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Week 25, 2006
THE BEST SELLERS (recent popular articles):
1) The Onion: Suicide PowerPoint presentation [C'est de l'humour... un salarié laisse son mot de suicide sous forme d'une présentation PowerPoint de haute qualité.]
2) Chicago Tribune: Can Southern culture survive low-fat diets? [Alors qu'on lutte contre l'obésité, comment les gens du Sud des USA vont-ils faire pour laisser tomber leurs plats préférés, les uns plus gras que les autres.]
3) The Economist: Snakes and ladders [La mobilité sociale est plus forte en Europe qu'aux Etats Unis.]
4) New York Times: I hear ringing and there's no one there [Comment se fait-il qu'on entend la sonnerie de notre téléphone portable partout et n'importe où?]

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THE REGULARS: Summary
5) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Scholastic: World Cup Kicks Off [La Coupe du monde.]
6) Puzzle: Pilgrimage [Un casse-tête]
7) Retour sur les stages chez Disney... tout n'est pas rose...
8) AUDIO/Marketplace: Our long legacy of slackers [Emission radio sur l'économie, avec transcription et téléchargement streaming, cette fois-ci un entretien avec l'auteur d'un livre sur les glandeurs.]

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1) The Onion: Suicide PowerPoint presentation [C'est de l'humour... un salarié laisse son mot de suicide sous forme d'une présentation PowerPoint de haute qualité.]
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30903/print/

Project Manager Leaves Suicide PowerPoint Presentation

February 9, 2005 | Issue 41•06

PORTLAND, OR—Project manager Ron Butler left behind a 48-slide PowerPoint presentation explaining his tragic decision to commit suicide, coworkers reported Tuesday.

"When I first heard that Ron had swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills, I was shocked," said Hector Benitez, Butler's friend and coworker at Williams+Kennedy Marketing Consultants. "But after the team went through Ron's final PowerPoint presentation, I had a solid working knowledge of the pain he was feeling, his attempts to cope, and the reasons for his ultimate decision." "I just wish he would've shot me an e-mail asking for help," Benitez added.

Butler broke his presentation into four categories: Assessment Of Current Situation, Apologies & Farewells, Will & Funeral Arrangements, and Final Thoughts. According to Williams+Kennedy president Bradford Williams, finalgoodbye.ppt was "clear, concise, and persuasive." "After everyone left the room, I sat down and went through Ron's final presentation in slide-sorter view," Williams said. "Man, I gotta tell you, it blew me away. That presentation really utilized the full multimedia capabilities of Microsoft's PowerPoint application." "We're really gonna miss Ron around here," Williams added.

In the presentation's first section, a three-dimensional bar graph illustrated the growth of Butler's sorrow during the two years since his wife and only child died in a car accident. "We all got Ron's message loud and clear when that JPEG of his wife wipe-transitioned to a photo of her tombstone," coworker Anne Thibideux said.

The first section closed with a review of key objectives and critical success factors. The two-column text display was enlivened by colorful background wallpaper and clip-art question marks depicting Ron's confusion over his choice.

The second portion of the presentation comprised an ordered list of goodbyes to colleagues and apologies to friends. "The colors in Apologies & Farewells were perfectly calibrated for digital-projector display," I.T. director Bill Schapp said. "I think Ron was the only guy at W+K who understood the importance of running the Gretag-Macbeth Eye-One Beamer on presentations."

The third segment, Will & Funeral Arrangements, included a list of Butler's friends and family indexed with phone numbers, a last will and testament, and scrolling-text instructions for the dissemination of his ashes.

"To Ron's credit, it was one helluva way to go out," human resources manager Gail Everts said. "Ron clearly spent a lot of time on that presentation. If the subject matter weren't so heavy, we'd probably use it to train his replacement."

Copywriter Gita Pruriyaran said the presentation "had room for improvement." "I felt some of the later transitions were weak," Pruriyaran said. "The point of a transition is to maintain audience interest and lighten the mood. To me, the door-closing sound effects in Will & Funeral were repetitive and heavy-handed. But Ron's choice to end with that Hamlet quote and then fade to black was really powerful. There wasn't a dry eye in the room when Hector flipped off the projector and brought up the lights."

Coworkers were shocked to learn that Butler's document was initially created on Aug. 8, 2004. "I should have seen this coming, but I didn't," Benitez said. "When Ron started deleting all of his old files last week, I thought he was worried about another hard-drive crash. I never imagined he was, you know, preparing." "If only we'd all paid more attention to Ron during the Microsoft Project workshop he held last month," Benitez added.

Butler is survived by his parents Gerald and Martha Butler, who described their relationship with their son as "distant." "Ron would e-mail us photos and home movies, but we're not very good with computers," said Gerald, 71, a retired postal worker. "We tried to stay close, but we just never learned how to open up those files. At the very end, Ron was sending us his suicidal thoughts, but we didn't get the instant message—until it was too late."

Williams+Kennedy vice president Vivien Esterhaus said Butler "will not be forgotten." "We have made arrangements for his PowerPoint presentation to be stored in the W+K off-site secure file-storage archive," Esterhaus said. "Barring a virus or major computer malfunction, his final words will always be accessible. If only Ron could've been saved, too."

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2) Chicago Tribune: Can Southern culture survive low-fat diets? [Alors qu'on lutte contre l'obésité, comment les gens du Sud des USA vont-ils faire pour laisser tomber leurs plats préférés, les uns plus gras que les autres.]
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/health/diet/sfl-522southern,0,2320581.story?track=mostemailedlink

The deep-fried dilemma: Can Southern culture survive low-fat diets?
By Dahleen Glanton
Chicago Tribune

May 22, 2006, 6:34 AM EDT

ATLANTA -- During a typical week, the Busy Bee Cafe serves more than 700 orders of fried chicken, 500 pounds of collard greens, 300 pounds of fried pork chops, 400 gallons of sweet tea and about 85 pans of peach cobbler.

This small storefront restaurant in a black community on the edge of downtown Atlanta is where serious lovers of Southern cuisine have come for their regular fix of comfort foods for more than half a century. It also represents the kind of eateries all over the South that provide the greatest challenge to doctors and nutritionists fighting to change the calorie-laden, fat-filled diets of Southerners.

``We don't cook the way they cook downtown,'' said Otis Sutton, 78, who has prepared meals at the Busy Bee since it opened in 1947. ``We've got to put some soul into it.''

As the country wages a war on obesity, health officials have sought to encourage Americans to exercise more and eat healthier, giving up foods high in cholesterol and fat. But despite the region's ``Stroke Belt'' label _ because of the above-average number of strokes _ health officials have had difficulty persuading Southerners to drastically change their artery-clogging diet.

Other regions of the country, including the Midwest with its cheese, brats and pizza, also have challenges. But in the South, a meal of fried chicken smothered in gravy, collard greens and buttered cornbread is as much a part of the culture as front-porch rockers and a Southern drawl.

