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THE REGULARS: Summary
7) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Scholastic: Catch That Clock [Un réveil-matin qui s'enfuie pour vous obliger de le chasser.]
8) Car Talk/The Puzzler: Chemistry test [Un casse-tête. Quelle question pose le prof lors de l'examen de rattrapage ?]
9) Slate/Dear Prudence: Weddings and germs [Conseils sur la vie sentimentale et la vie tout court. Cette semaine, une lettre d'une femme convaincue que son mai la trome, et une autre d'un homme dont la femme insiste à donner son propre patronyme à leur enfant à naître.]
10) CNN/Global Office: Nelson's man management revealed [Encore une figure historique adopté comme modèle de management, cette fois-ci c'est l'affreux Nelson.]

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1) The Economist: Jacques Chirac, socialist [Jacques Chirac serait le parfait homme de gauche.]
http://www.economist.com
The French president

Jacques Chirac, socialist
Mar 17th 2005 | PARIS

A veteran Gaullist politician, Jacques Chirac has in office turned into one of Europe's most left-wing leaders

WHEN France's president, Jacques Chirac, dropped in recently on José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain's Socialist prime minister, his host paid him a rather unusual compliment. “Some people may well wonder,” said Mr Zapatero, “whether Jacques Chirac really is a leader of the centre-right, compared with others that we know.” In recent months, the pair seem to have become inseparable, meeting for summits and congratulating each other on their shared vision. To many outside France, it might seem odd that Europe's longest-serving conservative leader is so keen to identify closely with a Spanish Socialist. Yet Mr Chirac's fondness for his new Spanish friend should perhaps not be that much of a surprise. For Mr Chirac himself is these days one of the most left-wing of Europe's leaders.

Consider Mr Chirac's credentials as a champion of the left. His recent proposal to create an “international solidarity levy” on international financial transactions or airline-ticket sales, so as to finance African development and the fight against AIDS, won him the acclaim of the third-world lobby. “Development is both the greatest challenge and the greatest urgency of our time,” he declared in a speech broadcast at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, calling Africa's poverty “morally unacceptable”. Mr Chirac is also a certified écolo (green), having got his cherished environmental charter enshrined in France's constitution last month. This puts the right to live in a healthy environment on the same legal footing in France as human rights, setting the country up as a pioneer in environmental protection—and Mr Chirac as potential saviour of the planet.

The French president has no rivals as global spokesman on anti-Americanism, a doctrine that usually belongs to the left in Europe but in France has a long history on the Gaullist right as well. To this, he has added his own blend of anti-globalisation, globe-trotting with the likes of Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former trade-union leader, and dispatching representatives to the World Social Forum. Moreover, with his Arabist foreign policy in the Middle East, and his defiant hostility to the war in Iraq, he seems to have a soft-left world outlook that would fit well on any university campus.

On economic matters, this is certainly no market-liberalising, right-wing government. In May, Mr Chirac will celebrate ten years in office. It is hard to detect what mark his decade has left. Admittedly, he shared five years (1997-2002) with a Socialist government, which introduced such policies as the 35-hour week. But even this is not something that Mr Chirac's present centre-right government, under Jean-Pierre Raffarin, has been in any rush to dismantle: its reforms have loosened the rules, not overturned them.

Mr Chirac has contined to resist EU efforts to liberalise the energy market. He is now blocking the services directive, which he said this week was “unacceptable” and should be “picked apart”. He has even reactivated an interventionist industrial policy. And he has a high spender's tendency to throw money at political problems, especially ones that spill out on to the street—one reason why France's budget deficit has widened sharply.

Only this week, Mr Chirac's government was busy yet again caving in to demands for public-sector pay rises after 600,000-1m protesters took to the streets. Having stood firm for a full three days, it promised to reopen wage talks, and did not rule out another increase in the minimum wage, after a rise of 5.8% last year. Even the left-leaning Libération could scarcely believe it: “The volte-face of the government, which is today proposing to open the coffers which it swore yesterday were empty, will prove right all the numerous unionists who believe that there is no point in discussing coolly and that social dialogue is a sham unless they turn up at the negotiating table with a loaded gun.”

