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Week 39, 2006

6) AUDIO/Slate podcasts: Key Party [Un reportage texte-audio sur Zipcar, une entreprise de partage de voitures, qui marche bien parce que c'est sexy. VOUS POUVEZ TELECHARGER UNE VERSION MP3 DE CE TEXTE EN LIGNE]

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1) The Wall Street Journal: Make way for the sidewalk SUV [Les Américains sont tellement paresseux que les personnes valides commencent à utiliser les véhicules électriques prévus pour les handicapés moteurs.]
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115291408087707342-
d3knU98U3xXi3xesgCRyFSfaECs_20060728.html?mod=blogs  

Culture: Make Way for the Sidewalk SUV
Motorized scooters for the disabled are finding a lucrative new market: People just sick of walking

By ELLEN GAMERMAN
July 15, 2006; Page P1

On a recent afternoon at Walt Disney World, Dennis Robles was cruising around on an electric "mobility scooter" that the park usually rents out to people with disabilities. Mr. Robles doesn't have a problem walking -- he says he was simply saving up energy for late-night dancing. "I'm pretty healthy," says the 37-year-old truck driver from Brooklyn, N.Y. "Just lazy, I guess."

The power scooter is an increasingly ubiquitous sight, with an estimated 1.2 million in use nationwide. But while the $1,000-plus vehicles have been hailed as a boon for the infirm and the elderly, they are now finding a new constituency: able-bodied people who simply don't feel like walking. In addition to theme parks like Dollywood and Minnesota's giant Mall of America, the scooters are popping up everywhere from Las Vegas casinos to grocery stores. When scooter demand outstrips supply at Wal-Mart, greeters "evaluate the situation" and make sure that people using the scooters can demonstrate a legitimate need, according to a company spokesman.

Some entrepreneurs are starting to push the vehicles as bicycles without the pedaling. City Scooter Tours, an outfit that operates in Washington and plans to extend into Chicago, offers scooters as an easy way to see the sights.

"It's kind of bad for the cause," says Janna Starr, director of disability rights and technology policy for United Cerebral Palsy, a nonprofit group. Stores and tourist attractions need to set guidelines and "not just let people come up and take off in the scooters just because they want one," she says.

Ms. Starr and some other advocates for the disabled say able-bodied riders can rile pedestrians, creating a negative image of scooter use that could hurt those who really need assistance.

In the next few years, there will likely be a lot more people buzzing down sidewalks and in supermarket aisles. The number of people aged 50 and older is expected to soar by 33 million to 118 million by 2020, according to the Census Bureau.

Cavernous stores, which tend to offer scooters for free, and big theme parks, which tend to rent them, see these scooters not only as a tool for the disabled but also as a lure for visitors who might not otherwise want to spend the day walking around. At the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., where all the scooters are rented out by noon most weekends, the fleet is being expanded from 30 to 45 later this year. Over the past year, Dolly Parton's Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., boosted its fleet from 55 to 70. People often bring their own scooters, but the park's rentals are a convenience for occasional users. "Our park is quite hilly," says Dollywood spokesman Pete Owens. "It's quite a handy vehicle to have."

While some companies say they don't limit ridership to disabled people, others actively encourage use to anybody who wants one. The owner of Florida Mobility, a motorized scooter vendor outside Disney World, pitches a $75 rental package by telling customers: "Ride all day and dance at night." Last month, Avis started offering motorized scooters in Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla., and for an extra $40 to $50, they will arrange for the scooter to be waiting in the trunk of the rental car. At AA Tourist Rentals in Orlando, Fla., scooter business was up 20% in the last year, an increase the company partly attributes to a spry blonde woman in the ads: "She doesn't look like there's anything wrong with her," says office manager Donna Carroll.

Karen Mckinney jumped on her first scooter in May when she and her sister and their friends took an organized scooter tour through the National Mall in Washington. (The tour company, City Scooter Tours, which is owned by rental company Scootaround, bills the trip as "a way for the entire family to experience the sights together.") The 57-year-old from Elkridge, Md., says when the group took their last trip, to Las Vegas, they tired out after all the walking and were looking for an alternative this year. They thought about taking a van tour of the monuments, but worried about the walk from the van to the sites. "None of us have a disability, but we're all getting older," she says.