Changing the way people eat, experts said, could mean changing an important part of Southern culture.

``Food is a strong emblem of identity for Southerners. It is one of the few cultural artifacts that both black and white Southerners embrace and hold in high esteem,'' said John Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. ``Segregation remains in many aspects of our daily lives in the South, but there is no segregation of our black-eyed peas and our collard greens.''

Restaurants such as the Busy Bee take pride in serving authentic cuisine, and over the years some have tried to make healthy changes. Vegetables, for example, are no longer cooked with pork but with smoked turkey wings at the Busy Bee. Other restaurants, however, have gone out of their way to create concoctions that could literally take your breath away.

One of the most popular items on the menu at Mulligan's bar in suburban Decatur, Ga., is the ``hamdog,'' a half-pound of hamburger meat wrapped around a hotdog, which is deep-fried and served on a hoagie topped with chili, bacon and a fried egg. The bar also offers the ``Luther,'' a half-pound burger served with bacon and cheese on a Krispy Kreme donut, and, for dessert, fried Twinkies, two deep-fried Kap'n Crunch-coated Twinkies topped with chocolate and cherry sauce.

Bar owner Chandler Goff, 35, said there is no practical way to measure the fat or calories in those dishes. He has added a notation at the bottom of the menu urging diners to ``have the sense to realize that although delicious, we do not recommend eating fried foods every day.'' He also reminds people to exercise regularly and get an annual physical.

``These are great pleasures,'' Goff said. ``You don't want to eat this every day.''

The South was labeled ``the Stroke Belt'' because 11 states and the District of Columbia, from Washington to Florida and west to Texas, have the highest incidence of and mortality from stroke in nation, according to Dr. Mark Alberts, a professor of neurology at Northwestern University Medical School.

``It is extremely difficult everywhere in the country to get people to adopt a healthy lifestyle,'' said Alberts, who heads the Stroke Belt Consortium, a group of health care professionals and organizations working to educate the public about the risk of stroke. ``There are some things like hush puppies, pig's feet and the quantity of fried foods that are significant in the South. Diet has a central role in many risk factors that directly lead to stroke.''

While the stroke rate is higher among all races in the South, more Southern blacks die of it than whites in the South or blacks in other parts of the country. That, in part, could be due to a lack of access to healthy foods, some experts said.

``In poor communities, there are sometimes no grocery stores nearby and people shop at convenience stores where they can't get fresh fruits and vegetables. But the odd thing is the ice cream truck drives through the neighborhood every day,'' said Dr. Daniel Blumenthal, a professor at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta. ``If you have to find transportation to get to the supermarket, it is more expensive. And it costs more to buy fresh foods.''

Since the mid-1990s, groups such as the Stroke Belt Consortium have been working with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prevent heart disease and strokes in the South, focusing primarily on eliminating obesity.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent on programs in churches, schools and community centers to educate the public about health risks and teach people how to cook healthy meals without losing the flavor.

Every Friday morning at the Lou Walker Senior Center in Lithonia, Ga., CDC nutritionist Annie Carr teaches participants how to make things like sauteed collard greens, egg white omelets and homemade turkey sausage. Each week, she said, more people show up, indicating that there is growing interest in learning how to prepare meals without excessive grease and sugar.

``Their mother and grandmother cooked with a lot of fat and that's the only way they know how to cook,'' said Carr. ``If we can show them healthy recipes that look good and taste good, they will try it. But if it is bland, they are not going to eat it.''

The dietary changes have been particularly tough for soul food restaurants like the Busy Bee, which opened in 1947 in the shadows of the city's predominantly black colleges and universities. During the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the Busy Bee and other black-owned restaurants served as meeting centers for organizers.

``For our customers, this is home,'' said Tracy Gates, 47, whose family bought the Busy Bee in 1982. ``They want fried chicken, barbecue ribs and oxtails on the menu every day. They are not concerned about transfats. If they were, I would be out of business.''

While Gates said she does not pay attention to trends such as low-carb diets, she does listen to the concerns of her patrons. Chitlins are only on the menu during the winter holiday season, she cooks fried chicken in peanut oil rather than vegetable oil, and she has added items such as green salads to the menu.

But when customers such as Ron Burks of Conley, Ga., come in three to four times a week, they know exactly what they want, and it is not a fresh salad.

``I come in here to treat myself,'' said Burks, 48, over a plate of smothered turkey wings, dressing, giblet gravy, yams and green beans. ``My mother died of diabetes and all my sisters and brothers have high blood pressure. Most of the time, I try to eat healthy, but this is my falling-off-the-wagon place.''

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3) The Economist: Snakes and ladders [La mobilité sociale est plus forte en Europe qu'aux Etats Unis.]
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_GJSNQRG

Charlemagne: Snakes and ladders
May 25th 2006
From The Economist print edition

Europe is economically inflexible but socially mobile. Whence this strange combination?

EUROPEANS have mixed feelings about class. They deplore the idea that people may remain mired in poverty, and they have large welfare programmes to help them move up. They also resent the sight of rich families staying at the top for generations, and so impose high taxes to redistribute wealth and income.

On the other hand, compared with Americans, Europeans cling to a somewhat static view of society. They dislike the extremes of wealth and poverty that accompany America's supposed free-for-all meritocracy. They look askance at “excessive” job mobility, which breeds insecurity. Polls show that, compared with Americans, Europeans are more likely to dislike unfettered market competition and to believe that success is outside their own control. With some exceptions (eg, Dick Whittington), they lack the equivalent of Horatio Alger's myth of rags to riches. In short, in the European view, social stability is desirable, and if a certain amount of inflexibility is needed to underpin it, that is a price worth paying to avoid the restless uncertainties of America's market-driven model.

Yet the curious thing is that European society—at least in the Nordic countries—is far less stable than America's. Two new research papers* confirm that, if one compares the incomes of children with those of their parents, or considers how long people in one income group stay there, Nordic countries emerge as far more mobile than America. Britain shows more class stability than its northern neighbours, but it is still a lot closer to them than it is to America.

The authors rank countries on a scale from one to zero, with one meaning no mobility at all (ie, a child's income is identical to its parents') and zero meaning perfect mobility (ie, a child's income bears no relation to its parents'). The Nordic countries score around 0.2 for sons, Britain scores 0.36, and America 0.54 (meaning that a son's earnings are more closely related to his father's in America). These figures are roughly in line with the conclusions of other studies, though they have the advantage of using standardised data, thereby minimising problems of definition that usually bedevil cross-country comparisons.

The biggest finding of the studies is not, however, about overall social mobility, but about mobility at the bottom. This is the most distinctive feature of Nordic societies, and it is also perhaps the most significant difference with America. Around three-quarters of sons born into the poorest fifth of the population in Nordic countries in the late 1950s had moved out of that category by the time they were in their early 40s. In contrast, only just over half of American men born at the bottom later moved up. This is another respect in which Britain is more like the Nordics than like America: some 70% of its poorest sons escaped from poverty within a generation.