Mr Chirac has not strayed entirely from centre-right territory. He campaigned for election in 2002 with a promise to cut income tax by a third, and this is still official policy. Yet the combined efforts of four successive finance ministers have secured only a modest 10% reduction. He is pressing ahead with privatisation too: his latest finance minister, Thierry Breton, has confirmed that Electricité de France and Gaz de France are being prepared for sale. But the right hardly has a monopoly on privatisation, a policy embraced in some ways just as fervently by the former Socialist government.

What does all this add up to? “Compared with the rest of the European right—Berlusconi, Merkel, Aznar—he is certainly different,” comments a leading French Socialist. “They are all both more liberal and more Atlanticist.” Mr Chirac's economic policy certainly puts him to the left of Britain's Tony Blair. Even Germany's Gerhard Schröder has done more to deregulate the labour market and reform welfare than Mr Chirac. His new chum, Mr Zapatero, is arguably his closest ideological ally now.

One explanation for Mr Chirac's embrace of a soft-left, statist, instinctively anti-capitalist creed could be that he is playing Mr Blair's post-ideological game of stealing the opposition's clothes ahead of the 2007 presidential election. A French presidential candidate needs broad electoral appeal in the run-off, and the country's political centre of gravity lies well to the left of Britain's, say.

Another explanation is that his variety of continental conservatism belongs to a social Gaullist tradition, which—like Christian Democracy—often defines itself precisely against liberalism. Under this doctrine, the language of “social cohesion” and “solidarity” belongs to the right as much as to the left. In other words, Mr Chirac has not been liberalising simply because, as one adviser says, “he does not believe in untempered liberalism”.

Yet this may be to lend more coherence to Mr Chirac's policies than they deserve. More plausibly, exactly 40 years since he was first elected to public office, he is guided less by conviction than by a desire to keep the social peace and avoid confrontation. As prime minister in the late-1980s, Mr Chirac was seen as an energetic reformer. Age and power have tempered such zeal; consensus now matters more than change. At the EU summit next week to consider economic reforms, France will again be in the rearguard, not the vanguard. Despite GDP growth of only 2-2.5% this year, and unemployment of 10%, Mr Chirac's advisers argue that not much in the French model needs radical change. Try telling that to the jobless.

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3) The Economist: The second amendment [Aux Etats Unis il est de plus en plus difficile pour un employeur d'interdire à son personnel le port d'armes.]
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3749922

The second amendment: Loaded debate
Mar 10th 2005 | NEW YORK

Guns in the office are perhaps a bad idea. But what about the car park?

IN MISSISSIPPI, the law is clear. If businesses want to keep concealed weapons off their property, they must put up a sign stating that “Carrying of a pistol or revolver is prohibited”. Vistors must also be able to read the sign from 10 feet away. If they can't, they can bring their guns in.

Other states also allow companies to ban guns from their premises. But what about car parks? Lawmakers in Oklahoma are feeling anxious. Banning guns in the office, they say, is all very well. But what about the poor fellows who want to go hunting straight after work?

Last year the state passed a law requiring companies to allow employees to keep guns in their cars, as long as the weapons were locked in the vehicle. Several employers challenged the law as bad for workplace safety. Enforcement has been suspended while the courts decide. For good measure, the Oklahoma legislature is now trying to pass a law that would exempt companies from liability if a gun locked in the car goes off (oops) on their property.

The debate is less frivolous than it sounds. Last month a newly fired employee of International Paper in Michigan apparently stormed back to his car, fetched his gun, and is now charged with murder. There are dozens of workplace shootings each year, sometimes with weapons retrieved from cars. Essentially, the second-amendment right to bear arms clashes with employers' rights to keep the workplace safe.

Gun nuts despise workplace bans. Erich Pratt, of Gun Owners of America, thinks people should boycott businesses that post no-gun signs—and that the signs merely make the businesses targets, anyway. Some second-amendment enthusiasts even argue that employers could be liable for banning guns in the workplace. What if there is a shootout and a worker, dutifully obeying company rules, cannot defend himself? Nonsense, scoff workplace-safety experts (not to mention insurance companies).

