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4) USA Today: French say, vive la difference! [On refait la promotion de la France aux USA, et la promotrice en chef, c'est notre désormais célèbre Clara Gaymard nationale !]
http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2004-12-02-france-usat_x.htm

At a recent salmon-and-Burgundy lunch at the sumptuous French consulate on Fifth Avenue in New York, Jean-David Levitte, ambassador to the United States, made it clear his country is open for business. "More and more the old Europe is becoming the new France," Levitte says with a wide grin. "Since the days of Washington and Lafayette, our countries have been partners. We wish to build on that."

France has earmarked $12 million over three years to "The New France" campaign in recognition that the country needs to upgrade its anti-business, low-tech image. Target audiences include the USA, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and China.

Driving France's effort to become the primary destination for foreign capital is Clara Gaymard, France's ambassador for international investment. A rollerblading 44-year-old mother of eight, Gaymard, wife of the French agriculture minister, stresses the USA is "our biggest market, our first market."

Despite icy relations between Washington and Paris over Iraq and other issues, the French government says the USA is the leading investor in France, supporting almost 550,000 French jobs, while France is the No. 2 investor in the USA, where its companies account for nearly 600,000 American jobs. About $1 billion in commercial transactions take place between France and the USA every business day.

Battling its reputation

The French, congenitally anti-British, desperately want to displace the dominant Anglo-American business axis. "American companies always go to the U.K.," Gaymard says. "But the U.K. is not in Europe, not in the Eurozone."

Euro-skeptics such as author P.J. O'Rourke wonder aloud whether a country that rhymes with underpants can really persuade U.S. CEOs to open their pocketbooks. Indeed, U.S. investment in France last year was cut by more than half to a paltry $1.5 billion. Even Gaymard admits France suffers from a reputation of meddling tax-and-spend politicians, militant labor unions and arrogant workers, enamored of European Union rules that ensure more pay for less work. Edward Prescott, the 2004 Nobel memorial prize winner in economics, points out that lower-taxed Americans, on a per-person basis, work 50% more than the French. Based on the same labor market statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, German and Italian workers do not fare much better.

"I understand the misperception of France," Gaymard says. "We have not been as business orientated as we are now. But we have changed a lot in the last two years." Gaymard claims France enjoys fewer days lost to strikes than the U.K. or the USA and that France ranks second in the world in hourly productivity, ahead of the USA. She also cites 50 recent reforms designed to attract more investment. Among them, a wide array of tax benefits, faster visa approvals, work permits for spouses, elimination of the minimum capital requirement for small start-ups and easier procedures for sacking employees.

The timing of the campaign appears fortuitous. With U.S. presidential elections out of the way and new efforts to bridge the trans-Atlantic divisions, the political climate seems to be improving. French President Jacques Chirac still champions a "multipolar" (translation: anti-American) world. But Champagne shipments to the USA, an influential barometer, are up 4% after disappointing last year.

"I guess they bet on an ebb tide of French-bashing after the election," says Emmanuel Saint-Martin, a correspondent with French newsweekly Le Point. "But I don't see that the political dissension between France and USA had any consequences on business."

Targeting excellence

A number of top American companies praise the French government for making the country more business-friendly. "The French government over the last three or four years has identified key industries where they want the country to excel, and biotechnology is clearly one of them," says James Geraghty, Genzyme's senior vice president of international development. The Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech firm has 150 employees, or about 3% of its workforce, in France. "France is often the first country in Europe to get important new medicines to patients," Geraghty adds, citing as an example its new drug Myozyme for a rare and often-fatal muscle disorder called Pompe disease.

"Some (criticisms) are real, some are clichés about the way the French do business," says Frenchman Herve Gallaire, chief technology officer of Xerox worldwide. "But France today is much more open to the outside world." The Stamford, Conn.-based copy machine maker has 2,700 employees or about 5% of its total workforce in France, including 100 engaged in cutting-edge document content analysis and image classification work at Xerox's research center outside of Grenoble. "When I look at the excellent output of our research center," Gallaire says, "I don't feel everyone is always on holiday.

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8) Car Talk/The Puzzler: Heat Attack Location [Un casse-tête. Comment l'opératrice a-t-elle fait pour localiser la victime d'une crise cardiaque ? On ne triche pas !]
http://www.cartalk.com/content/puzzler/transcripts/200140/index.html

An old guy is driving home. It's late at night. He's driving along the highway and he's some considerable distance from home. Suddenly, he feels himself having a heart attack. He says, "Oh my God. It's the big one." Thinking quickly, he takes the first available exit.