The Nordic countries are distinctive in one further way: the sons born at the bottom (into the poorest fifth) earn roughly the same as those born a rung above them (the second-poorest fifth). In other words, Nordic countries have almost completely snapped the link between the earnings of parents and children at and near the bottom. That is not at all true of America.

Social mobility at middle-income levels is more similar everywhere (it is a bit higher in most European countries, but not by much). That may partly explain why Americans think their society is more mobile than it is (the middle classes tend to set the political agenda, and mobility is genuine enough for them). It may also explain why few Europeans appreciate quite how much movement up and down the income ladder there is, because much of it takes place off the radar screen of the politically influential.

Unwrapping the Scandinavian model

The obvious explanation for greater mobility in the Nordic countries is their tax and welfare systems, which (especially when compared with America's) deliberately try to help the children of the poor to do better than their parents. One might expect social mobility and economic flexibility to go together—in fact, to be two sides of the same coin. But to the extent that redistribution is an explanation, it implies the opposite: that social mobility is a product of high public spending, a bit like the low incidence of poverty or longer life expectancy (on both of which Europe also does better than America). But greater public spending tends also to be associated with less economic flexibility—which is why Nordic countries have sought to limit the more arthritis-inducing features of their tax-and-spend programmes.

Yet redistributive fiscal policies cannot be all there is to it. If they were, Nordic countries would not do as well as they do (their welfare states are not appreciably more generous than Britain's). The other part of the explanation seems to be their superior education systems. Education has long been recognised as the most important single trigger of social mobility—and all four Nordic countries do unusually well in the school-appraisal system developed by the OECD.

That in turn may explain why the bigger continental European countries, notably France, Germany, Italy, are not as mobile as Nordic ones. With relatively poor education systems, they are bound to perform more like Britain. But that still makes them socially (if not economically) more flexible than the land of the free. For Europe, the secrets of greater social mobility are, first, tough redistribution policies that particularly benefit those at the bottom; and, especially in Nordic countries, a more supple and less class-ridden education system, running from top to bottom. America could learn something from that.

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4) New York Times: I hear ringing and there's no one there [Comment se fait-il qu'on entend la sonnerie de notre téléphone portable partout et n'importe où?]
http://www.nytimes.com/

I Hear Ringing and There's No One There. I Wonder Why.
By BRENDA GOODMAN

SIX minutes 39 seconds into the Richard Thompson song "Calvary Cross," Mike Pelusi, a music reviewer in Philadelphia, will almost invariably check his cellphone. Minka Wiltz, an actress in Atlanta, has tried to answer her phone to the thrrrrup, thrrrrup, thrrrrup of a truck bouncing down a pothole-pocked street.

Others say they thought they heard phones ring while taking a shower, using a blow-dryer or watching commercials. What they are hearing is a barely discernable sound — perhaps chimes, a faint trill or an electronic bleat — that they mistake for the ringtone of their cellphone, which isn't ringing. This audio illusion — called phantom phone rings or, more whimsically, ringxiety or fauxcellarm — has emerged recently as an Internet discussion topic and has become a new reason for people to either bemoan the techno-saturation of modern life or question their sanity.

Some sound experts believe that because cellphones have become a fifth limb for many, people now live in a constant state of phone vigilance, and hearing sounds that seem like a telephone's ring can send an expectant brain into action.

"My experience has been hearing just a few notes that are similar to my phone's ring, my brain will fill in the rest," said David Laramie, a doctoral student at the Los Angeles campus of the California School of Professional Psychology, who is writing his dissertation about the effect of cellphones on behavior.

He plans to send questionnaires this summer to learn when and how often phantom rings happen and who is most likely to experience them. A few notes in the background of a television commercial can fool him, he said. Other times the culprit will be the sound effects in a song on the radio. "Another place I hear it is running water, so I sometimes hear it while I'm shaving," Mr. Laramie said.

Phantom rings are a "psycho-acoustic phenomenon" related to the way the human brain interprets sound, said Rob Nokes, president of Sound Dogs, a sound effects company in California.

The ear gives unequal weights to certain frequencies, making it particularly sensitive to sounds in the range of 1,000 to 6,000 hertz, scientists say. Babies cry in this range, for example, and the familiar "brrring, brrring" ringtone hits this sweet spot, too. (Simple ringtones are more likely to produce phantom rings than popular music used as a ringtone.)

"Your brain is conditioned to respond to a phone ring just as it is to a baby crying," Mr. Nokes said.

Why people seem to be hearing phantom rings more often now is another question. The answers range from the paranoid to the vast exposure to cellphones in people's lives — there were 207 million wireless subscribers nationwide at the end of 2005, a nearly sevenfold increase in just a decade, according to the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association.

On blogs, some cellphone users wonder if an ominous agenda is at work when a phantom ring is triggered by a television or radio broadcast. A writer posting as Koan on forumgarden.com said that at first, songs played on the radio triggered a phantom ring. "Thing is, the high-pitched sounds, although a lot fainter, are still present during announcements now," Koan wrote. "What is this? Is it subliminal advertising ... or something else?"

Peter Arnell, the chief creative officer of the Arnell Group in New York and a major force in the marketing business, said that theory might not be far off the mark. While he said he has never been asked by a client to include sounds in an advertisement that would mimic a ringing cellphone, he thinks the increasing use of high-pitched, electronic tones is very much by design.

"People are using a sound trigger to control emotions," Mr. Arnell said. "The most controlling device in our life right now is a cellphone."

He suggested that a sound trick that sent confused listeners hunting for their cellphones might be especially effective for ads ending with a call to action. (An example is a directive to "Call this toll-free number now!")

"Hollywood has always known how to use sound to control emotions, right?" Mr. Arnell continued. "But this is newer to advertising. Sound effects have become the big deal on Madison Avenue."

Michael Sweet, the creative director of Audio Brain, a sonic branding company in New York that has done work for NBC and Verizon, also said that he had never been asked to use a sound for the purpose of generating a phantom ring. But he also said he believes that the ear-brain trick isn't a mistake.

"I think it's definitely intentional," Mr. Sweet said. "Do ad agencies know they're getting your attention? Sure. Do they know it's because you're trying to answer your phone to the TV? Not necessarily."

Allen Henderson, who runs the blog AwfulCommericals.com, was bothered by a Toyota ad showing a man dragging a rusted heap of a car uphill as if it were a ball and chain. The chain eventually snaps and the man is free to drive a Toyota. Mr. Henderson lamented what he called the spot's overblown premise, but that wasn't the only thing.

"Most of all," Mr. Henderson wrote on his blog, "I hate this commercial for making me check my phone every time it came on the air." Steve R. Chavez, creative director for Saatchi & Saatchi, the Los Angeles agency that created the spot, "Ball and Chain," seemed tickled when told of Mr. Henderson's phantom ring experience.

"You know, it only took us 20 years to develop that," Mr. Chavez said impishly. "I'm soooo kidding.