The brouhaha is unlikely to die down, especially in the 35 states that allow people to carry concealed weapons. Utah's Supreme Court only recently ruled that, despite a law allowing licence-holders to carry concealed weapons “without restriction”, employers can still ban guns at work. Now other fronts are opening up. Should guns be allowed on public university campuses? Or in restaurants? (Lawmakers in Georgia are circulating a bill to allow them there, in case the food's unsatisfactory.)

The entire debate may be moot, of course. Some people will do as they please, since in practice employers rarely rummage through workers' gear, or their locked cars. Just don't go out hunting with the boss straight after work

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Euromail: What Germans can teach us about e-mail.
By Eric Weiner
Posted Friday, March 25, 2005, at 4:17 AM PT

North America and Europe are two continents divided by a common technology: e-mail. Techno-optimists assure us that e-mail—along with the Internet and satellite TV—make the world smaller. That may be true in a technical sense. I can send a message from my home in Miami to a German friend in Berlin and it will arrive almost instantly. But somewhere over the Atlantic, the messages get garbled. In fact, two distinct forms of e-mail have emerged: Euromail and Amerimail.

Amerimail is informal and chatty. It's likely to begin with a breezy "Hi" and end with a "Bye." The chances of Amerimail containing a smiley face or an "xoxo" are disturbingly high. We Americans are reluctant to dive into the meat of an e-mail; we feel compelled to first inform hapless recipients about our vacation on the Cape which was really excellent except the jellyfish were biting and the kids caught this nasty bug so we had to skip the whale watching trip but about that investors' meeting in New York. ... Amerimail is a bundle of contradictions: rambling and yet direct; deferential, yet arrogant. In other words, Amerimail is America.

Euromail is stiff and cold, often beginning with a formal "Dear Mr. X" and ending with a brusque "Sincerely." You won't find any mention of kids or the weather or jellyfish in Euromail. It's all business. It's also slow. Your correspondent might take days, even weeks, to answer a message. Euromail is also less confrontational in tone, rarely filled with the overt nastiness that characterizes American e-mail disagreements. In other words, Euromail is exactly like the Europeans themselves. (I am, of course, generalizing. German e-mail style is not exactly the same as Italian or Greek, but they have more in common with each other than they do with American mail.)

These are more than mere stylistic differences. Communication matters. Which model should the rest of the world adopt: Euromail or Amerimail?

A California-based e-mail consulting firm called People-onthego sheds some light on the e-mail divide. It recently asked about 100 executives on both sides of the Atlantic whether they noticed differences in e-mail styles. Most said yes. Here are a few of their observations:

"Americans tend to write (e-mails) exactly as they speak."

"Europeans are less obsessive about checking e-mail."

"In general, Americans are much more responsive to email—they respond faster and provide more information."

One respondent noted that Europeans tend to segregate their e-mail accounts. Rarely do they send personal messages on their business accounts, or vice versa. These differences can't be explained merely by differing comfort levels with technology. Other forms of electronic communication, such as SMS text messaging, are more popular in Europe than in the United States.

The fact is, Europeans and Americans approach e-mail in a fundamentally different way. Here is the key point: For Europeans, e-mail has replaced the business letter. For Americans, it has replaced the telephone. That's why we tend to unleash what e-mail consultant Tim Burress calls a "brain dump": unloading the content of our cerebral cortex onto the screen and hitting the send button. "It makes Europeans go ballistic," he says.

Susanne Khawand, a German high-tech executive, has been on the receiving end of American brain dumps, and she says it's not pretty. "I feel like saying, 'Why don't you just call me instead of writing five e-mails back and forth,' " she says. Americans are so overwhelmed by their bulging inboxes that "you can't rely on getting an answer. You don't even know if they read it." In Germany, she says, it might take a few days, or even weeks, for an answer, but one always arrives.