Ms. Starr, of United Cerebral Palsy, says scooters are beginning to attract some of the problems associated with handicapped-accessible parking spaces -- with some riders being accused of not warranting the privilege. She says it also puts companies in the problematic position of judging who "deserves" aid and encourages them to assess disabilities -- which can be hidden -- based on appearances.

Judy Stark, 65, bought her Golden Companion scooter about two years ago on the recommendation of a friend. What started as an occasional indulgence is now becoming a more permanent part of her life -- she even walks her dog via scooter, giving Mugsy a lift on particularly hot days. Recently at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City, N.J., she drove in laps around the casino floor, something that would have required several walking breaks before. "Now waiting on line at the buffet is no problem," she says. "You just sit there."

Power scooters caught on in the early 1990s, in part because they're a more outdoorsy alternative to motorized wheelchairs. Power wheelchairs are typically used by severely disabled people because they're steered via a joystick, which requires less upper body strength to steer than the scooter's handlebars.

When industry leader Pride Mobility Products began selling its Victory scooter in 1992, it promoted "sleek styling" and personalized options. In recent years, scooter manufacturers have pushed it even further -- the tail lights on a Landlex scooter are reminiscent of a sports car's. Prices are as low as $1,000, down from twice that, as cheaper scooters from Asia flood the market.

Scooters are now being designed for specific uses. The SmartKart by Dane Technologies, for example, maxes out at three miles per hour, instead of the standard five, because it is meant to be used in grocery stores and other crowded indoor spaces. In the last year, Pride has super-sized models like the Maxima and introduced the Celebrity-X, to keep up with the increase in obesity.

Even some riders say it's not easy for them to decide if they really need a scooter. On a recent trip to Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, John Hopkins refused to rent a scooter, despite urgings from his daughter. The 66-year-old retiree, who had a quadruple bypass four years ago and suffers from the effects of a stroke, says he struggled on foot at the casino but thinks scooters are "a pain" that get in the way of other people and cause traffic jams. Plus, "there's a vanity part," he says. "I'd just rather do it on my own."

John Warchalowsky, 81, says he's been using a scooter for years. A retired phone-company manager from Bergenfield, N.J., Mr. Warchalowsky has taken his scooter to the Grand Canyon, on Caribbean cruises and to every state in the nation, including Alaska. When the green one conked out, he replaced it with a fire-engine red scooter and kept on touring with his girlfriend, who also rides one. He says he walks around his house and remains active, but the scooter gets him out more. Another benefit: He always buys cheap tickets to shows at casinos, because he knows he'll be put in a better spot. "I tell the usher, how do I get all the way back there? And he puts us right in the mezzanine with the handicapped people."

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2 ) The Economist: Work-life balance [Certaines entreprises tentent de promouvoir un meilleur équilibre travail-vie perso.]
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7055931

Work-life balance: Life beyond pay
Jun 15th 2006

Are you a “binge worker” ? Do you “chunk” your career? Companies are having to find new ways to attract and retain skilled workers

A NEW magazine was published in America this month. Success is the resurrection of a title first published in 1897 by Orison Swett Marden, an entrepreneur and author of a series of self-help books, including “Getting the Most Out of Life”. The magazine's publisher, Joseph Guerriero, wants today's Success to reflect the contemporary workplace, where, he says, success is measured less by money and titles, and more by what is sweepingly referred to as “work-life balance”. The first issue contains an article about men leaving work to become full-time fathers.

Improving the balance between the working part of the day and the rest of it is a goal of a growing number of workers in rich Western countries. Some are turning away from the ideals of their parents, for whom work always came first; others with scarce skills are demanding more because they know they can get it. Employers, caught between a falling population of workers and tight controls on immigration, are eager to identify extra perks that will lure more “talent” their way. Just now they are focusing on benefits (especially flexible working) that offer employees more than just pay.

Some companies saw the change of mood some time ago. IBM has more than 50 different programmes promoting work-life balance and Bank of America over 30. But plenty of other firms remain unconvinced and many lack the capacity to cater to such ideas even if they wanted to. Helen Murlis, with Hay Group, a human-resources consultancy, sees a widening gap between firms “at the creative end of employment” and those that are not.