"I think, as an industry, we're often accused of manipulation. It's simply not true." And after this reporter was taunted by phantom rings from "Homage," a television spot for Marriott Hotels, the ad agency that created it, McGarry Bowen in New York, said any confusion was purely unintentional. "Everyone here is kind of baffled," said Rob Kaplan, the director of music production at McGarry Bowen. "No one meant to put anything that sounded like a cellphone ringtone in the spot."

In "Homage," which was conceived as a tribute to business travelers, a series of twinkling chimes punctuate shots of hotel rooms, a traveler falling back on a bed, and shoes kicked off on the floor.

Mr. Kaplan said the spot was created before he was hired but that the sound design wasn't meant to fool the ear. "I've worked on a lot of spots that have used a lot of modern, atonal sounds," Mr. Kaplan said. "It is kind of cutting edge and compliments visuals really well."

Intentional or not, audio experts say fooling the ear into hearing a ringing phone isn't hard.

As long as it's a more traditional trill, a telephone ring is a simple tone that can be reproduced relatively easy, said Adam Jenkins, a sound effects mixer who has worked on movies like "Crash" and "Apollo 13."

"It's a 1,000 hertz tone that can be generated by just about anything," Mr. Jenkins said. And because most sounds are the result of two or more tones put together — human speech is multitonal, for example — simple tones really stand out.

Tones that are generated around 1,000 hertz have another special characteristic that helps them hoodwink those within range. It is tough to tell where they are coming from.

Because humans have ears on each side of their head, they are able to localize most sounds. The direction of high-frequency sounds is pinpointed based on their volume level in each ear, and low frequency sounds based on their arrival time in each ear.

But Guy Moore, an assistant professor of physics at McGill University in Montreal, said human ears do not do a good job finding the source of sounds around 1,000 hertz using either method, so that a noise in that range seems just as likely to be coming from the television to the right as a purse sitting to the left.

"That's also why it's so hard to tell where an ambulance siren is coming from in traffic," Mr. Moore said.

So, primed as busy people are to respond to a ring, the phone usually is the first response to the question, "Where is that coming from?"

Jonathan Wolff, a retired sound designer in Lexington, Ky., who created the theme songs for "Will & Grace" and "Seinfeld," said he has unintentionally created sound mixes that generate phantom phone rings. "But I take it out if I think its going to be annoying," he said.

While phantom rings may generate reactions from curiosity to irritation, at least explanations for the phenomenon exist. More mysterious are phantom phone vibrations, a cellphone side effect that many people said they also have experienced. It seems that having a phone set to vibrate can cause a particularly physical kind of false alarm.

Charles Maniaci, a special education teacher from Atlanta, said he used to feel phantom vibrations almost constantly. Then about a year ago he developed a lump on his thigh underneath the pocket where he kept his cellphone. "Nobody could tell me what it was," he said.

For a while, he moved his phone to a belt clip. But the vibrations eventually stopped, and he moved the phone back to his pocket. "I've thought that maybe the nerves got so irritated from the phone vibrating that this tissue grew around them," he said. "That's what the body does, it grows tissue around things to protect them. But it's exactly where I used to keep the phone."

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5) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Scholastic: World Cup Kicks Off [La Coupe du monde.]
http://www.scholastic.com

World Cup Kicks Off
By Michael Lewis

Soccer-crazed fans worldwide have been waiting four years for today.

The World Cup—one of the world's biggest sporting events—begins today in Germany. For the next 30 days, 32 teams will represent their countries, including the United States, to play a total of 64 soccer games in cities throughout Germany. Imagine the World Series, the Super Bowl, and the Olympics all rolled into one, and you'll have an idea of what Germany will be like. All the excitement leads up to July 9, when the two World Cup finalists will face off at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin.

The World Cup happens every four years. International soccer fans, including several million in the U.S., will follow their favorite teams on TV, awaiting the latest news from the matches. This year's tournament is expected to capture the attention of more than a billion people.

Germany's Strong Start

The World Cup may have just begun, but the host nation already has something to celebrate. In the opening game of the tournament, Germany defeated Costa Rica, 4-2.

Costa Rica's striker, Paulo Wanchope, scored two goals in the match, but his team proved unable to keep up with its opponent. Due to a calf injury, German captain Michael Ballack missed the game, but his team pulled together for the win. Six minutes into the game, defender Philipp Lahm (still recovering from recent elbow surgery) scored the first goal. Forward Miroslav Klose, who today celebrated his 28th birthday, scored two goals, while a 30-yard shot by Torsten Frings scored the final point.

Germany's next match will be June 14 against Poland.

Tournament Format and Favorites

In the World Cup, teams are separated into eight groups of four. In the first round, each team in a group plays the other three teams, so that every team in the tournament is guaranteed at least three matches. After round one, the top-two teams in each group move on to the next round—the beginning of a single-elimination format.

One of the top teams in the competition is five-time champion Brazil, which won the World Cup in 2002, and looks to repeat that feat, or achievement, this year. Today, Brazil is the overwhelming favorite, thanks to the skill of players like midfielder Ronaldinho (regarded as the best player in the world the past two years), as well as Ronaldo, Adriano, and Robinho, who are strikers, or forwards. Brazil's fans put on a show of their own: Win, lose, or draw, they samba—perform a lively Brazilian dance—before, during and after the games.

Other countries to keep an eye on include Germany; the Czech Republic (ranked second in the world); Argentina (Brazil's archrival in South America); England (which has been dealing with player injuries); and an Italian team whose traditionally strong defense has been made even stronger this year with two new players.

The U.S. is considered a long shot to win at all, especially because it is playing very strong opponents, including the Czech Republic and Italy. But the American squad has some talent of its own—midfielders Landon Donovan and DaMarcus Beasley, and defender Oguchi Onyewu—to make opponents sweat.

The winning team will take home a 14-karat gold FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) World Cup trophy. Follow all the action from home, as ESPN, ESPN2, ABC and Univision broadcast games from Germany.

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8) AUDIO/Marketplace: Our long legacy of slackers [Emission radio sur l'économie, avec transcription et téléchargement streaming, cette fois-ci un entretien avec l'auteur d'un livre sur les glandeurs.]
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/06/14/PM200606146.html

Tom Lutz talks to host Kai Ryssdal about his new book on the history of slackers in America. You know, like Benjamin Franklin.

TEXT OF INTERVIEW

KAI RYSSDAL: Senators and members of the House of Representatives disclosed their personal finances today. And, as it turns out, no, they're not very representative. In fact, only a few lawmakers said their congressional salary is their primary source of income. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist earned millions of dollars in interest alone. Hillary Clinton has $50 million in the bank. So why do these people work? When they could be, you know, slacking off? Tom Lutz's new book, "Doing Nothing," is about those who work and those who choose not to. Mister Lutz, are you a slacker, lying on the couch all day?