Maybe that's because, on average, Europeans receive fewer e-mails and spend less time tending their inboxes. An international survey of business owners in 24 countries (conducted by the accounting firm Grant Thornton) found that people in Greece and Russia spend the least amount of time dealing with e-mail every day: 48 minutes on average. Americans, by comparison, spend two hours per day, among the highest in the world. (Only Filipinos spend more time on e-mail, 2.1 hours.) The survey also found that European executives are skeptical of e-mail's ability to boost their bottom line.

It's not clear why European and American e-mail styles have evolved separately, but I suspect the reasons lie within deep cultural differences. Americans tend to be impulsive and crave instant gratification. So we send e-mails rapid-fire, and get antsy if we don't receive a reply quickly. Europeans tend to be more methodical and plodding. They send (and reply to) e-mails only after great deliberation.

For all their Continental fastidiousness, Europeans can be remarkably lax about e-mail security, says Bill Young, an executive vice president with the Strickland Group. Europeans are more likely to include trade secrets and business strategies in e-mails, he says, much to the frustration of their American colleagues. This is probably because identity theft—and other types of hacking—are much less of a problem in Europe than in the United States. Privacy laws are much stricter in Europe.

So, which is better: Euromail or Amerimail? Personally, I'm a convert—or a defector, if you prefer—to the former. I realize it's not popular these days to suggest we have anything to learn from Europeans, but I'm fed up with an inbox cluttered with rambling, barely cogent missives from friends and colleagues. If the alternative is a few stiffly written, politely worded bits of Euromail, then I say … bring it on.

Thanks to Pierre Khawand for research assistance.

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5) The San Francisco Chronicle: Spring cleaning with eBay [Des entreprises viennent chez vous pour voir ce que vous pouvez vendre sur eBay.]

http://sfgate.com
Spring cleaning -- the eBay way
S.F. company makes house calls to sell your stuff online for you
- Pia Sarkar, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, March 26, 2005

One man's trash is another man's opportunity to cash in on it.

Or so go es the thinking behind FoundValue, a San Francisco company that sends specialists into people's homes to size up their belongings and auction them on eBay for a fee.

"Who doesn't have stuff they want to get rid of?" said Stella Kleiman, 36, who started FoundValue as a one-woman operation out of her Manhattan apartment in 2001.

Kleiman has since moved her operations to her native home of San Francisco, hiring a support staff of 10 people working out of an office in the city's South of Market. She has also established a network of 60 specialists in 17 states, including one in Alaska. FoundValue's gross merchandise sales have been growing by 50 percent each month in this year alone.

"We just expand it more and more," Kleiman said. "There's so much stuff that people want to sell."

With a record 1.4 billion listings in 2004 and 56.1 million active users on eBay, Kleiman saw a market ready to be tapped. She also recognized the tedium that some people might experience in having to photograph items, post them on the eBay Web site, type up descriptions, respond to bidder inquiries, process winning bids, then haul items off to the post office. So Kleiman established a service that took care of all of that.

"To sell on eBay is time consuming," she said. "People can do it, but so many start the process of selling and never finish. No one wants to stand in line at the post office."

According to eBay, there are 30,000 individual trading assistants worldwide who serve as intermediaries between buyers and sellers, including 62 in San Francisco. Hani Durzy, an eBay spokesman, said FoundValue is the first business he has heard of that actually makes house calls.

"It seems like a promising model," Durzy said. "It's up to them to drum up their business."

Although eBay keeps a directory of trading assistants on its Web site for customers to peruse, the company maintains no other ties. "In terms of their relationships with their customers, that's their business," Durzy said.

The company does, however, benefit from trading assistants and a company like FoundValue because they draw more customers to the Internet auction Web site, and eBay makes a commission from each sale. "We are very much in favor of people selling on behalf of other people," Durzy said.

Kleiman said her company follows a similar business model to Avon and Mary Kay cosmetics in that specialists are not FoundValue employees but independent contractors.

Specialists working on behalf of FoundValue are required to have access to a computer and a digital camera and must also have a knack for salesmanship, because they are paid on commission and must find their own customers. They must also have a flexible schedule, which explains why many of the company's specialists are stay-at-home moms and retirees.

Working at home

"It's entirely a home-based business," Kleiman said. "The margins in this business are so small that it makes more sense for them to work at home."

