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C'est une reprise de la semaine dernière avec quelques rajouts...

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THE REGULARS: Summary
A) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Scholastic News: Terrible Quake Hits South Asia [Catastrophe naturelle dans l'océan indien.]
B) Executive Planet/Business Culture: Guide to business conversation in the US [Un petit guide pour bien converser avec vos contacts d'affaires américains.]
C) Car Talk/The Puzzle: RAF Armor [Un casse-tête. On ne triche pas !]
D) New York Times/The Ethicist: Dead Flowers [Conseils sur l'éthique et la déontologie. Cette semaine : Peut-on piquer des fleurs d'un tombeau ?

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B*) CNN/Global Office: Divided by an uncommon language [Des salariés poursuivent la filiale française de GE pour non-respect de la loi Toubon sur l'emploi de la française.]
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/BUSINESS/11/24/french.english.ap/index.html
Divided by an uncommon language

Wednesday, November 24, 2004 Posted: 1115 GMT (1915 HKT)

PARIS, France (AP) -- General Electric employee Nadine Meslin says dealing with computer software in any language is tricky, but it's even worse when you're French and the jargon is in English.

So what's the answer? Sue!

French employees of a GE branch that makes medical equipment, tired of struggling with company e-mails, manuals and meetings in English, took their fight to court on Tuesday -- the latest flare-up in the French language's struggle to maintain linguistic pre-eminence, at least at home. "It is really for work purposes, so we can do our jobs competently," Meslin, a GE Healthcare marketing assistant who also represents the CGT trade union, said of the court action. "It is in no way a question of pride."

Pride, nevertheless, has a lot to do with French discomfort over the creep of English, both here and elsewhere in the world. A French law aimed at fending off English usage in business and on the airwaves marked its 10th anniversary this year. French-language defenders keep an eagle-eye out for transgressions such as -- quelle horreur! -- English-language advertising.

The Web site of the Defense of the French Language, a group partly financed by France's Culture Ministry, even has a page titled "Museum of Horrors" showing photos of English-language billboards on buses, at train stations, airports and that most iconic of French institutions, the Paris Metro.

On Wednesday, it and other groups are to award their annual English Doormat Prize for perceived offenses against the French language. Last year's winner was an academic who promoted teaching in English. The 2002 award went to the esteemed Le Monde newspaper for running weekly excerpts in English from the New York Times.

This year's candidates include the head of the French Football Federation for using the song "Can You Feel It?" as a national team anthem, luxury goods firm Dior for promoting perfumes in English and European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet for giving a speech in English.

GE Healthcare based its court complaint on the Toubon Law, introduced in 1994, which makes French mandatory in a variety of situations, ranging from advertising to workplace documents employees need to do their jobs. The latter must be written in French but can be accompanied by translations.

The employees claim English has become the main language in their branch of GE in recent years for instruction manuals, company e-mails and meetings. Older employees, hired when English was not a requirement, find it particularly hard to adapt, they claim.

The case was brought by the left-wing CGT union and more moderate CFDT, and hearings opened Tuesday in a court in Versailles west of Paris, union representatives said. They expect a verdict in January. "We are asking for the translation into French of a certain number of documents and software applications. All we want is to be able to work well, in good conditions," said Meslin, the CGT representative. "It's especially important for software," she added. "Already, in French, it's not easy, so imagine what it's like when it's not your native language."

Employees contend safety is also an issue because technicians may incorrectly assemble medical machines sold by the firm if they don't understand instruction manuals.

A 1998 study by the national statistics agency INSEE backs them up: it found that 64 percent of people aged 15 or above whose mother tongue is French say they have no working knowledge of English.

In a statement, GE Healthcare said it provides employees with translations of business communications and French language tools. The firm employs more than 1,500 people from 45 countries at its site in Buc, near Versailles, and from there exports to more than 100 countries. "GE Healthcare is committed to upholding the highest standards when it comes to respecting local laws, customs and cultures in countries where it operates," the statement said.

Employees say the company has made an effort since the complaint was filed in June, with all e-mails from management offered in English, French and other languages since September. The firm has also promised that a software package in French would be made available, employees said.