TOM LUTZ: It was actually not me, it was my son lying on the couch. He moved into my house when he was 18 and started to just lay on the couch day in and day out. I found that it made me completely furious. I just was enraged by it. So I was surprised by my own emotional reaction to seeing my son doing something that I'd done a million times. That I'd watched him do a million times. So, I wanted to understand my own emotional reaction to his slackerdom.

RYSSDAL: We should probably start with the term, though. I mean, how do you define being a slacker?

LUTZ: Well, slacker, as a term, originates in World War I as a term for "draft dodger." But it's not until the 1980s that slacker becomes the common term for somebody who has a principled aversion to work.

RYSSDAL: As opposed to the unprincipled aversion . . .

LUTZ: Exactly. . . . As opposed to the purely lazy.

RYSSDAL: We can go back even farther in the history of this country and find some really prime examples of people who specialized at doing nothing. Ben Franklin is one of your key examples.

LUTZ: Well, Ben Franklin in America and Samuel Johnson in England are the two people I start out with. Franklin is a guy who we associate with the work ethic. He's got his famous schedule which he charts out what he's going to do hour by hour, day by day. And Samuel Johnson is the guy who signed himself, in his essays, as the idler. In fact, Johnson was constantly beset by guilt over his sloth. And Franklin, on the other hand, is a guy who just, as soon as he could, retired. He retired at the age of 42. He loved to take air baths, which meant taking all of his clothes off, laying with the windows open for a couple of hours in the middle of the day. John Adams said the only thing he's not late for is lunch.

RYSSDAL: So, I have the book here, and it is 320-something pages long of text. And you have, in a book on doing nothing, 34 pages of bibliography and notes. This was not a do-nothing kind of project.

LUTZ: No, I feel this book very strongly, in part, because I do work way too much.

RYSSDAL: You're a workaholic, you think?

LUTZ: I'm a bit of a workaholic. When I get going, I can sit at the computer, y'know, 16-17 hours and then wake up in the middle of the night and go back down and write a couple of paragraphs.

RYSSDAL: You talk, actually, about writers and how you're never comfortable with the time off that you need to be writing. But you're never happy working, so you can't write.

LUTZ: Yeah, writers have a particular problem with slacking, partly because we never looked like we're working.

RYSSDAL: Y'know, they say the same thing about radio journalists . . .

LUTZ: Of course! . . . Well, actually, it's a problem for all professionals who have control over their own time, [they] are faced with that issue 10-20 times a day. Y'know, "How am I going to spend the next hour?" We have to read to get ready to write. We have to kind of constantly be doing research. That research can slide off into reading the New York Times, which can slide off to reading Salon, which can slide off reading whatever . . .

RYSSDAL: Take your pick, sure.

LUTZ: Yeah, and since a lot of us watch culture for a living, watching "The Sopranos" is probably an important part of our job. We need to watch it. We need to be up with that. And the NBA Finals? .. .

RYSSDAL: Absolutely.

LUTZ: I think so. But, y'know, we have this sort of slacker crisis on a regular basis simply because of the nature of our work.

RYSSDAL: Before I let you go, I want to have read the very last paragraph in this book.

LUTZ: OK . . . Right now, I'd rather stop and rest. Do nothing for a while. I know that people have said that doing nothing is the hardest thing in the world to do. But I feel that now, after the work of making this book, I'm ready for the challenge. I'm ready to get off the treadmill to face the slow, beautiful emptiness and say, "Yes, this too is good."

RYSSDAL: The latest book from Tom Lutz is called, "Doing Nothing." Mr. Lutz, thanks for your time.

LUTZ: I'm glad to be here. Thanks.

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9) The Economist: Staying pure [Portrait de Howard Schultz, PDG de Starbucks]
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_VVQVVJD

Face value: Staying pure
Feb 23rd 2006

Howard Schultz's formula for Starbucks

SOME people might want a “double tall skinny hazelnut decaf latte”, but Howard Schultz is not one of them. The chairman and “chief global strategist” of the Starbucks coffee chain prefers a Sumatra roast with no milk, no sugar and poured from a French press—the kind of pure coffee, in fact, favoured by those coffee snobs who sneer at Starbucks, not just for its bewildering variety of choice and flavours (55,000 different drinks, by the company's count), but for its very ubiquity—over 10,500 locations around the world, increasing at a rate of five a day, and often within sight of each other.

Starbucks knows it cannot ignore its critics. Anti-globalisation protesters have occasionally trashed its coffee shops; posh neighbourhoods in San Francisco and London have resisted the opening of new branches; and the company is a favourite target of internet critics, on sites like www.ihatestarbucks.com. Mr Schultz is watchful, but relaxed: “We have to be extremely mindful and sensitive of the public's view of things...Thus far, we've done a pretty good job.” Certainly, as reviled icons of American capitalism go, Starbucks is distinctly second division compared with big leaguers like, say, McDonald's.

The reason, argues Mr Schultz, is that the company has retained a “passion” for coffee and a “sense of humanity”. Starbucks buys expensive beans and pays its growers—be they in Guatemala or Ethiopia—an average of 23% above the market price. A similar benevolence applies to company employees. Where other corporations seek to unload the burden of employee benefits, Starbucks gives all American employees working at least 20 hours a week a package that includes stock options (“Bean Stock”) and comprehensive health insurance.

For Mr Schultz, raised in a Brooklyn public-housing project, this health insurance—which now costs Starbucks more each year than coffee—is a moral obligation. At the age of seven, he came home to find his father, a lorry-driver, in a plaster cast, having slipped and broken an ankle. No insurance, no compensation and now no job.

Hence what amounts to a personal crusade. Most of America's corporate chiefs steer clear of the sensitive topic of health-care reform. Not Mr Schultz. He makes speeches, lobbies politicians and has even hosted a commercial-free hour of television, arguing for reform of a system that he thinks is simultaneously socially unjust and a burden on corporate America. Meanwhile the company pays its workers' premiums, even as each year they rise by double-digit percentages. The goal has always been “to build the sort of company that my father was never able to work for.” By this he means a company that “remains small even as it gets big”, treating its workers as individuals. Starbucks is not alone in its emphasis on “social responsibility”, but the other firms Mr Schultz cites off the top of his head—Timberland, Patagonia, Whole Foods—are much smaller than Starbucks, which has 100,000 employees and 35m customers.

Why size matters

Indeed, size has been an issue from the beginning. Starbucks, named after the first mate in Herman Melville's “Moby Dick”, was created in 1971 in Seattle's Pike Place Market by three hippie-ish coffee enthusiasts. Mr Schultz, whose first “decent cup of coffee” was in 1979, joined the company only in 1982—and then left it in 1985 after the founding trio, preferring to stay small, took fright at his vision of the future. Inspired by a visit to Milan in 1983, he had envisaged a chain of coffee bars where customers would chat over their espressos and cappuccinos. Following his dream, Mr Schultz set up a company he called “Il Giornale”, which grew to a modest three coffee bars. Then, somehow scraping together $3.8m (“I didn't have a dime to my name”), he bought Starbucks from its founders in 1987.