FoundValue customers get to decide whether they want to establish an initial bidding price for the items they want to sell on eBay or start at $1 and let the market decide.

FoundValue takes a 35 percent cut on each sale under $250, 20 percent on the next $750 to $1,000, and 15 percent on any remaining amount above $1,000. EBay and PayPal also charge separate commissions for each sale. FoundValue specialists keep a portion of their commission, and the rest goes back to the company. Kleiman said that specialists can make $200 to $1,000 a week, depending on how aggressive they are.

Kim Dempster, 38, started working as a specialist for FoundValue in February and has had six customers so far. A mother of two and a part-time marketing consultant, Dempster said that her job at FoundValue gives her extra pocket money, which helped her fund a family trip to Mexico last month.

On a recent evening, Dempster stopped by Celine Teoh's apartment in San Francisco's Potrero Hill neighborhood to survey her belongings. She picked through shopping bags of cast-off clothing, some barely worn, others that still had their original price tags attached.

Teoh looked on anxiously as Dempster got down on her knees and sifted through the bags. "I've always meant to get rid of this stuff but never had the time," explained Teoh, 30, who has lived in the one-bedroom apartment since 2000.

Treasure hunt

Among Teoh's stash were Earl jeans, Donna Karan khaki pants, Three Dots cotton tank tops and an Yves Saint Laurent scarf. "I'm looking for brand names that I know," Dempster said.

Teoh pulled out a pair of hot-pink velour pants in hopes of impressing Dempster.

"How many times have you worn it?" Dempster asked her.

"Maybe five times," Teoh replied.

Dempster passed on the velour pants but hung on to other items she thought might sell, including two slinky evening gowns, a pair of black strappy shoes and some Gucci sunglasses.

Kleiman started out much the same way as Dempster when she created her business, learning over time which items could fetch a strong bid and which ones would flop.

These days, Kleiman can easily rattle off what sells (consumer electronics, designer accessories, musical instruments, sporting equipment) and what doesn't (clothing).

"(Clothing) is the one thing that everyone is trying to sell and that does not sell well," Kleiman said, unless the clothes are made by well-known designers.

Kleiman got her inspiration for FoundValue after she moved into her husband's apartment in Manhattan in 2001 and the couple had to consolidate their belongings. Kleiman's first sale was a wristwatch she found buried inside the side pocket of her husband's car for two years, which she auctioned on eBay for $150. Then she began selling his games and electronics. Soon, friends began inquiring if Kleiman could sell their stuff as well, and her business began to take off.

Dempster's ambitions are not as high as Kleiman's, but she is happy all the same. "As long as I can fit it into my routine, it's fun money," she said of her work for FoundValue. "I like the independence. It's sort of mindless. I can do it after the kids go to bed."

E-mail Pia Sarkar at psarkar@sfchronicle.com.
©2005 San Francisco Chronicle

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6) 365Gay: chigan Preparing To Let Doctors Refuse To Treat Gays [Une nouvelle loi du Michigan permettra aux medecins de refuser certains traitements comme l'IVG et certains malades, comme les homosexuels, pour des raisons de moralité.]

http://www.365gay.com/newscon04/04/042204MichMed.htm

Michigan Preparing To Let Doctors Refuse To Treat Gays
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff

Posted: April 21, 2004 8:14 p.m. ET

(Lansing, Michigan) Doctors or other health care providers could not be disciplined or sued if they refuse to treat gay patients under legislation passed Wednesday by the Michigan House.

The bill allows health care workers to refuse service to anyone on moral, ethical or religious grounds.

The Republican dominated House passed the measure as dozens of Catholics looked on from the gallery. The Michigan Catholic Conference, which pushed for the bills, hosted a legislative day for Catholics on Wednesday at the state Capitol.

The bills now go the Senate, which also is controlled by Republicans.

The Conscientious Objector Policy Act would allow health care providers to assert their objection within 24 hours of when they receive notice of a patient or procedure with which they don't agree. However, it would prohibit emergency treatment to be refused.

Three other three bills that could affect LGBT health care were also passed by the House Wednesday which would exempt a health insurer or health facility from providing or covering a health care procedure that violated ethical, moral or religious principles reflected in their bylaws or mission statement.