Marceau Dechamps, vice president of the Defense of the French Language group, said the Toubon Law has proved effective in previous cases but lamented the number of French companies using English is increasing. French employees faced with English in the workplace "often don't say anything because they are scared of being judged poorly, of appearing backward, of compromising their promotion prospects. In meetings in English, they act as if they understood, even though they understood nothing or little," he said. Using French is a matter of economic efficiency, not just pride, Dechamps said. "People can only think and communicate clearly in their language. It's utopian to think tomorrow we'll all speak in the same language."

And the Doormat Prize?

Marc Favre d'Echallens, secretary general of the Right to Understand, one of the sponsors, promised results would be sent to reporters by "courrier electronique" and "telecopie" -- which many people in France prefer to call "e-mail" and "fax."

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2*) The Economist: The software-development industry [Il est de plus en plus de difficile de concevoir des logiciels.]

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3423238
The software-development industry: Managing complexity
Nov 25th 2004

Most software projects fail to meet their goals. Can this be fixed by giving developers better tools?

ON SEPTEMBER 14th, the radios in an air-traffic control centre in Palmdale, California shut down, grounding hundreds of flights in southern California and Nevada, and leading to five mid-air encounters between aircraft unable to talk to the ground controllers. Disaster was averted because aircraft managed to communicate with more distant back-up facilities. But why did Palmdale's radios fail? A glitch in the software running the system meant the computers had to be re-booted every 30 days, and somebody forgot to do so. But software running a mission-critical system should not have to be restarted every month. The culprit: poor design.

At least Palmdale's software worked some of the time. The same cannot be said of an $4 billion write-off that America's Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had to swallow when a multi-year effort to overhaul its computer system failed completely in 1997. And such problems are confined neither to governments nor to America. A £456m ($844m) project for Britain's Child Support Agency came in over a year late, and has failed to deliver payments to more than half of eligible applicants.

As software has become more and more pervasive in business and government, and more complicated, the impact of poor software design has been steadily growing. A study earlier this year by the Standish Group, a technology consultancy, estimated that 30% of all software projects are cancelled, nearly half come in over budget, 60% are considered failures by the organisations that initiated them, and nine out of ten come in late. A 2002 study by America's National Institute of Standards (NIST), a government research body, found that software errors cost the American economy $59.5 billion annually. Worldwide, it would be safe to multiply this figure by a factor of two. So who is to blame for such systematic incompetence?

Cost overruns and delays are common in numerous industries—few large infrastructure projects, for instance, are completed either on time or on budget. But it is peculiar to software that billions of dollars can be spent only for nothing useful to result. At a very basic level, it is the fault of the software engineers who are writing the programs, and of their bosses. Even companies that specialise in software development suffer from delays and overruns. An obvious example is Microsoft: its “Longhorn”, the long-heralded successor to its Windows XP operating system, was originally scheduled for launch this year. Longhorn is now not expected before mid-2006, and many of its key features have been put off until 2007.

The prevalence of such failures can be explained by one startling weakness: the tools available to software developers. As software projects have become more and more complicated, it has become impossible for even the most talented team of programmers to keep track of the millions of lines of “code” required. As long ago as the 1980s the industry began to rely heavily on software-development applications—basically, software that helps write software, for example by creating reusable modules that form part of broader processes. The problem is that these have simply not been up to the task. As a report in May by Forrester Research, another consultancy, succinctly put it: “Corporate software development is broken.”

Dale Fuller, the boss of Borland, a software-development company, agrees. He also thinks he can fix the problem of weak tools. So does John Swainson, long in charge of software development at IBM and now bound for the top job at Computer Associates. John Montgomery, who runs such things for Microsoft, does not think the situation is quite so bad. However, he believes Microsoft has what it takes to “commoditise common problems” and so enable average software developers to write above-average programs. And a bevy of smaller companies offers solutions as well. The challenge facing all of these companies is how to create tools that are reliable, yet capable of dealing with millions of lines of code and requirements that can shift, sometimes alarmingly, during a project's lifetime.

The importance of the software-development sector to business as a whole is huge. It is also an increasingly substantial business in itself (see chart). And, as Mr Montgomery points out, although selling software-development applications is profitable for Microsoft, it is also a way of winning new business. Better development tools mean more software is written for Windows, which in turn means more people are likely to use the operating system. Ditto for rivals—one reason IBM is making a big push to support development in various flavours of Unix (including in the “open source” version—ie, software code that is non-proprietary and ostensibly free to anyone—Linux). Unix is a long-established operating system that remains the biggest threat to Windows.