As luck would have it, he winds up in a residential neighborhood. It's very late at night. He pulls over to the side of the road behind some parked cars. He's fading fast, but he has the presence of mind to pull out his cell phone and call 911 [numéro d'appel des services d'urgence].

He says to the dispatcher, "I need help. I'm having a heart attack."

And the conversation goes something like this: "I don't know where I am."
"What exit did you take?"
"I don't remember."
" Were you going north or south or east?"
"I don't remember."
"Can you tell me what street you're on?"
"I'm in the middle of the block. I'm parked. I didn't see any street signs."
She says, "Start blowing the horn. Someone will come out of the house."
No one comes out.
She then asks him to do one more thing.
Minutes later, an ambulance is on its way there and saves his life.

What did she ask him to do?

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10) Los Angeles Times: Town gives Brave New World an F [Suites du badge Big Brother. Voir texte 3.]
http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-me-sutter22feb22.story
February 22, 2005

CALIFORNIA: Town Gives Brave New World an F
When an elementary school required students to wear radio frequency IDs, some parents saw the specter of Big Brother.

By Eric Bailey, Times Staff Writer

SUTTER, Calif. — This little Northern California farm town is blissfully unaccustomed to turmoil. But recent weeks dished up a hopper of dissent. It started with a girl who went home from junior high saying she felt like an orange. Lauren Tatro, 13, told her parents the plain facts. Every student at Brittan Elementary School had to wear a badge the size of an index card with their name, grade, photo — and a tiny radio identification tag. The purpose was to test a new high-tech attendance system. To the eighth-grader, it seemed students had been turned into grocery items on the shelf, slabs of sirloin at the meat counter, fruit in the produce section.

So began a difficult stretch for this town of 2,885. Outraged parents claimed the school was trampling their children's privacy and civil liberties, maybe even threatening their health. School board meetings overflowed. Folks talked of George Orwell, Big Brother and the Bible. The American Civil Liberties Union joined the fray. Parents picketed. TV news crews from as far away as Germany descended on the 600-student school.

At odds as they have been few times before, Sutter residents were dragged into a simmering national debate over the use of tracking technology on human beings. Known as radio frequency identification, RFID for short, the technology has been around for decades. But only lately have big markets blossomed. Radio identification has been embraced by manufacturers and retailers to track inventory, deployed on bridges to automatically collect tolls and used on ranches to cull cattle. The microchips have been injected into pets.

But applying that technology in conjunction with people prompts an outcry from civil libertarians and privacy advocates. Proposals to use the high-tech ID tags in U.S. passports, Virginia driver's licenses and even San Francisco library books have drawn sharp fire. The ACLU characterizes such forays as the "seemingly inexorable drift toward a surveillance society."

Add schoolchildren to the list.

Critics in Sutter, an hour's drive north of Sacramento, say the aim at Brittan Elementary might have been an amped-up attendance system, but the badges, hung on lanyards that the students wore around their necks, represented something far more disturbing. As some parents figured it, their children had been made high-tech guinea pigs.

Sutter is located a mile off a highway big-city folks don't normally travel. Farm fields flank a tidy grid of two-lane streets. The nearest traffic light is miles away in Yuba City. Mostly it's a place of multigenerational families, some dating to the 1880s, with a smattering of newcomers. Folks meet and greet on the streets — and mostly they get along. Given the tranquil community sensibilities, school officials never anticipated controversy.

Earnie Graham, principal and superintendent of the one-school district, is a self-described "tech guy." He liked the badge idea because it would streamline the taking of attendance, giving teachers a few minutes more each day to teach and boost accuracy, no small matter given that California school funding is based on how many children attend class each day. Aside from boldly going where no principal had gone before, Graham figured the new technology held an additional appeal: Homegrown talent was promoting it.

The founders of InCom Corp., the start-up firm marketing the idea, work at local schools or have children who attend them. They formed the firm about a year ago and paid the district $2,500 to test the system during summer school. It went without a hitch. Each RFID has a miniature antenna connected to a tiny computer chip identifying the wearer.

When students walked into class, an RFID scanner mounted above the door recorded it, pumped out the roll on a teacher's wireless Palm Pilot and stored the attendance figures on a central computer. Impressed, school trustees last October agreed to expand the project. They held a public hearing, but virtually no parents attended. In exchange for allowing it on campus, InCom promised unspecified royalties from future sales.