The chief component of almost all schemes to promote work-life balance is flexible working. This allows people to escape rigid nine-to-five schedules and work away from a formal office. IBM says that 40% of its employees today work off the company premises. For many businesses, flexible working is a necessity. Globalisation has spread the hours in which workers need to communicate with each other and increased the call for flexible shifts.

Nella Barkley, an American who advises companies on work-life balance, says that large firms are beginning to understand the value of such schemes, “but only slowly”. For most of them, they still mean little more than child care, health care and flexible working.

Yet some schemes go well beyond these first steps. American Century Investments, an investment manager in Kansas City, pays adoption expenses and the cost of home-fitness equipment for its employees. Rob Marcolina, a gay consultant with Bain & Company based in Los Angeles, was allowed time off to marry his partner in Canada, and another break to look after their daughter when she was born to a surrogate mother. Mr Marcolina, who has an MBA from the high-ranked Kellogg business school, says his employer's understanding makes him want to be “part of Bain for some time”.

Businesses have other good reasons for improving employees' work-life balance. Wegmans Food Markets, a grocery chain based in Rochester, New York, frequently appears near the top of lists of the best employers in America. It has a broad range of flexible-work programmes, which gives it one of the lowest rates of employment turnover in its industry—8% a year for full-time workers, compared with 19% across the industry.

Simple programmes can be surprisingly cost-effective. IBM, for instance, is spending $50m over five years on “dependant-care” facilities for its employees. Although that sounds generous, it is the equivalent of little more than $30 for each IBM employee every year. That is far cheaper than a pay rise and probably a better way to retain talented mothers and fathers. Ernst & Young, a global accounting firm, has a low-cost range of initiatives called “People First”. It provides breaks for people to provide care and has over 2,300 flexi-time employees in the United States. James Freer, a senior executive, says he is “absolutely convinced” the initiatives help produce better financial results.

DeAnne Aguirre, a mother of four and a senior partner in San Francisco with Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), says “it is easy to make the business case” for work-life balance programmes at the consultancy by looking at attrition rates. BAH calculated that it was investing more than $2m in turning a raw recruit into a partner, an investment it should be reluctant to write off. Corning, an American glass company, reckons that it costs 1.5 times a worker's salary and benefits to replace him. If it can retain just 20 workers a year who would otherwise have left, Corning reckons it would produce annual savings of $2.6m.

The spread of flexible work has come about at least partly as a result of initiatives to keep women workers. Companies have had to offer extended periods of leave for them to look after dependants (young and old), and flexible working in between. At BAH, women partners take an average of eight-and-a-half extended breaks during their careers. Men take an average of one-and-a-half. Ernst & Young, keen to show that part-time workers can also become partners, recently made the first such appointment in Houston, Texas.

Some of these initiatives are spreading even to the citadels of binge working, such as investment banks. Lehman Brothers has just launched a programme called “Encore” which is aimed at easing back into the industry people who have spent time out of it (which still means mostly women). The scheme offers retraining and promises part-time work thereafter.

Business schools are now climbing on the bandwagon, too. In October Tuck School at Dartmouth, New Hampshire, will start a course on returning to corporate life after an extended absence. Called “Back in Business”, the 16-day, $12,000 re-entry programme is open only to students with “work experience in a high-potential career”.

The majority will inevitably be mothers wanting to rejoin the workforce. But fathers are also asking for sabbaticals. Work-life balance “is not just a women's issue” any more, says Ted Childs, who is in charge of workforce diversity at IBM. “Men, too, are very concerned about it.”

The demand is being stoked by the “Generation Y”, the under-28s. They look sceptically at the idea of lifetime employment within a single organisation and they are wary of the commitment they believe too often drove their parents to the divorce courts. Hay's Ms Murlis says that today's business-school graduates are “looking for a workstyle to go with their lifestyle”, not the other way round. They are happy to binge-work for a while, but in return want extended sabbaticals in which to chill out.