Reality long ago surpassed the dream. Since Starbucks went public in 1992, its stock has soared by some 6,400%. The company is now in 37 different countries. China, which hasover 200 stores, will eventually be its biggest market after America, and Russia, Brazil and India are all in line to be colonised over the next three years. The long-term goal is to double the number of American outlets to 15,000—not least by opening coffee shops along highways—and to have an equal number abroad.

No doubt the coffee snobs will blanch at the prospect. Yet they miss three points. The first is that, thanks to Starbucks, today's Americans are no longer condemned to drink the insipid, over-percolated brew that their parents endured. The second, less recognised, is that because Starbucks has created a mass taste for good coffee, small, family-owned coffee houses have also prospered (and no one has ever accused Starbucks, with its $4 lattes, of undercutting the competition).

The most important point, however, is that Mr Schultz's Starbucks cultivates a relationship with its customers. Its stores sell carefully selected (no hip-hop, but plenty of world music and jazz) CD-compilations, such as Ray Charles's “Genius Loves Company”. Later this year the company will promote a new film, “Akeelah and the Bee”, and will take a share of the profits. There are plans to promote books. Customers can even pay with their Starbucks “Duetto” Visa card.

Short of some health scare that would bracket coffee with nicotine, there is no obvious reason why Starbucks should trip up, however ambitious its plans and however misconceived the occasional project (a magazine called “Joe” flopped after three issues, and the Mazagran soft drink, developed with Pepsi, was also a failure). Mr Schultz says: “I think we have the licence from our customers to do more.” The key is that each Starbucks coffee house should remain “a third place”, between home and work, fulfilling the same role as those Italian coffee houses that so inspired him 23 years ago.

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10) USA Today: Lunch break becomes briefer as 'hour' shrinks [L'heure du déjeuner se rétrécit pour les salariés US.]
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/employment/2006-06-11-no-lunch-hour-usat_x.htm
Lunch break becomes briefer as 'hour' shrinks

By Stephanie Armour, USA TODAY Mon Jun 12, 7:11 AM ET

What lunch hour? More employees today are forgoing the traditional long lunch and taking an abbreviated afternoon break instead, using the time they'd normally eat to keep working or get other errands done. It's a sign of just how time-starved employees have become: More than half of employees take 30 minutes or less to eat, according to a survey of more than 1,000 workers on behalf of KFC. Sixty-three percent say the lunch hour is the biggest myth in office life today.

American workers today are taking less time for lunch than they used to. Fifty-five percent of workers take half an hour or less, according to a 2005 study by Grand Rapids, Mich.-based office furniture maker Steelcase. Workers in 2005 were spending 14% less time breaking for lunch - 31 minutes - compared with 1996, when workers spent an average of 36 minutes a day for lunch.

Blame it on too much work, not enough time for personal errands, the value of face time and greater productivity demands.

Riza Berkan, CEO of New York-based Hakia, a search engine, has employees in Turkey, England, India and Russia. Trying to accommodate the different time zones means his lunch is usually downing something small while walking the streets of Manhattan. "It's the nature of business today," Berkan says.

Some lunches are being forfeited by employees, but companies also have come under fire for not granting their workers enough of a break. In 2005, a California jury awarded more than $172 million to more than 100,000 current and former Wal-Mart workers who claimed they were illegally denied lunch breaks and asked to clock back in before their breaks were over.

Executives, professionals and other non-hourly employees are generally not entitled under federal law to any break for lunch, according to Robin Bond, an employment lawyer in Wayne, Pa. But employees who are paid hourly or who are covered under union collective bargaining agreements typically are supposed to get regular breaks, including a 30-minute lunch for five hours of work.

Employers could face legal claims from eligible hourly workers who aren't given those breaks, or even from eligible employees who voluntarily work through lunch. Some states, such as California, also have their own statutes mandating lunch breaks for workers.

"I see more and more in our culture where being overworked is a badge of courage. It's a major mistake to let work encroach even further on this time," Bond says. "People really need a break."

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11) The Economist: Sport and politics [La Coupe du monde FIFA, c'est mieux que les JO.]
http://economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7038930

Sport and politics: Let the games begin
Jun 8th 2006

Why the World Cup is better than the Olympics

SEVENTY years after Jesse Owens sprinted to victory in the 1936 Olympic Games, the Berlin Olympic stadium is once again at the centre of the sporting world. Football's World Cup, which starts this week, will come to a climax with a final in the refurbished Olympic stadium in Berlin next month.

Fortunately, the political overtones that made the Berlin Olympics such a sinister event are completely absent. This is not just because Germany is now a democratic country. It is also because the World Cup, unlike the Olympics, is wonderfully difficult to manipulate for political purposes. Over its long history, success at the Olympics has usually been a fairly accurate measure of global political power. Although the world now remembers the snub that Jesse Owens delivered to Nazi theories of racial superiority, the Germans came top of the Olympic medal table in 1936, reflecting the Nazi regime's growing power. During the cold war, the United States and the Soviet Union repeatedly struggled to gain a symbolic victory, by winning the most medals at the Olympics. Already a similar, politically charged battle for supremacy between America and China looks likely in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

By contrast, the World Cup has its own hierarchy, which is pleasingly divorced from the global pecking order. There is a sole superpower—Brazil. The Italians and French, apparently doomed to gentle decline in the real world, remain formidable competitors on the football field. And then there are the rising powers—which are more likely to hail from Africa than Asia. America will field a serious team at the World Cup, but nobody expects it to win. The Chinese, who have discovered a passion for football, failed to qualify for the tournament.

Football's power structure reflects a satisfying characteristic of the global game. Despite the undoubted prestige to be had by becoming champions of the world, it is extremely hard—if not impossible—for a determined and well-resourced government to create a World Cup-winning team. Arguably, the Italians managed it in the 1930s; and Argentina's World Cup winners in 1978 received plenty of backing from the ruling military junta. But a modern-day dictator who ordered his minions to create a team that could beat Brazil—or even play in their style—would be swiftly disappointed.
How to run rings around the Olympics

Again, the comparison with the Olympics is striking. Think of all those robotic East German sprinters, Romanian gymnasts and Chinese swimmers churned out by state-backed programmes. By contrast, a winning football team needs not just athleticism but also a spark of creativity and style that cannot be manufactured by sport's central planners. Even taking drugs does not appear to be much help for footballers.

As a result, every World Cup seems to throw up a team that suddenly clicks at the right time and beats a much-fancied opponent. Think of North Korea vanquishing Italy in 1966 or Senegal turning over France, the reigning champions, in 2002. It is this capacity to surprise that helps make the World Cup such a gripping event. And it is why in the endless competition between the Olympics and the World Cup for the title of “the world's greatest sporting event” we vote for the World Cup.