On Jan. 18, every student at the kindergarten-through-eighth grade school got a badge, though scanners were installed only in seventh- and eighth-grade classrooms. Most of the pupils accepted it at first, but a few griped to their parents.

Mike and Dawn Cantrall, parents of two Brittan students, met with Graham to complain about the badges' having student photos and names, saying the information made them vulnerable to predators. Only then did they learn about the radio tags inside. The family asked that their children be excluded from the test. "Our children are not inventory," the Cantralls said in a letter to the district. They said the monitoring program smacked of Big Brother. They also cited biblical warnings about the mark of the beast.

School administrators said the program was mandatory and threatened to discipline — even expel — students who didn't wear their badges.

Within days, news of the tussle in Sutter reached the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other groups concerned about electronic surveillance. They waded in to warn the district in a Feb. 7 letter that radio ID badges could put children at risk to stalkers with scanners. They also noted that Brittan Elementary had no history of security or attendance problems. Each child had become "a walking homing beacon," said Nicole Ozer of the ACLU. "It's a very slippery slope this district set out on," indoctrinating children to a life under surveillance.

Graham, the principal, called it rhetorical overkill. The only information contained on each student's identification badge was a 15-digit number. All their personal information was safely stowed in the school computer, he said.

In classes and on the playground, the hubbub intensified. When word leaked, TV news crews trolled campus. Some students, amplifying their parent's opposition, performed a bit of monkey-wrenching. They took to biting through the plastic badges and pulling out the antennas and microchips.

"They're really ugly, really big, and I hate them," summarized Madison Mason, an eighth-grader, who dressed up her badge with smiley face stickers.

"I got hit in the head by it in P.E.," chimed in a friend.

"It's like we're in prison," said another.

After a rambunctious Feb. 8 board meeting, InCom opted to turn off the scanners until the board resolved the squabbling.

As school let out before last week's board meeting, foes prowled either side of campus with picket signs. "Badges … badges…. We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges," said one. Toni Scrogin was among the picketers. "I have not been convinced this is safe for my child," she said. "There's no research on this around humans." And neither the school nor InCom had many answers, she said.

Eric Shepherd, father of a third-grader, scoffed at Scrogin and her sign. "Our kids are more at risk walking down the street than wearing these badges," he griped to the picketers. "This is paranoia! I trust Earnie, I trust the board and I trust what they're trying to do."

Scrogin and Carrie VanOosterhaut yelled back about health worries. Lisa Ziegenmeyer, mother of three girls, told Shepherd the school was tagging kids children "like cattle." Shepherd walked off shaking his head. "This was a little town where everyone looked after everyone else," he muttered. "But this is ridiculous."

Parents flocked to a board meeting Feb. 15. A hundred chairs were set out, but the crowd flowed out the doors. Oxygen ebbed, the heat rose and angry voices cascaded. Few bothered introducing themselves — most everyone knew everyone. This had the makings of a family quarrel, 150 souls strong.

And then the InCom team pulled the plug. Doug Ahlers, a high school teacher and one of InCom's founders, read a prepared statement. Given the community dissent and concerns, the company had decided to terminate the test. The firm's "only regret," he told the hushed crowd, was that the district would not reap the promised royalties from future InCom sales. "This is a sad day for this school," said Tina Jones. Her kindergarten son didn't see the badge as a nuisance. It made him feel safer.

Others argued that the stakes were bigger than the feelings of a little boy. "This is about more than just this one district," said Ozer of the ACLU. Civil libertarians are worried over the potential uses and misuses of RFID — concerns that were once within the realm of science fiction. Authorities could use RFID to identify protesters at rallies, they say. Terrorists abroad could pick out Americans. Kidnappers might be able to track the child of a billionaire. The ACLU is pressing for state legislation curbing use of RFID technology in personal identification. Ozer worries about the identification tags' being embraced in other districts, as well as in hospitals, motor vehicle departments and credit companies.

Precedent is already being set for her fears. Ever since InCom's name began appearing on TV and in newspaper stories around the country, the phone hasn't stopped ringing. Many are callers from school districts wanting to adopt the technology. Ahlers said he won't be surprised if some states eventually require the technology in schools. "This has been a very, very good experience," he said. "They spelled our name right and spread it across the country."