Three main trends are shaping the future of software development and giving hope to those who oversee big software projects. The first is awareness of the need to pay greater attention to the lifecycle of a piece of software, from the initial setting of requirements to ongoing implementation. The second trend is towards automating the testing of software. The NIST study estimates that $22.2 billion (more than one-third) of the cost of software failures could be eliminated simply by improved testing. The third trend is the emergence of open-source code, something embraced even by Microsoft, which is often seen by its many critics as the would-be nemesis of the open-source movement.

The five-step program

There are five steps involved in creating a piece of software: enumerating the requirements; designing the program; actually writing the code; testing it; and then deploying it. Traditionally and naturally enough, this was seen as a sequential process. However, Mr Swainson points out that by the time an organisation gets around to deploying a piece of software, its requirements have often already changed. This, he says, means that an “iterative” model, in which an organisation continually cycles through the five phases, makes more sense than the traditional “waterfall” which puts them in sequence.

Although the consensus among software-development providers is that iterative models are the way forward, a note of caution is in order. A paper by Phillip Laplante and Colin Neill of Penn State University in the February issue of ACM Queue, a scholarly journal, claims that, in practice, the waterfall remains by far the most popular model. It may be that real change is lagging behind developers' marketing literature, or that the iterative approach is more style than substance.

Borland, though, is betting its business on the success of the iterative model. In September it announced “Software Delivery Optimisation”, an approach that seeks to bring together all five bits of the development cycle, along with the people who are constantly making decisions about the project. At the heart of the system is management software called Themis (the Greek goddess of order), planned for release in the first half of 2005. Themis will have a module that turns models automatically into programming code. When code is written, it will instantly update the requirements input by the business developers. Mr Fuller says that this will transcend even the iterative model because the iteration will be so fast as to be seamless. As soon as a portion of the code is completed, it will be tested. As soon as requirements change, programmers will instantly change course.

If that sounds a bit utopian, it is by no means unique. In October, IBM announced its newest package, called “Atlantic”, which is poised to compete with Themis. Atlantic is based both around IBM's own products and those of Rational, a company bought by IBM in December 2002 for $2.1 billion. Not to be left out, Microsoft will release a similar product called Visual Studio 2005 sometime in the first half of next year. The rhetoric of this rush of entrants into the marketplace is almost indistinguishable.

This is partially due to the fact that, although they are competitors, and fierce ones at that, they are also collaborators. Mr Montgomery points out several bits of development software—WS-Routing, for instance (which handles network routing) and WS-Security (you guessed it, security)—that were developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft. Both firms trumpet that their development software is used by an impressive percentage of the world's largest companies, and both support the same basic standards, such as XML (a language for exchanging data on the web) and other web protocols.

Indeed, so-called web services—programs that are meant to run on the web and be accessed by many computers remotely—are the primary battleground for the next generation of software-development applications. The business case rests on the view that almost anything can be done over the web. This is particularly true for the most common, commodity-type applications where most of the available revenues appear to be.

Tick this box

One snag is that, so far, web services have turned out to be much harder to deliver than their champions had hoped. Consider the example of a relatively simple challenge: enrolling 6m Americans living abroad who wanted to use the internet to cast their votes in the recent elections. America's Defence Department, which has responsibility for helping expats to vote, decided to launch a pilot program for 100,000 people, and even came up with an acronym: SERVE, or Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment. In February, after $22m had already been spent, the project was abandoned. The software was judged to be too unreliable.

The various efforts to prevent the occurrence of such disasters—IBM's web-services platform is called WebSphere, and Microsoft's suite of development tools for web services is known as .NET—have more similarities than differences. IBM tends to favour Java as its native programming language, while Microsoft prefers C#, a language it developed itself. However, both firms' platforms support other languages. Borland claims that, being neutral, it does a better job, but marketing seems to be as important as technology when it comes to winning market share.

That is why Mr Montgomery emphasises Microsoft's efforts to create an “ecosystem” of developers. He says that the company has spent, over the years, hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars investing in the Microsoft Developer Network. This is certainly a busy website—some 3m developers a month visit to exchange programs and ideas, Mr Montgomery says. Indeed, some of the developers come up with products that compete directly with elements of .NET.

What's more, Mr Montgomery says that the tools made by companies such as Component 1 and Infragistics are better than Microsoft's own, and that this is something Microsoft encourages. The small fry make millions of dollars by staying one step ahead of Microsoft, but the giant benefits because its overall ecosystem is strengthened.