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12) Dark Reading: Social Engineering, the USB Way [Sécurité informatique et social engineering par l'emploi de clés USB.]
http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=95556&WT.svl=column1_1

Social Engineering, the USB Way

JUNE 7, 2006 | We recently got hired by a credit union to assess the security of its network. The client asked that we really push hard on the social engineering button. In the past, they'd had problems with employees sharing passwords and giving up information easily. Leveraging our effort in the report was a way to drive the message home to the employees.

The client also indicated that USB drives were a concern, since they were an easy way for employees to steal information, as well as bring in potential vulnerabilities such as viruses and Trojans. Several other clients have raised the same concern, yet few have done much to protect themselves from a rogue USB drive plugging into their network. I wanted to see if we could tempt someone into plugging one into their employer's network.

In the past we had used a variety of social engineering tactics to compromise a network. Typically we would hang out with the smokers, sweet-talk a receptionist, or commandeer a meeting room and jack into the network. This time I knew we had to do something different. We heard that employees were talking within the credit union and were telling each other that somebody was going to test the security of the network, including the people element.

We figured we would try something different by baiting the same employees that were on high alert. We gathered all the worthless vendor giveaway thumb drives collected over the years and imprinted them with our own special piece of software. I had one of my guys write a Trojan that, when run, would collect passwords, logins and machine-specific information from the user’s computer, and then email the findings back to us.

The next hurdle we had was getting the USB drives in the hands of the credit union’s internal users. I made my way to the credit union at about 6 a.m. to make sure no employees saw us. I then proceeded to scatter the drives in the parking lot, smoking areas, and other areas employees frequented.

Once I seeded the USB drives, I decided to grab some coffee and watch the employees show up for work. Surveillance of the facility was worth the time involved. It was really amusing to watch the reaction of the employees who found a USB drive. You know they plugged them into their computers the minute they got to their desks.

I immediately called my guy that wrote the Trojan and asked if anything was received at his end. Slowly but surely info was being mailed back to him. I would have loved to be on the inside of the building watching as people started plugging the USB drives in, scouring through the planted image files, then unknowingly running our piece of software.

After about three days, we figured we had collected enough data. When I started to review our findings, I was amazed at the results. Of the 20 USB drives we planted, 15 were found by employees, and all had been plugged into company computers. The data we obtained helped us to compromise additional systems, and the best part of the whole scheme was its convenience. We never broke a sweat. Everything that needed to happen did, and in a way it was completely transparent to the users, the network, and credit union management.

Of all the social engineering efforts we have performed over the years, I always had to worry about being caught, getting detained by the police, or not getting anything of value. The USB route is really the way to go. With the exception of possibly getting caught when seeding the facility, my chances of having a problem are reduced significantly.

You’ve probably seen the experiments where users can be conned into giving up their passwords for a chocolate bar or a $1 bill. But this little giveaway took those a step further, working off humans' innate curiosity. Emailed virus writers exploit this same vulnerability, as do phishers and their clever faux Websites. Our credit union client wasn’t unique or special. All the technology and filtering and scanning in the world won’t address human nature. But it remains the single biggest open door to any company’s secrets.

Disagree? Sprinkle your receptionist's candy dish with USB drives and see for yourself how long it takes for human nature to manifest itself.

— Steve Stasiukonis is VP and founder of Secure Network Technologies Inc. Special to Dark Reading

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How to maintain business as usual in unusual times

COMPANIES' contingency planning used to consist of little more than duplicating IT facilities in case their systems went down or the hardware in their basement was flooded. Today, however, firms are aware that they need to think about many more potential disruptions. Hardly a week goes by without a new threat. Last week, the government of New Zealand issued a pandemic planning guide for businesses, suggesting how firms should prepare for an outbreak of avian flu. Gartner, a large IT research firm, has advised companies to consider whether their systems could continue if up to 30% of their staff were to be absent from the workplace.

This week yet another hurricane swept across the southern states of America. Every time a Katrina, Rita or Wilma wreaks her havoc, firms around the world worry that a vital supplier may have been knocked out of their increasingly global supply chains. In a recent survey by Harris Interactive, a polling firm, and FM Global, an American property insurer, financial executives in Britain and North America said that the top threat to their revenues came not from terrorism or natural disasters directly, but from a breakdown in their supply chain.

The effect on Ericsson, a Swedish mobile-phone company, of a fire in a New Mexico chipmaking plant belonging to the Dutch firm Philips, has become a legend. The fire, in March 2000, started by a bolt of lightning, lasted less than 10 minutes, but it caused havoc to the super-clean environment that chipmaking requires. Ericsson, unable to find an alternative source of supply, went on to report a loss of over $2 billion in its mobile-phone division that year, a loss that left it as an also-ran in an industry where it had once been a leader. The lesson was not lost on other firms with far-flung global supply chains. General Motors, for example, now systematically tracks the geographic origin of all the bits that go into making its cars.

The growth of outsourcing has added to the complexity of the issue. Removing back-office business services to low-cost (and frequently more hazardous) locations leaves firms vulnerable to hard-to-monitor disruptions in those faraway places. Susir Kumar, chief executive of Intelenet, an Indian outsourcing firm that is 50% owned by Britain's Barclays Bank, says that Indian firms are in fact more diligent about continuity planning than firms in the West—partly because disruptions there are more frequent (so they get more practice), and partly because costs are so much lower they can afford to duplicate more facilities. Indian outsourcers say there was little consequence for their clients from the flooding in Mumbai in July.

Firms around the Gulf of Mexico also get plenty of practice at business continuity plans that kick in when the storms blow in. Companies such as Boeing, UPS and Wal-Mart, which have thousands of employees in and around Houston, for instance, were up and running again a couple of days after Hurricane Rita hit the city in September. NASA's flight controllers were away from their desks for six days, during which time control of the international space station passed seamlessly to colleagues in Moscow. Good planning can save both money and lives.

For businesses around the Gulf, property damage is the least of their worries. Relatively cheap techniques now minimise the damage: using top-quality roof fastenings, for example. The biggest challenge during this year's spate of hurricanes has been keeping in touch with employees forced to flee to new locations. Mobile phones proved unreliable as masts were blown down, and Boeing, Southwest Airlines and UPS are among those companies that have modified their procedures as a result, relying more on e-mails, hot lines and their own websites to keep in touch with distant employees.

While most big companies are continually refining their business continuity plans, many smaller firms are not. Recent research by AXA, a European insurer, found that 46% of small and medium-sized businesses in Britain do not have a business continuity plan of any sort, despite being alerted again to the risks of disruption by this summer's terrorist bombings in London. For some, the task is too daunting; the risks too universal. They prefer, says AXA's Douglas Barnett, to assume “they can deal with disruptions as and when they happen.”

In a book published this month (“The Resilient Enterprise” by Yossi Sheffi; MIT Press), the author, a professor of engineering systems at MIT, gives some guidance to firms that are shy of examining these risks. “Large-scale disruptions”, he says, “rarely take place without any warning ”. By carefully monitoring and analysing near-misses, the airline industry has avoided many a crash. Likewise, says Mr Sheffi, “learning from small incidents can help organisations correct the conditions that lead to accidents.” Lightning can strike twice in New Mexico.