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11) Slate: The Hassle Factor [Une objection lucide mais insolite à la privatisation de l'assurance vieillesse aux Etats Unis : la vie est déjà assez compliquée sans avoir à se soucier de son portefeuille d'investissement.]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2114263/
The Hassle Factor
But I don't want to manage my own Social Security account!
By Thomas Geoghegan
Posted Wednesday, March 2, 2005, at 1:27 PM PT

Of the Bush plan to establish individual Social Security accounts, a lawyer friend of mine complains: It's one more damned thing I'd have to manage. I've got enough to handle already.

Isn't that the real issue? Let's forget the funding problem. Or even the risk of ending up with a lower benefit for retirement. Under the Bush plan, we'd be partly responsible. We'd have to hatch our own nest eggs. It's one more job the Republicans would give to us.

This is my gripe against the Bush plan: I've already got enough to do.

Millions of Americans, I'm convinced, are against it for only that reason. We don't want to have to think about Social Security. "But people worry about it now," you might say. Oh, sure, at these presidential drop-in discussions in Fargo, N.D., a cop or cook will say, "I worry Social Security won't be there for me." But come on, they don't really worry. If they did, they'd open a damned savings account.

In real life, we ignore our Social Security. That's the glory of it. We have the freedom not to think about it. With all the time I have not to think about my "private" account, I can turn on the Cubs game. Or open up Kafka.

I can even pray, if I want.

Privatization is one more damn thing to distract and upset me. I read a bit less (as Laura Bush reads more). I volunteer a bit less (as her husband lauds us for volunteering more). In one way or another, I spend less time being responsible for other people because I'm more responsible for me.

I don't like it.

I hate to personalize things, but since Mr. Bush's reform is his personal obsession, I think I will. It galls me that a president who has never had to dig is handing us a shovel. Look at all the freedom that George W. Bush had because Bill DeWitt Jr. and Mercer Reynolds handled all his investments. Early on, they told him, "You just worry about coming up with funny nicknames, and you will never have to worry about money." And he came into the White House with his brow unlined.

Social Security is our little taste of this freedom. The world adds and adds. Social Security subtracts. It simplifies life. Social Security is "Social" and "Secure" instead of "Individual" and "At Risk." That's what is so maddening to people on the right, the Ayn Randers, the libertarians.

They look down on the rest of us. They think of us as slugs. We aren't living authentically until we worry as much as they do.

It's not so bad when privatization flops in places like Chile or the United Kingdom. At least in those countries there is a strong social bond. In Chile, the government has stepped in to make sure people get a little. In the Bush era, we're too atomized to do anything like that. In the United Kingdom, people have more time and freedom, since they don't have to think about their health care. They have single payer. Everything is free. In the United States, even when it's free, we have paperwork. As another friend says, "It's a full-time job for a lot of people to manage their health bills." Now we have to manage our Social Security, too?

And these extra tasks are being heaped on us as we work longer and longer hours, with longer commutes. I'm exhausted. Please: no more privatization. Unless it's something I can take care of while I drive.

But what if the existing system is doomed? Of course, being a liberal, I don't believe it. Raise the amount of payroll tax that Bill DeWitt and Mercer Reynolds have to pay, and the crisis goes away. At any rate, at this point no one knows the extent to which we may or may not be in trouble in the future. That's also the glory of Social Security: not to know.

But if Bush has his way, you and I will know, early on, whether we are in trouble. Our accounts may tank. Indeed, the full-blown libertarian version of Bush's plan would create winners and losers. For some of us there will be a sickening feeling, at age 42 or 45 or 48, that we already have blown it. We picked the wrong stock. We didn't put enough in bonds. The worst part will be that we'll know.

This is the pleasure that the winners will take: to bring home to the losers what a bunch of bunglers we are. In a life in which you or I may have failed over and over, here's another way we get to learn that yes, we've failed again.

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12) The Borowitz Report: Millions of Frenchmen celebrate end to 'Freedom Fries' [HUMOUR : Une réponse satirique au tête-à-tête Bush-Chirac.]
http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=1076&srch=

MILLIONS OF FRENCHMEN CELEBRATE END TO ‘FREEDOM FRIES’
Cries of ‘Vive Bush!’ Heard Throughout Paris

After President George W. Bush signaled an end to calling French fries “Freedom Fries” at a dinner with French president Jacques Chirac this week, millions of jubilant Frenchmen poured into the streets in demonstrations of euphoria reminiscent of the end of World War II.

Cries of “Vive Bush!” could be heard from the rooftops of Paris as French citizens celebrated the end to two years of living under the cruel yoke of “Freedom Fries” derision. “I was angry at President Bush for invading Iraq,” said accordion player Fernand Daubigny, 37. “But this more than makes up for it.”