Opponents of the bills said they're worried they would allow providers to refuse service for any reason. For example, they said an emergency medical technicians could refuse to answer a call from the residence of gay couple because they don't approve of homosexuality.

Rep. Chris Kolb (D-Ann Arbor) the first openly gay legislator in Michigan, pointed out that while the legislation prohibits racial discrimination by health care providers, it doesn't ban discrimination based on a person's sexual orientation.

"Are you telling me that a health care provider can deny me medical treatment because of my sexual orientation? I hope not," he said.

"I think it's a terrible slippery slope upon which we embark," said Rep. Jack Minore (D-Flint) before voting against the bill.

Paul A. Long, vice president for public policy for the Michigan Catholic Conference, said the bills promote the constitutional right to religious freedom.

"Individual and institutional health care providers can and should maintain their mission and their services without compromising faith-based teaching," he said in a written statement.

©365Gay.com® 2004

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7) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Scholastic: Catch That Clock [Un réveil-matin qui s'enfuie pour vous obliger de le chasser.]
http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/news/article_tue.asp
Catch That Clock
By Genet Berhane

Do you have trouble waking up in the morning? You're not alone. Gauri Nanda is a 25-year-old graduate student at MIT who always had a difficult time getting out of bed—until now. Nanda designed an alarm clock, called Clocky, that would wake up any sleepyhead. When the alarm goes off, the clock rolls off the nightstand and around the floor of the room. If you want to turn it off, you have to catch it.

"I've been known to hit the snooze bar for up to two hours or even accidentally turn it off," said Nanda. "Having the alarm clock hide from me was just the most obvious way I could think of to get out of bed."

Part of Nanda's inspiration for Clocky's design came from kittens she had that would play with her toes every morning. The idea, she said, was to create a clock that people could view as a kind of troublesome pet. Nanda admits that Clocky's appearance, with its shag-carpet covering, is "a bit ugly."

"But its unconventional look keeps the user calm, and inspires laughter at one of the most hated times of the day," she observed.

Clocky is covered with shag carpeting that hides the wheels that allow it to move around. The clock's programming instructs the motors to move at different speeds and directions, to help the clock find a different hiding spot each morning.

"The idea really was to use technology in a more playful way," Nanda said. "It's sort of like a hide-and-seek game."

According to Nanda's school adviser, Michael Bove Jr., Clocky is getting a fair amount of attention. Bove has received hundreds of calls and e-mails from people asking about buying and selling the clocks. Many of these people said they've tried everything they could think of to get out of bed in the morning. Some have even set their alarm clocks at the other end of the room (but then they forget to set the clock). For now, the wandering clock is considered an academic research project and not available for sale, but Nanda is thinking about starting a business to make and market the clocks.

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9) Slate/Dear Prudence: Weddings and germs [Conseils sur la vie sentimentale et la vie tout court. Cette semaine, une lettre d'une femme convaincue que son mai la trome, et une autre d'un homme dont la femme insiste à donner son propre patronyme à leur enfant à naître.]
http://slate.msn.com/id/2116695/

Pru,
I'm 23. I have a 2-year-old son and just discovered child No. 2 will be arriving in about six months. I've been married for just over two years to a man who, in the beginning, seemed to be perfect in every way. Now, however, I have a very hard time justifying wasting my youth on this man. I love my son, and in that aspect of my life I couldn't be happier. But there have been other women. He claims he hasn't had sex with any of them, but I've found love letters written by one woman, and he even confessed to telling her he loved her. He says they never had sex because they didn't have time. Of course he claims she meant nothing and that I overreacted. He has several female friends I have never met. I wrote one woman an e-mail requesting her to please tell me the nature of their relationship. In her reply she called me names and told me that her friendship with my husband was "none of my business." My husband laughs about this and insists I am jumping to conclusions.

—HELP! Please!

Dear HELP,

Jumping to conclusions does not necessarily make them wrong. Any man who tells you he "doesn't have time" for sex with a woman he is telling he loves is lying. And the class of people he is dallying with just confirms that you should, indeed, not waste your youth on this lowlife. The sooner you leave this marriage, the better your life (and your children's) will be. Good luck.