Many of the more imaginative schemes come from organisations that are not under pressure to report quarterly to Wall Street. Wegmans and American Century Investments are family-controlled businesses and the big accounting firms and consultancies, such as Ernst & Young, KPMG, Bain and BAH, are partnerships. This allows them to take a longer-term view of growth and costs.

To some extent, the proliferation of work-life-balance schemes is a function of today's labour market. Companies in knowledge-based industries worry about the shortage of skills and how they are going to persuade talented people to work for them. Although white-collar workers are more likely to be laid off nowadays, they are also likely to get rehired. Unemployment among college graduates in America is just over 2%. The same competition for scarce talent is evident in Britain.

Just after the dotcom boom ended in 2000, labour-market conditions were very different. Attrition rates shrank then because staff were afraid to leave. Many were offered unpaid sabbaticals for the sake of the firm's health rather than that of the individual. Such conditions may yet recur.

The European way

Europeans suggest that the reason why so many work-life initiatives come first from America is that American firms have more scope for improvement. Paid holidays there, for instance, are considerably shorter than in Europe. Flexible working and the occasional sabbatical may be the local alternative to Europe's longer annual leave, a one-off levelling of the non-pay elements of remuneration in the face of international competition.

The introduction of flexible working, of itself, gives no guarantee that employees' work-life balance will improve. The same technology that enables them to work flexibly from home or on the road also prevents them from ever leaving their office. There are lots of people who choose to sleep close to their mobile phones and their BlackBerries.

Is the fashion for work-life balance here to stay? Plenty of companies eschew such corporate programmes. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia recently told employees to leave if they were not prepared to work weekends and long evenings over the coming months for no extra reward. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, president of the Centre for Work-Life Policy in New York, says that many workers still have what she calls “extreme jobs”. Global responsibilities and “always on” communications leave little room for balance.

Charles Handy, the author of several books on the changing nature of work, says that young workers today are increasingly “chunking” their lives, dividing them into discrete bits. These include work, parenting, travelling and doing something completely different. He believes this marks a change in attitude that is slowly filtering down from elite knowledge workers to manufacturing employees.

Heavy lay-offs in the early 1990s, mostly the result of enthusiasm for the ephemeral fad of re-engineering, changed attitudes to work. For many, downsizing sounded the death-knell for having a job for life. In “The New Deal at Work” (Harvard Business School Press), Peter Cappelli, a professor at the Wharton business school, claims that, “while employers have quite clearly broken the old deal and its long-term commitments, they do not control the new deal...it is hard to see what could make employees give that control and responsibility back to the employer.” Young skilled workers increasingly write their own terms of employment. In such a labour market, where short-term contracts are the norm, corporate schemes to improve the balance of employees' lives can become a side-show.

Some go further, arguing that in the not-too-long term, the desire of global firms to entice the West's educated elite may disappear in a flash of enthusiasm for the graduates of India's and China's tertiary-education systems. Even today, less than one in five of the world's university graduates are white men.

However, Liz Ramos, the partner at Bain & Company in charge of human capital, says that though employers are looking to India, it will be a while before India's business schools produce graduates comparable to those from Europe and America. Despite all the political heat it arouses, moving offshore satisfies only a small part of the demand for skilled labour in developed economies.

For some time to come, talented people in the West will demand more from employers, and clever employers will create new gewgaws to entice them to join. Those employers should note that for a growing number of these workers the most appealing gewgaw of all is the freedom to work as and when they please.

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3) AUDIO/Marketplace: Too many kids, not enough seats [Certaines écoles américaines sont pleines à craquer. Parmi les solutions pour créer des places pour de nouveaux élèves, des partenariats avec le privé, notamment à travers le LEASING. NB: Vous pouvez écouter ce reportage en ligne.]
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/07/31/PM200607315.html

Monday, July 31, 2006

KAI RYSSDAL: Too many kids, not enough of those tiny little chairs. That's the math problem stumping school districts in some fast-growing communities. So some public schools are looking to the private sector to help balance the equation. From the Innovations desk at North Carolina Public Radio, Janet Babin explains.