A new survey released today reflected the grateful mood of the French, as President Bush topped the poll as the most popular figure in modern France. According to the survey, Mr. Bush garnered a whopping 92% approval rating, compared to 89% for singer Edith Piaf and 84% for actor Jerry Lewis.

But even as the mass celebrations kicked into high gear, critics of Mr. Chirac said that the French president had given up too much in order to secure Mr. Bush’s promise to stop calling French fries by the derogatory name. Specifically, the newspaper Le Monde accused Mr. Chirac of agreeing to train Iraqi troops and grant billions of dollars in debt relief in exchange for the lifting of the “Freedom Fries” tag.

For his part, Mr. Chirac today defended his decision: “French fries are an important source of French national pride, even though they actually came from Belgium.”

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Sloshed in America
Sideways, a road movie about wine addiction.
By David Edelstein
Posted Thursday, Oct. 21, 2004, at 4:06 PM PT

As someone who frequently contemplates the pros and cons of alcohol consumption, I've wondered why no one ever talks about out-of-control epicureans—why Alcoholics Anonymous people (at least in my circles) never tell horror stories of self-destructive Chateauneuf du Pape obsessions or ridiculous 150-mile trips to taste some acclaimed brewpub India pale ale or rent monies blown on bottles of 25-year-old Springbank. I admit that doesn't sound as nightmarish as, say, waking up from a three-day blackout on a rooftop, naked, covered in vomit, with a needle sticking out of one arm and two cops pointing guns. But there is a class of addicts (and not always privileged ones) for whom the epicurean drive is closely allied with the drive to self-medicate. Epicures go sideways, too, big time.

Which brings us to Alexander Payne's Sideways (Fox Searchlight), a warm, ingratiating, and fitfully hilarious epicurean road movie with a steady ache—an ache like a red-wine hangover. It's about two guys, Miles (Paul Giamatti) and Jack (Thomas Haden Church), who take a wine-tasting road trip the week before Jack's wedding. Closely adapted (by Payne and his partner Jim Taylor) from a novel by Los Angeles screenwriter Rex Pickett, it's like a gonzo teen sex comedy smacked upside the head by encroaching middle age and its attendant insults: bleariness, self-hatred, bodies and minds that don't recover as quickly (or at all) from relentless self-abuse, and the unshakable sense that, as Shakespeare's Richard II puts it, "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me." And yet, even here, there are moments of blissful connectedness: fleeting ones, somewhere around the second glass of that single-vineyard central coast pinot, opposite someone sympathetic—moments when the wine helps to stop time, soften anxiety, and open up a new world of hope.

It's Miles who's the oenophile—and the alcoholic. Recently divorced, still carrying a torch for his ex-wife, and with an unwieldy novel making the rounds of ever-smaller publishing houses, Miles has channeled a lot of his longing in the direction of pinot noir. For him, it's not about getting blotto (or, I should say, going sideways). It's about tasting the latest vintage. It's about sticking his nose in the glass, smiling at the voluptuous aroma, sipping, chewing, taking apart the flavor components, and mulling over the finish. It's about holding forth pedantically until his table mates' eyes glaze over. ("Citrus, passion fruit, just the faintest soupçon of asparagus, and, like a nutty Edam cheese" is one pronouncement.) And it's about working his way down to the bottom of the bottle, phoning and harassing his ex, and stumbling home and passing out like any other drunk.

Jack is an addict too, of a different sort. A washed-up television leading man with a big chest, a deep tan, and a can-do California disposition—quite a contrast to the paunchy, morose Miles—he's an incorrigible pussy-hound. Despite his impending nuptials, he makes a play for almost every woman he eyeballs, and he ends up embarking on a whirligig, vaguely S&M affair with a tasting-room employee named Stephanie (Sandra Oh). But Jack is thinking about Miles, too. He encourages Miles to get cozy with Maya (Virginia Madsen), a blonde, radiantly beautiful divorced waitress and horticulture grad student with an incredible wine palate (better than Miles'). The fact that Miles isn't turning cartwheels the instant he connects with Maya is a mark of how depressed he really is. And the fact that she looks at him twice is a mark of—

Maybe Hollywood? Some viewers will find the attraction of Madsen's Maya to Miles a little mysterious. It's not that Giamatti is totally unprepossessing—just that his intense I'm-a-loser vibe and, oh yes, his obvious alcoholism don't exactly add up to the most promising boyfriend material. (We've also seen him steal money from his own mother, cut his toenails in close-up, and do a crossword puzzle while driving.) But he has his moments. He's charming when he celebrates the pinot noir grape in part because it's so hard to grow: thin-skinned, temperamental, early-ripening, needing constant care from the most patient and nurturing of growers. You don't need a shrink to tell you that Miles has overidentified with that fragile little grape. And you don't need to be a matchmaker to see that Maya has a comparable identification: She speaks lyrically of wine's ephemeralness—the way it constantly evolves, the way it conjures up a time and place long past.