If software development in general is somewhat fragmented, in the area of software testing there is one clear market leader: Mercury Interactive, a company based in Mountain View, California. Other companies, especially IBM, are trying to make inroads into testing, and Mercury itself is trying to expand into other areas, particularly through an initiative called “Business Technology Optimisation” (yes, the initiatives all start to sound rather similar). That aims to do the kind of system-level integration at which companies such as Borland have traditionally been best. However, industry watchers say there is real promise in efforts to refine the testing process.

There are two sorts of software testing. The first, unit testing, tests a very small subroutine to see that it does what it should. The second, functional testing, is actually trying to use the software. Unit testing is far more straightforward—it is easier to test if a brick will crumble than if an entire structure is sound. Functional testing, on the other hand, is tricky—how is one to know if the software is fully tested? However, according to Mercury, about 60% of the necessary functional testing can be automated—things like repeatedly entering data. And automation allows the developers to explore a far larger number of test cases than would be possible by hand, in far less time. The gains are even greater when software is revised—old automated tests can often be re-used, whereas manual testers would have to start from scratch.

The benefits of this approach are amplified by the transition to the iterative approach—testing is much more effective if its results can be easily re-integrated into the software. Indeed, there is a symbiosis here: the faster testing made possible by automation is easing the transition from the waterfall model to an iterative one. Hence the interest from IBM and Microsoft.

An open-source solution?

The third big industry trend is arguably the most promising of them all. As Mr Montgomery points out, there are two ways of thinking about open-source software development. The first is to see it as a business model, and the second is to understand it as a development process. Microsoft, he says, makes a large amount of source code available under a so-called shared-source licence, which grants users downstream a limited set of rights to modify and use the code.

For purists, this is not enough. However, Mr Montgomery says it suffices to build the sort of community Microsoft wants, while retaining its ability to make a profit. (For instance, people are allowed to take the code, modify it and sell it, but only if it will be used on a Microsoft operating system.) IBM uses a similarly restrictive licence, but it has built its platform on top of Eclipse, a purer open-source framework for building integrated development environments.

However, other companies, such as CollabNet, a firm based in Brisbane, California, are using a less restrictive licence, along the lines of what is traditionally thought of as open source, with only one exception—the licence allows for commercial use. Brian Behlendorf, founder and chief technology officer of CollabNet, says that the open-source ethos allows programmers, particularly those collaborating from different locations, to work together more efficiently. He contends that the freedom to tinker with and improve tools essentially without restriction is the best route to efficiency. Mr Behlendorf was a pioneer in the development of the well-known Apache open-source web server, so his views come as little surprise. Less predictably, they are shared by businesses not usually thought of as being open-source enthusiasts.

For instance, CollabNet signed a deal earlier this month with Barclays Global Investors (BGI), a large asset manager, to provide it with development tools for the next three years. Mr Behlendorf points out that software-development companies, like software companies themselves, are moving towards a model of selling services rather than products. The tools that CollabNet uses are almost all open-source, but by paying “rent”, clients get the benefits of the company's expertise. It seems to work. BGI reports that since it first started using CollabNet two years ago, the time it takes to complete a project has halved.

The three big industry trends—lifecycle management, testing and open source—come together in a movement known as “agile” programming. This approach to software development was codified in a meeting in February 2001 in Utah when a group of programmers declared its allegiance to doing things quickly, using common sense and simplicity. The canonical example of what they are trying to avoid was a 1980s program called CONFIRM. Funded by a consortium of hotels, airlines and rental-car companies, it was meant to be a comprehensive travel-reservation system. After three and a half years and $125m, it was cancelled.

The main principle of agile programming is that developers must talk to each other often, and that they must talk to the business people setting requirements equally often. Combine this with a short time-scale—ideally agile proponents seek to deliver a working bit of software every few weeks—and you have an accelerated, informal version of the iterative model. This means that no project can go on for years and produce nothing—a fatally flawed project will be caught sooner.

Gartner, a consultancy, estimates that agile programming will have a substantial impact on high-priority projects. Nonetheless, pessimists argue that the problems plaguing software development are so fundamental that none of the many innovations being pursued today will really make a difference. In mitigation, software engineering is still an immature discipline. It is just possible that the techniques now being pursued by Microsoft, IBM and their growing army of competitors will lead to a future where failure is an exception rather than the rule.