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14) Yahoo/AFP: Football fever likely to cost Britain billions [La Coupe du monde va faire perdre des milliards en productivité aux entreprises GB]
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/

Football fever likely to cost Britain billions

Sun Jun 4, 7:37 PM ET

LONDON (AFP) - English football fans watching World Cup matches on their office computer screens could cost their employers billions of pounds, according to a report.

The BBC has said its policy of making matches available live on the Internet "will allow people to do their job and keep up with the very latest action", but analysts at Brabners Chaffe Street are not so sure about the "doing their job" part of that. Their study reckons that if half of all British workers spend just one hour a day watching footie online, the British economy could find itself four billion pounds (5.8 billion euros) out of pocket.

That is without factoring in the number of days lost through workers calling in sick when they are hungover -- though 80 percent of managers have said, in another survey, that they are not going to tolerate such behaviour this year.

On the other hand, some businesses stand to make a tidy profit from English football mania -- not least pubs. Nearly one in four English people have said they plan to watch the games pint in hand.

According to a study by Mastercard, also published on Monday, fans in England -- not including the ones who are actually travelling to Germany for the tournament -- are likely to spend an average of 60 pounds (87 euros) each every time England play. Twenty-six of those pounds are set to go on gambling, but that still leaves 34, which break down as 13 on food and drink, five on transportation, and 12 on boozy celebration or sorrows-drowning, depending on the result.

On top of that, the survey says, the average supporter will spend 55 pounds (80 euros) on the various bits of paraphernalia needed to demonstrate their allegiance to the team: from huge St George Cross flags to commemorative T-shirts, not forgetting stickers and other souvenir products, including stamps from the Post Office's world cup commemorative range.

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By BRUCE CRUMLEY | PARIS

Sunday, Jun. 04, 2006
French businessman malamine Koné is talking a very big game. The 34-year-old founder and ceo of sportswearmaker Airness is explaining his goal of boosting his company's 2005 sales of $150 million — mostly in France — to rival global giant Nike's some $14 billion. Sound a touch fanciful? Don't tell Koné. "You know where Puma was five years ago? Deeply troubled," Koné says of the now-thriving German-American sportswear group, whose own sales last year exceeded $2 billion. "And six years ago, Airness scarcely existed. We didn't get this far this fast worrying about what we supposedly can't do."

That might smack of excessive exuberance, if not for the gains Koné has made in the six short years since he founded Airness — a name borrowed from U.S. basketball star Michael Jordan to reflect Koné's brand motto "ever higher, ever stronger." Koné started in 1999, selling sweatshirts sporting the Airness name and slinking-panther logo around the northern Paris housing projects where he lived. He has since developed a clothing and sports line that has grown at least 100% every year. Its founder built Airness around his own early street-level observation: kids determine what's hip, not the companies hawking stuff to them. "By observing what people were buying or looking for, I could react faster to current trends and demand and anticipate what would work next," says Koné.

Airness has the irresistible cool derived from celebrities the French love most: football stars. How did Koné swing that when all the pros worth recruiting were already under contracts with Nike, Adidas and Puma? "I came up with the concept of the 'extra-sports' contract — getting players to wear Airness in their private life once their on-field obligations were over," he says. Koné's French-African roots were key to signing stars such as Didier Drogba — an Ivorian who plays for the top English team, Chelsea — and Djibril Cissé, currently with Liverpool. Those ties also allowed Koné to go to the next level: signing Airness as official uniform supplier to several French pro clubs, and half a dozen national squads in Africa. Next season, London club Fulham joins that stable, with an added plus: Fulham's owner Mohamed al Fayed will place Airness products in another asset he owns — Harrods, the London department store.

Such coups have enabled Koné to build Airness into France's largest-selling domestic sportswear brand. Relying on his intelligence, busi-ness flair and never-say-die attitude, Koné is an all-too-rare success story: a young black man from the kind of blighted, unemployment-racked French suburban housing projects that erupted in riots last year. In addition to being one of the brightest lights to have come from the banlieues, Koné is trying to change the system. Without the massive capital and worldwide production resources that the older brands such as Nike and Adidas possess, Koné has used the Airness allure to handpick partners licensed to produce the brand's sportswear — often with stiff conditions. All Airness clothes, for example, must be produced in France to satisfy quality requirements, and firms must have the ability to adapt design and materials quickly as demand evolves. Through similar deals, Koné has extended the Airness paw into other hot-selling, fashion-conscious products ranging from school notebooks to mobile phones.

Koné manages that activity from the offices of MK Promotion — the unit overseeing marketing, communications and design questions for all Airness-branded products, located off Paris' Champs Elysées, a long way from the banlieues. Despite his success, Koné has not forgotten his roots, or the slim chances of escaping the housing projects. MK Promotion recruits new hires from qualified job seekers from the projects who are on the dole, and provides help with business and social projects to banlieue youths. "Contrary to what most people think, we get less requests for funding than we do for advice and pointers on how to navigate the mass of red tape you encounter when you try anything in France," says Koné. "The people of the projects gave me a lot, so I want to give them back as much as I can."

Koné's tale is a dramatic one. Born in the southern Malian village of Niéna — a place that even today has no electricity or running water — Koné came to France at 10, unable to speak the local language. He got a prelaw degree in the hope of becoming a police inspector. A talent for boxing earned him two French amateur titles and selection to represent France in the 1996 Summer Games. But an auto accident in early 1995 shattered his left knee; Koné required 12 operations and five years of rehabilitation.

The injury ended Koné's Olympic and career dreams. But it set the stage for what would later become Airness — whose panther logo was drawn from Koné's nickname from the days before he was forced out of the boxing ring and into a wheelchair. "The long, forced immobility made me observe things in a way I hadn't before — including how fashion works," he says. Koné is convinced that catching up with giants like Adidas and Nike is just as attainable as the dream of millions across France to make it out of the projects, just as he has successfully done. "I've seen that there are lots of preconceived ideas and prejudices out there to stop you from doing what you want if you give in to them," Koné says. "Perhaps my strength is that I don't accept those limits."

Airness's founder insists there'd be a lot more chances to go around if rigid French attitudes could limber up in U.S. style. "In America, if a 15-year-old kid from the Bronx has a million-dollar idea, there's no debate about what's possible: the kid is ceo, and people get to work behind him," laughs Koné. "France has lots of young people with great ideas. Why aren't they getting through?" Still, in at least one area, Koné is a true French traditionalist: he believes that France should support its own. Many multimillion-dollar equipment contracts expire at the end of World Cup play in July. Koné reasons that with Germany's Adidas equipping the Nationalmannschaften, the U.S.'s Nike supplying Team U.S.A. and Britain's Umbro sponsoring England, "I can only hope France will now chose a French company like Airness to supply its uniforms."

The French national team playing in a brand created in the projects by a man who immigrated to France from a village in Mali — that would be something to see.