This is a lovely film—agreeably rambling. It's more even-toned and less smug, I think, than Payne's last road movie, About Schmidt. Payne's framing is relaxed and spacious: Nothing—not even the scene where Miles pours the contents of a tasting-room spit bucket down his throat—comes off as unduly grotesque. Well, maybe that scene does, but Giamatti is buoyant even when sodden, and Church has a marvelous etherized sense of entitlement, a spoiled optimism that's pure California. It's a joy to see Madsen, a golden ingenue in the '80s who seemed permanently consigned to horror movies and made-for-cable thrillers, with first-rate material—and proving that something other than wine gets better with age.

As for the alcohol question, it's left hanging. Sideways doesn't spell out the message that Miles and Jack have to get a handle on themselves and stop disappearing sideways into their respective addictions. But that message hangs in the air—the faintest soupçon of rot in an otherwise wondrous bouquet.

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14) Slate: A connoisseur's guide to 'Sideways' [Le film 'Sideways' vu par un critique oenologique.]
http://slate.msn.com/id/2109290
A Connoisseur's Guide to Sideways
Sure, the movie's good. But how's the wine?
By Mike Steinberger
Posted Friday, Nov. 5, 2004, at 3:25 PM PT

When I first heard about Sideways, the film that follows a wine buff and his friend on a weeklong, wine-soaked misadventure through the vineyards of California's central coast, I braced myself for two cringe-inducing hours at the theater. My apprehension wasn't all that surprising, I suppose—whenever obscure hobbies become fodder for major motion pictures, the hobbyists get restless. We worry that the filmmakers, in some misguided effort to render a beloved and complicated subject accessible, will dumb it down and produce a work riddled with errors.

Sideways is a major disappointment for those of us who relish pointing out such mistakes. It is not just a terrific movie: It is a terrific wine movie, one that should put an appreciative smile on the face of every oenophile.

The movie doesn't get everything right, of course. At one point in the film, Miles Raymond (the wine obsessive played by Paul Giamatti) is dumbstruck to discover that Stephanie (the saucy tasting-room hostess played by Sandra Oh) has a Richebourg in her small wine collection. But the fact that the wine is a Richebourg (a grand cru red Burgundy) by no means guarantees that it will be celestial; what matters is who made the wine and when. The important point is that Stephanie's bottle is a Romanee-Conti Richebourg—which is impressive. (Unfortunately, we don't get a close enough shot of the bottle to see the vintage.)

A more substantial sticking point is Miles. It is impossible to say that Paul Giamatti's portrait of the oenophile is inaccurate, but it is not exactly flattering. Apart from being luckless and joyless—his life is truly an empty glass—Miles is also a bit of a wine asshole. At the first winery he and his friend Jack hit, Miles claims to detect in one wine a "soupçon of asparagus" and a "flutter of nutty cheese," descriptions that had me sliding a little lower in my seat. Later in the movie, he pompously dismisses another wine as "quaffable but far from transcendent." Miles is also condescending. When Maya (the love interest played by Virginia Madsen) observes that the alcohol overwhelms a pinot noir the two of them are sharing, he seems excessively surprised that she recognizes the flaw in the wine and can diagnose it using the correct lingo.

Sideways casts a bemused eye at wine geek culture generally. It suggests that all the sniffing, swilling, and pontificating is ultimately BS and that, even for an aficionado like Miles, the real point of tasting fine wine is to catch a nice buzz. (Miles is forever getting tanked and nursing hangovers.) In The New Yorker's recent food issue, Adam Gopnik caused some gnashing of teeth among oenophiles when he claimed that the rituals and rigors of wine appreciation are essentially a smokescreen, a way of prettifying the grubby business of getting bombed. In online chat rooms, aggrieved wine lovers weighed in: "The enjoyment of wine qua wine, distinct from the joy of imbibing alcohol to get drunk, seems lost on Mr. Gopnik," one wrote. "The twin pleasures of the wine and its alcohol combine to produce an intoxicating effect, but to collapse the former into the latter is to effect a fruitless reduction. ... I have been pleasantly drunk on fine wine and cheap lager. Sorry, there is a difference." So far, wine fans have been kind to Sideways, even though it echoes Gopnik at points—perhaps this is the best testament to how winning the movie is.