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6*) Test for dementia [Un petit test pour la démence. Il faut surtout ne pas prendre trop de temps pour répondre, mais réagir spontanémment.]
TEST FOR DEMENTIA

Below are four (4) questions and a bonus question. You have to answer them instantly. You can't take your time, answer all of them immediately. Let's find out just how clever you really are.

Ready? GO!!! (scroll down)

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First Question:

You are participating in a race. You overtake [dépasser] the second place person. What position are you in?

Answer: If you answered that you are first, then you are wrong! If you overtake the second place person, and you take their place, you are second!

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To answer the second question, don't take as much time as you took for the first question.

Second Question:

If you are in a race, and you overtake the last person, then you are?

Answer: If you answered that you are second to last, then you are wrong again. Tell me, how can you overtake the LAST person?! You're not having a good time at this! Are you?

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Very tricky maths! Note: This must be done in your head only. Do NOT use paper and pencil or a calculator. Try it.

Third Question:

Take 1000 and add 40 to it. Now add another 1000. Now add 30. Add another 1000. Now add 20. Now add another 1000. now add 10. What is the total?

Answer: Did you get 5000? The correct answer is actually 4100. Don't believe it? Check with your calculator!

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Today is definitely not your day. Maybe you will get the last question right?

Fourth Question:

Mary's father has five daughters: 1. Nana, 2. Nene, 3. Nini, 4. Nono. What is the name of the fifth daughter?

Answer: Nunu? NO! Of course not. Her name is Mary. Read the question again!

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Okay, now the bonus round. You can partially redeem yourself with this one!!!!!

Bonus Question:

There is a mute [muet] person who wants to buy a toothbrush. By imitating the action of brushing one's teeth he successfully expresses himself to the shopkeeper and the purchase is done. Now if there is a blind [aveugle] man who wishes to buy a pair of sunglasses, how should he express himself?

Answer: He just has to open his mouth and ask. He's blind, not mute - so simple.

KEEP THIS GOING TO FRUSTRATE THE "SMART PEOPLE" IN YOUR LIFE

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A) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Scholastic News: Terrible Quake Hits South Asia [Catastrophe naturelle dans l'océan indien.]
http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/news/article_thu.asp
Terrible Quake Hits South Asia
Steven Ehrenberg

The worst earthquake in 40 years shook South Asia on Sunday, triggering monstrous waves that swept entire villages into the sea. At least 20,000 people in six countries were killed in the disaster, and millions were left homeless.

The quake shook deep beneath the Indonesian island of Sumatra and registered 9.0 on the Richter scale, which measures the intensity of earthquakes. It was felt more than 3,000 miles away in East Africa, where heavy tides kept fishermen at home and resorts closed.

It was as if the sea had struck the land. Residents of Sri Lanka, a small island country off the coast of India, ran for the hills to find safety from the tsunami, or giant waves. Many took their radios, televisions, and other valuables with them. The disaster hit Sri Lanka hardest. Of its 20 million people, 1 million lost their homes, and 10,000 died.

"The water simply raised itself up and huge waves came ashore," wrote eyewitness Peter Thomas from Kochi, India. "It was moving very fast. The impact smashed the glass walls of a restaurant on the beach here and damaged hundreds of boats."

In some places, the tsunami struck with no warning. "The weather was fine with no clouds," wrote an eyewitness in Indonesia. "Suddenly the seawater just hit the city. In some parts the water was up to chest level."

Relief Efforts

A massive effort to help the affected countries is already under way. Leaders from around the world have pledged their support, and teams of aid workers, doctors, and volunteers are rushing to the region.

"The United States stands ready to offer all appropriate assistance to those nations most affected, including Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Thailand, and Indonesia, as well as the other countries impacted," said White House spokesman Trent Duffy.

Organizations from the Red Cross to the International Monetary Fund have launched fund-raising drives to ease the costs of rebuilding.