JANET BABIN: Briar Creek Elementary is the kind of place that almost makes you wish you were back in grade school again. Brick and shiny glass exterior, spacious halls, and a room dedicated just to music class. This morning, these second graders seem eager to sing along with their teacher: "Yea, yea, yea, we're ready. Yea, yea, we're ready."

This Raleigh area school district ranks among the top in the nation. But facilities superintendent Mike Burriss says the district struggles with overcrowding:

MIKE BURRISS: We are currently at 102 percent of our capacity at the elementary schools, 24 percent of our elementary students are in mobiles or modulars.

JANET BABIN: And 7,000 new students appear each fall. To reduce the number of kids learning in double-wides, the district and the state hope to turn to the private sector. Under new state legislation, developers could build schools and then lease them back to the school district for a profit. Similar public-private collaborations already exist in other states with fast-growing populations, like Florida, Nevada and California. Proponents say these partnerships can ease overcrowding and lower taxpayer costs. Chris Sinclair heads a group of businesses that helped initiate the North Carolina legislation. He says local governments are less efficient builders than developers:

CHRIS SINCLAIR: It saves time. Construction materials are going up on a constant basis, and if you can get a school built quicker, and you can save millions of dollars over several years in interest.

JANET BABIN: These collaborations also appeal to districts that need new buildings but don't have the money to build. The Philadelphia School District will lease two privately owned buildings this fall. Philadelphia Facilities manager Len Dillinger says his district didn't have $50 million to construct new high schools. But it does have the $1.5 million he'll need to lease them. But he cautions school districts to think carefully before taking on a landlord:

LEN DILLINGER: Leasing a facility quite often, just as leasing an auto, will cost you more than buying one. You also are putting another middle man into the mix, and they're not in this as a charitable type of program. They're looking to make money as well.

JANET BABIN: Dillinger says schools and local governments can borrow money more cheaply than any private developer. So while a build-to-lease option might deliver a school faster, it won't necessarily be cheaper in the long run. That appears to be the case in Virginia, where the cost per square-foot of developer-built schools is slightly higher than its traditional schools. John Hill with Grimm and Parker Architects has worked on several of the Virginia deals. He says if a school project includes, say, a shopping center, or senior housing, then a developer can provide some ancillary benefit to the district. Otherwise, he says hiring a developer will cost taxpayers more money:

JOHN HILL: Their time and the profit their company intends to make has to come out of the project one way or another, and you're adding another layer of overhead to the whole structure. It really can't come out more cheaply than if you go directly to a school builder.

JANET BABIN: But some districts feel they can't afford to think long-term. Schools in Charlotte recently rejected a bond issue despite overflowing classrooms. And in Raleigh voters will decide on a billion-dollar school initiative this fall. Advocates here hope these public-private partnerships will at least give cash-strapped districts an option besides the double-wide trailer classroom.

In Durham. N.C., I'm Janet Babin for Marketplace.

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4 ) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Kidzworld: Luc Besson biography]
http://www.kidzworld.com/site/p7077.htm

Luc Besson Biography

Birthdate: March 18, 1959
Birthplace: Paris, France

Luc Besson is a pretty accomplished dude. Whether he's producing films, making music or writing books, he's always on top of his game. Kidzworld take a look at the author of Arthur and the Forbidden City!

Luc Besson - Aquatic Upbringing
Luc Besson was born in Paris to parents who were both SCUBA diving instructors. Their unconventional occupation had a huge influence on Luc and he spent most of his teen years hoping to be a marine biologist. When a diving accident left him unable to dive anymore, Luc changed his focus to filmmaking. He worked odd jobs in the French industry before moving to the US for a few years. When he returned to France, Luc started his own film company.

Luc Besson - There's No Business Like Show Business
Luc began writing, directing and producing his own films and quickly found success in France. In fact, many people have called him "the French Steven Spielberg". In 1997, he had huge success in English-speaking countries with the film, The Fifth Element, starring Milla Jovovich and Bruce Willis. Luc Besson married Milla Jovovich later that year but they divorced in 1999. Luc also wrote and directed La Femme Nikita, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, and produced Madonna's Love Profusion music video.

