION: Sorry, Halle. Judi says you, too.

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