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B) Executive Planet/Business Culture: Guide to business conversation in the US [Un petit guide pour bien converser avec vos contacts d'affaires américains.]
http://www.executiveplanet.com/business-culture-in/132427303896.html
Conversation

Updated April 18, 2003

Business Language

# Almost all business is conducted in English in the United States.
# Be aware that many Americans speak only English. Spanish is another common language due to the United States' proximity to Mexico and Central America and the large population of Spanish-speaking individuals in the country. However, English will still be used almost 100% for business deals.
# Because many Americans speak only one language, they may not be sensitive to the difficulties of other individuals trying to speak English. They may speak fast or very loudly [as if this will help you understand them better].
# American business language is also very idiomatic. Many Americans adopt sports terms in their business speech ["Touch base," "Ballpark figures," "Call the shots," "Team players," and "Game plan" are a few examples.] Many Americans may not be aware that they are using these idioms because they seem so natural.
# If language becomes a barrier, ask for clarification and seek understanding. If you are not totally comfortable speaking and doing business in English, hire a translator.

General Guidelines

# Americans often ask, “What do you do?” [that is, “Tell me about your job and employer”] to start a conversation. This kind of question is not considered presumptuous, but rather is a way to show interest in the individual by showing interest in his or her job.
# Compliments are exchanged frequently and are popular “conversation starters.” If you wish to make conversation with someone, you can compliment an item such as his or her clothing or a work or sports related achievement.
# Generally, Americans like to laugh and enjoy being with people who have a sense of humour. Jokes are usually welcome, but be careful. In all situations, ethnic and religious humour should be avoided. Self-deprecating humour, however, usually goes over well.
# Sports are very popular in the U.S., especially baseball, football [not to be confused with soccer], and basketball. Soccer [known as football in most other countries] has grown in popularity in recent years, but is not nearly as popular as these other sports.
# Golf is another popular sport, especially among businesspeople. It is often a venue for business discussions and deals, so be prepared to play golf and talk business at the same time.

Topics to Avoid
# Until you know a person well, avoid discussing religion, politics or other controversial subjects [i.e., abortion, racism, sexism].
# Refrain from asking women if they are married. If a woman volunteers this information, however, you may ask a few polite questions about her husband and/or children.
# Ethnic or religious jokes

Welcome Topics of Conversation

# A person's job/work-related matters
# Sports
# Travel
# Food
# Music
# Movies
# Books

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D) New York Times/The Ethicist: Dead Flowers [Conseils sur l'éthique et la déontologie. Cette semaine : Peut-on piquer des fleurs d'un tombeau ?]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/26/magazine/26ETHICIST.html

THE ETHICIST
Dead Flowers
By RANDY COHEN

Published: December 26, 2004

My son and I were visiting Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris. Just before closing time, I wanted to liberate a particularly lovely bouquet of roses left at Chopin's gravestone. My son was aghast that I would steal from the dead, and he rejected my explanation that the bouquet was on its way to a garbage can, so it might as well make living people happy in our hotel room. Who was right? D.M., Ann Arbor

Applying your logic, I can break into your hotel room, find an attractive sweater you won't wear many more times and steal it -- sorry, liberate it -- to make a living person happy: me. Your son was rightly dismayed. It is not uncommon for flowers to remain on a grave for weeks, gradually withering, a sad metaphor for the death the bouquet is meant to memorialize. Your proposed rose grab would not only dishonor the dead; it would thwart the intention of the living.

Even if those blossoms would be discarded imminently, you must wait until they actually are before snatching them. Eventually you, too, will go to that great garbage can in the sky, but that doesn't allow me to truncate your allotted span.

Incidentally, I've been to Père-Lachaise and thought it offered dignified tributes to lives lost -- a plaque on a wall marks the very spot where 147 Communards were executed in 1871 -- as well as more effervescent evocations of lives lived: Oscar Wilde's tomb is scattered with the lipstick kisses of modern admirers.

At the entrance, an old gent offers a map of the necropolis that, for all its gravity, is -- let's face it -- a map to the (deceased) stars' homes. And what stars they are: Balzac and Proust, Delacroix and Seurat, Piaf, Bernhardt and on and on. Does it mock the dead to turn them into tourist attractions, to encourage us visitors to wander around gawping as if we were at an incredibly glamorous cocktail party to which, were the local residents still alive, we'd never be invited?

When I reached the grave of Jim Morrison, it was covered with graffiti and surrounded by a score of international hippies solemnly singing ''Light My Fire,'' each in his own key. I think Jim would have wanted it that way. Death be not proud, man.

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THIS WEEK'S TEXTS

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1) Slate/Moneybox: Why Gift Cards Are Evil [Les bons d'achat cadeau sont nuls.]
http://slate.msn.com/id/2111769/

moneybox
Daily commentary about business and finance.