Luc Besson - Minimoy Madness
In more recent times, Luc Besson has turned his writing talents to children's books. Arthur and the Minimoys was his first novel for kids and in his second installment, Arthur and the Forbidden City, Arthur continues his quest to save his grandfather in the land of the Minimoys. Luc is currently working on a movie based on both books, which is due to hit theaters in the United States in January, 2007..

Luc Besson - Did U Know?
# A puppet styled after Luc Besson is on the French show Les Guignols de l'info.
# Luc spent much of his childhood in Greece and the former Yugoslavia where his parents were diving instructors for Club Med.
# Luc Besson has four daughters.

Luc Besson Says....
"People often say I'm a child at heart. In fact, I think I just have access to my childhood; I have a very clear memory of it. We were all children once. We just need to show a bit of respect for it."

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6) AUDIO/Slate podcasts: Key Party [Un reportage texte-audio sur Zipcar, une entreprise de partage de voitures, qui marche bien parce que c'est sexy. VOUS POUVEZ TELECHARGER UNE VERSION MP3 DE CE TEXTE EN LIGNE]
Version audio: http://media.slate.com/podcast/Slate060906_Zipcar.mp3

http://www.slate.com/id/2148632/

gearbox: Key Party
Zipcar makes car sharing sexy, not sorry.
By Paul Boutin
Posted Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2006, at 12:14 PM ET

Carpools, hybrids, buses that run on banana peels—it's too bad car sharing gets lumped in as another save-the-Earth guilt trip. Here in San Francisco, a hybrid plastered with City CarShare logos is the only politically correct way to be seen behind the wheel by your poetry-slam buddies. Challenge CarShare members on their dubious eco-friendly stance (they're still driving, aren't they?) and they retreat to liberal high ground: "It's a nonprofit." If only City CarShare could lose $50 million a year, it'd be as hip as public transit.

The dirty secret of car sharing is that it's not just for the environmentally or economically conscious. Car sharing is the ultimate pedal-to-the-metal lifestyle option for upwardly mobile, status-conscious, free-spending yuppies like me. So far this year, I've blown close to $4,000 on Zipcar, the unabashedly for-profit counterpart to City CarShare. (Flexcar is a similar but less upmarket service available in eight locations.) I joined in January when my own vehicle needed long-term repairs. After it came back from the shop, I found myself making excuses to keep renting Zipcars instead.

The company's official slogan is, "Wheels when you want them," but Zipcar's obvious appeal is, "wheels you really want." For $8.50 to $12.50 an hour—gas and insurance included—I can choose from a Mustang, a Mini (and a Mini convertible), a Mazda, three brand new BMW 325i's—silver for daytime, navy for nightlife—an Escape, a Toyota truck, even a Volvo to visit Mom.

I book cars online using the company's Web 2.0-inspired scheduling application: no need to deal with unpredictable rental-agency humans. I hit zipcar.com, click my choice, then walk to the parking lot where my new silver Mustang—mine for the next five hours, at least—waits in its stall, keys hanging in plain sight inside. I place my member card on the windshield and—fweep-beep—the car unlocks for me. Ten seconds later, I'm rolling.

Zipcar was founded in 2000 by Robin Chase, an MIT management grad who applied an Internet mind-set to the problems of urban transportation. The economics of car sharing are simple: City dwellers love to drive themselves, but car owners who don't commute waste money and valuable real estate on vehicles that sit idle for days at a time.

Car sharing shifts a smaller number of cars into a much higher duty cycle. Economies of scale kick in for everyone—fleet prices for cars, corporate rates for fuel (there's a gas card on the visor of each car), group insurance, long-term parking bought in bulk. The company handles maintenance and washing, too.

But most important, car sharing turns members into automotive swingers, free from having to commit to one model. In the city, middle-class people own a nice car. Rich people own lots of them. Zipcar makes me feel rich.

A recent week for me went like this: On Monday evening, the wife called me to pick her up after a late night at the office. I logged in and eyeballed the grid of available cars on our neighborhood lots. I could get a Mazda 3, but I saw a Mini available at 9 p.m. for a couple bucks more. Could she wait an extra 10 minutes? I rolled up in her favorite little red wagon and carted her home via the scenic route. We had to walk the last few blocks home from the lot, but it beat trying to squeeze our own car past our neighbor's in the alley at 10 p.m.