—Prudie, sympathetically

-*-*-

Dear Prudence,
Never before a user of these kinds of columns, I am irresistibly curious to see what you might think of the following: My wife and I are hoping to have a baby and have debated, at some length, the choice of first names. I've conceded/compromised on possible choices and thought that was the end of it. Now, she wants to talk about the last name. I consider myself very open-minded and am willing to discuss a hyphenation. (I find them dated, clunky, and pretentious, but I only have one vote.) She is insisting on her last name: no hyphenation. In theory, I can appreciate that the choice of the man's last name is, tradition aside, somewhat arbitrary. I've joked about selecting a new last name; an amalgam, or anagram perhaps. I have been assuming that as that future day approaches, the issue would disappear and the children would have my last name. But testing the waters tells me that her resolve is firm. In 100 years, maybe the convention will include choosing your own last name, but for the coming year or two, I doubt it. Any advice?

—Queryingly yours, Nameless in New York

Dear Quer,

Is your wife a militant feminist? Or perhaps your surname is the same as one of the major crime families? Prudie only knows of one instance where the last name on the birth certificate was the mother's: There were no males to carry on the name, and the name was that of a major corporation. Another instance would be if the parents weren't married and it was the mother's choice to use her own name (which, of course was her father's, but onward). What Prudie would like to know about your wife's "resolve" is the thinking behind it. You might want to get into this subject a little deeper, because there's a slim chance that the baby's name may be the least of your problems.

— Prudie, portentously

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LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Two centuries after he changed history at the Battle of Trafalgar, Horatio Nelson still has some key lessons for today's leaders, according to naval historian Colin White. He was ruthless in battle, deeply loyal to friends and subordinates, and passionate at self promotion, previously unpublished correspondence shows in a new book "Nelson - The New Letters".

"One of the insights coming out of this stuff is just what an incredible manager of people Nelson was," White told Reuters in an interview. "That really does come out of this new material -- the ability to identify with each of his key subordinates on a very individual level rather than as a group. That was something quite special," he added.

At Trafalgar off Spain, Nelson broke French naval power, signaling the beginning of the end for the Emperor Napoleon. He himself was killed but in the process gave Britain command of the seas for a century. Published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the battle, the 500 letters in the book give an insight into Nelson the leader, friend and lover. "You can see his mood change during campaigns. In effect you can watch Nelson at work," said White, who spent six years tracking down some 1,400 forgotten, suppressed or previously censored letters. "That is why I am calling this almost an autobiography. It covers every single major episode of Nelson's life and brings out the man behind the legend," he added.

The book is among a host of new studies of Nelson and his battles that will be published this year as part of the anniversary celebrations that will include a major international naval review -- including France -- at Spithead off the southern English coast in June.

Born on September 29, 1758, the son of a country parson, Nelson went to sea at the age of 13, got his first command seven years later, was knighted and promoted to rear admiral aged just 38 and was killed at Trafalgar on October 21, 1805 aged 47.

In the intervening years, he lost his right eye and arm, won several key naval battles, married and abandoned Frances Nisbet, had an open affair with the married Emma Hamilton that scandalized British society and became a national hero.

The new letters reveal Nelson's close relations with his brothers, his adept lobbying of key patrons -- including the admiral of the fleet -- his warm friendships with a wide range of people and his sensuous love of Emma. "I found all sorts of material that was unpublished for all sorts of reasons -- sometimes stuff that was deliberately suppressed back in the Victorian period, sometimes stuff that had been dismissed and some that had just been missed," White said. "Some was removed because it was critical of people then in important positions and others because it revealed his extensive intelligence network when he was commander in chief in the Mediterranean between 1803 and 1805," he added.

But the letters also show Nelson's close relations with his subordinate commanders -- often accompanying formal orders with warmer personal instructions to soften the officialese. "You have to remember that he was a right handed man without a right hand, so every letter that he wrote was quite an effort using his left hand. You can see that was quite a commitment to man management," White said.

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