And it is winning. Sideways is great wine porn. The vineyard scenes are, of course, stunning, and the wines paraded across the screen will certainly put that knowing smile on the faces of those who like to drink well. When Maya and Stephanie join Miles and Jack for dinner one night, the bottles come fast and furious, and all are recognizable, estimable names: Kistler, Sea Smoke, Andrew Murray, Dominique Laurent (a slightly odd presence, given that Miles indicates early on that he is no fan of excessive oak). When the ladies retreat to the bathroom for a moment and Jack chastises Miles for having subjected the table to a lengthy disquisition on Gaston Huet's Vouvrays—perhaps the ultimate insider's wines—I nearly fell out of my seat. Huet's Vouvrays, mentioned in a major motion picture? Delicious.

There were other things I never thought I'd hear in a mainstream movie. Miles outside a restaurant: "If anyone orders merlot, I'm leaving. I'm not drinking any fucking merlot." Maya to Miles: "Why are so you into pinot?" Miles to Jack: "I just don't like the way they manipulate chardonnay." There was also one thing I hope I only ever see in a major motion picture: Late in the film, sad sack Miles takes a 1961 Cheval Blanc to a local diner and proceeds to drink it out of a Styrofoam cup while chomping on a burger and onion rings. True, he is borderline suicidal at this point, and maybe this is his death-row meal, but a '61 Cheval Blanc certainly deserves a better death than that.

For this wine geek, it is Miles' affection for pinot noir that is most thought-provoking. Pinot, at least in its Burgundian incarnation (and it is in Burgundy that pinot reaches its apogee), is the most fickle wine grape. It also happens to produce, in Burgundy at least, the most ravishing and seductive wines of all, and I've always regarded pinot as the grape that has the greatest appeal for sensualists.

But because pinot is so temperamental, it delivers a lot more frustration than pleasure—for every truly sublime red Burgundy, there are probably a dozen that are thin, tart, and insipid. That Xanax-popping Miles, whose life is one long catalog of disappointments, is drawn to the one wine grape that rarely fails to disappoint raises an intriguing question: Pinot may appeal to sensualists, but does it also hold a perverse appeal for masochists and tortured souls? It is a question the sensualists may ponder over their next bottles of Volnay.

Mike Steinberger is Slate's wine columnist.

In an unremarkable 450-square foot half-constructed home, where smoke from the chulha has blackened the walls, sits a 15-year-old, awash with regret. Saurabh Singh is now officially one of the brightest schoolboy scientists in the world. NASA results don''t lie and Saurabh, a diffident boy from eastern Uttar Pradesh has become the first Indian to top its International Scientist Discovery Examination for 2005-06. It is the same examination in which President A P J Abdul Kalam, as a young boy, finished seventh and later Kalpana Chawla finished 21st.

But Saurabh is still upset that he missed out on a world record. His result speaks for itself: Aeronautics-A++; Physical Chemistry-A++; Organic Chemistry-A++; Magnetism-A++. Then the horror. He scored a mere A+ for Electronics and he is furious with himself. "I didn''t monitor the time properly and got nervous and made a mistake in the last one," he says.

It seems almost surreal to watch this boy from a lower middle-class Family - his father Ramkeshwar is an assistant teacher at Naherji Inter College - sitting in a 10x10 feet room, lighted only by a 40 watt bulb, speaking so nonchalantly of how he conquered science. It is a compelling tale that must, of course, begin with a brilliant boy, just five feet four inches tall, who is still working out physics formulae under the dim bulb and who thought nothing of studying 16 to 18 hours a day for months.

But the story is incomplete without his father Ramkeshwar, who thought nothing of forking out Rs 46,000 to ensure him sophisticated coaching, or his mother Nirmala Devi, an auxiliary nurse and midwife who has worked away from home, in Fatehpur, for years so that the family could make ends meet.