Why Gift Cards Are Evil: They're the best insult money can buy.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2005, at 12:45 PM PT

What do you buy when you're too lazy to find a real present? Probably a gift card. In a Christmas shopping season that lacked a must-have product, the most successful item may have been that nondescript, infinitely malleable slice of plastic.

Gift cards, which came on the scene in the late 1990s at Blockbuster and Neiman-Marcus, have spread into every nook of the vast retailing sector. Wal-Mart sells them for as little as $10. Barnes & Noble offers them. Fast-food joints like McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts are getting in on the act. So is American Express. A survey released last October by ValueLink, which creates gift cards for companies, estimated that in the previous 12 months, 64 percent of American adults (139 million people!) either bought or received a gift card, up from just 37 percent in 2002.

After Christmas, Bloomberg news reported that sales of gift cards in the 2004 holiday season may have exceeded the National Retail Federation's prediction of $17.3 billion. Michael Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers, has suggested that 11 percent of holiday sales may have been embedded in gift cards. And Providence College marketing professor Dan Horne, a gift card specialist, said Americans likely spend between $40 billion and $45 billion annually on gift cards.

The appeal of gift cards is obvious. They save time and mental energy for purchasers, who don't have to struggle to choose the right present. A $50 gift card from Barnes & Noble somehow seems more thoughtful than simply slipping two twenties and a bunch of wrinkled ones into an envelope. For recipients, gift cards ward off the uncomfortable and highly inefficient process of receiving and returning unwanted gifts. Every recipient of a gift card can be honestly and genuinely gracious—who doesn't like free money, after all?

Retailers love gift cards most of all. They're high-margin, low-maintenance sales that can be easily conducted online. They stimulate much-wanted traffic in the post-holiday season doldrums of January and February, especially at restaurants. And to the extent gift cards save merchants the expense and hassle of handling returns of unwanted gifts, they are a huge boon.

So, what's not to like? A few things. Buy a gift card and you're essentially lending cash to the retailer today that is paid back through merchandise tomorrow, or next week, or next month. ValueLink reported that 27 percent of those in its survey blew the cards out within seven days, and another 31 percent did so within a month. Which means that about 42 percent of cards retained some cash value on them for at least a month. Wal-Mart and Neiman-Marcus can borrow all the cash they want from banks or the bond market on rather favorable terms. Do they really need us to extend short-term interest-free loans to them?

And gift cards frequently carry a price for their recipients. Walking into a store with free money in your pocket is like walking into an all-you-can-eat buffet after fasting—you'll feel psychologically impelled and entitled to consume more than usual, because the short-term cost will seem lower. "When customers go into the store, they don't feel constrained to just stick to that card," said Karen Larsen, vice president of global marketing and business development at ValueLink.

That's one of the reasons retailers issue gift cards in low denominations. The Neiman-Marcus $50 gift card won't go very far on its own. Ditto for the $10 card at Wal-Mart. Indeed, ValueLink said that 55 percent of those in its survey spent more than the initial value of the card they received. (In an exquisite example of how commerce blasphemously adopts sacred language, such incremental spending is referred to in the industry as "uplift.") Dan Horne says that "the evidence is that there is incremental spend of 40 percent." But he hastens to note that some shopping experiences are far more uplifting than others. A core Wal-Mart shopper with a $100 gift card might spend $110 on his next visit, providing a mere $10 of uplift. A core Barneys fashion victim, armed with a $100 gift card, might spend $200.

Finally, depending on the recipient's self-esteem and level of paranoia, gift cards can seem a wee bit paternalistic and controlling. Gift cards are tailor-made for recipients who are irresponsible or deficient in taste and self-awareness—or who are simply prone to feeling that way. Give your teenager $50 and she might blow it on midriff-baring halter tops at Abercrombie & Fitch. But that J. Crew gift card can be spent only on presentable clothing. Dismayed that your boyfriend's recent reading list extends only as far as Maxim? A Border's gift card could send a message. For the insecure male on your list, a Thomas Pink gift card could be a not-so-subtle hint that his shirts are blighted with ugly stains.

So, let's review. A gift card is great. But every moment you don't use it, Wal-Mart or some other giant retailer is collecting interest on the giver's cash. When you go to redeem it, chances are you'll end up spending some of your own coin. And it probably reflects the giver's implicit criticism of your poor taste and untrustworthiness. Aren't you glad Christmas is over?

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