And it cannot ignore a certain Reena Singh who started Gyan Peethika Senior Secondary School on the suburbs of Ballia in 1993 - just around the time Saurabh was learning his alphabet. It was this surprising school, 40 km from his home, that he attended for his Classes IX and X, staying in a hostel and learning to dream. Reena Singh has made it her life's mission to make sure that she offers village children the facilities that can make their dreams come true. With the help of her two US-based daughters, she has set up a school complete with a multimedia lab and 25 computers. The place is fitted with CCTV cameras and she keeps an eye on what is happening in every corner or the school and hostel. The school, which offers science, commerce and Information Technology has also applied to start courses in Biotechnology and Fashion Designing. It even has a separate wing for competitive examinations where Saurabh first honed his skills.

"We used to read about great people and he said that one day we would read his name too," said his hostel room-mate Pankaj Singh. Reena Singh herself made sure that she sharpened Saurabh's English language skills. "The children here are oozing with talent and just require some motivation," she said. No wonder that when NASA chief Sean O''Keefe asked Saurabh a question on English grammar, he gave the right answer - even though replied in Hindi and conveyed it through an interpreter. "The NASA chief applauded," says Saurabh, who was taken to England for the final exam.

The boy certainly keeps good company. After his stint at Gyan Peethika, he was packed off to Kota for coaching in science and mathematics. There again, he says he was fortunate to run into Umesh Singh, a young physics teacher who was so devoted that he would actually stay up all night with his students as they prepared.

Now the results are out and Saurabh is already a celebrity in his own right - again, no coincidence as Reena Singh's daughters were on their laptops within minutes of the news, sending out the information to the media and the VIPs. Each member of the UP Legislative Council has now promised to donate a day's salary to help Saurabh. His own idol, President Kalam, has expressed a desire to meet him. And Gyan Peethika school, which proudly lists the achievements of its students (the list includes IITians, genetic scientists and air force officers), has announced a Saurabh Singh scholarship worth Rs 40,000. When the young boy from the small eastern UP village spends next year at Pennsylvania, he will know that back home he himself has become a role model.

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16) Reuters: Indian boy's NASA claims crash to earth [Un canular assez improbable en Inde, où un garçon fait croire qu'il a remporté un concours de la NASA qui n'existe pas, à Londres où il n'est jamais allé, et politiques et presse ont tout gobé sans se poser la moindre question. Ici on commence à se rendre compte qu'on s'est fait avoir...]
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050226/80/fdbdu.html

Saturday February 26, 10:04 AM

Indian boy's NASA claims crash to earth
By Sharat Pradhan

LUCKNOW, India (Reuters) - An Indian teenager from one of the country's most backward states appears to have fooled governments, the media and even India's president into believing he had topped the world in a NASA science exam.

In a country hungry for international recognition, 17-year-old Saurabh Singh was feted as a national hero after announcing he had won NASA's International Scientist Discovery examination, which he said he took at Oxford University.

The Uttar Pradesh state government rewarded him with a 500,000 rupee prize (6,110 pounds) and more than 100 members of the state's upper house each donated a day's salary to him.

But as he was at the president's official residence awaiting an audience during the week, his story unravelled. An Indian news portal, rediff.com, contacted NASA, which denied any knowledge of the exam. "Right now, no one knows where this examination comes from," Rediff quoted NASA education official Dwayne Brown saying.

A meeting planned with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was hastily called off and the boy returned to his village of Narhai, where he is now under police investigation.

Singh had also said President Abdul Kalam and Indian astronaut Kalpana Chawla, who died in the Columbia shuttle explosion in 2003, had sat the test. Kalam's office denies this. Singh insists he met Kalam, although some Indian newspapers say the meeting was cancelled as he waited to go in. "It was really inspiring," Singh told Reuters by phone. "And let me tell you, he saw my certificate and praised me for the achievement, while you all are asking all kinds of questions and trying to dub me as a fraud."

The certificate, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, declared "You are the member of NASA" (sic) and is signed by Singh and "Chief of NASA, Cin K. Kif" -- NASA's former administrator was Sean O'Keefe. It also lists the name of Singh's father, common practice in Indian documents.

Singh says he flew to London on Indian Airlines -- which does not fly to the city -- and took a taxi to Oxford University and back every day for the exam from January 4-8, a round trip of about 140 miles. Singh told Reuters he stayed in a hotel, but told a Hindi language newspaper he stayed at Buckingham Palace.

The Indian school where he says he sat the preliminary exam along with 200,000 others does not exist. The Bansal institute, where he says he studied mathematics, has never heard of him. Singh cannot produce his passport to back his claim. That, he says, is with institute director P.K. Bansal. "How can we possess his passport when we don't even know him?" Saturday's The Indian Express quoted Bansal saying.

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