When I got home, I found mail from a friend coming to town for a weekend. I reserved the red Mini—then switched to the blue convertible—for all three days. The next morning I was summoned to a meeting in another county. Zipcar's Web site showed a Prius and a Mazda a block away, but by walking a bit farther I was able to pick up my business date in a shiny new BMW.

This is where Zipcar departs from standard car-share marketing. City CarShare plasters supersize logos on all of its autos. It's not just advertising, it's a way for members to flaunt their non-car-owning status. But if you're renting a Beemer to court clients, a bunch of stickers sends exactly the wrong message.

That's why the pricier your Zipcar, the more low-key its branding. The econoboxes sport jaunty decals on their passenger doors. A 325i has discreet black "zipcar.com" lettering on its trunk lid but nothing on the front or sides. I drove a silver BMW from Boston to Bar Harbor and back over Memorial Day weekend. I caught plenty of guff from Mainers for my Massachusetts license plate, but not one word about the URL.

My only beef with the service is they need to wash the cars more often. A rented 3 Series is cool, a dirty one is not. With a bit more bling, Zipcar could erase the stigma from car sharing once and for all. What they need is a halo car—a tastefully posh Bentley Continental GT garaged at AT&T Park for high-rolling Giants fans. How about $100 an hour? At that price, it shouldn't say Zipcar on it at all. It wouldn't need to. People would know.

Paul Boutin is a Silicon Valley-based writer who also contributes to Business Week, Wired, and Engadget.

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7) The Economist: Property funds in Germany [L'Allemagne s'apprête à officialiser les fonds d'investissement dans l'immobilier, ou REITS.]
http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_SNNGDJP

Property funds in Germany: Blood, sweat and REITs

Jul 27th 2006 | FRANKFURT
Lawmakers think they have a working model

A HANDFUL of bankers and bureaucrats, in a land that all but shuts down in August, are racing to finish a draft law that could transform the German capital market. One estimate puts the potential value of listed real-estate investment trusts (REITs) at up to €230 billion ($290 billion); a more conservative guess lies between €30 billion and €70 billion. By comparison, the market capitalisation of REITs in America, 46 years after they started, is $340 billion.

A REIT is a property investment fund which typically escapes direct taxation if it distributes a lot of its profits (90% or more) to investors, who are then liable for tax, though some avoid it. REITs are therefore more liquid than other forms of property investment and in theory attract new classes of investor. They also allow industrial companies and insurers to realise the value of property which may be languishing on their books.

The plan is to have a draft law by mid-August and to let German REITs open on January 1st, the same day as in Britain. But several obstacles lie ahead. Most threatening is a lobby group led by three left-wing members of the Bundestag's finance committee, who say rents will soar if public housing ends up in a REIT owned by “profit-hungry speculators”. Peer Steinbrück, the finance minister, believes he can allay their fears, which are anyway off the mark. Even without a REIT law, public housing has already been sold to foreign private-equity firms; but they, like other owners, are bound by rent-control clauses.

Fears that lots of foreign investors in REITs would escape tax altogether, as they have in France, paralysed lawmakers for a while. Then they seemed likely to come up with an unworkably complex tax rule. “Now it's beautifully simple,” purrs an expert at Initiative Finanzstandort Deutschland, a lobby group that has campaigned for two years for REITs to be permitted.

Experts admit that the law may be delayed until the middle of next year. Some see this as a lost opportunity. But others say the costs may not be that great. REIT structures can already be created synthetically or listed abroad. Deutsche Bank has listed a REIT in Australia; Commerzbank has listed one in France, with tax advantages only because the assets too are French.

Fortress, an American private-equity firm, intends to list a property holding company in October containing its three German portfolios, but in Luxembourg. There is talk that it may turn this into a German REIT one day. Doing so would probably require a cut in the company's debt-to-equity ratio, from around 90% to the 60% limit envisaged in the law.

Until the law is passed, property portfolios listed in Germany are subject to 25% corporate tax. While big companies with expensive tax advisers can avoid this by creating structures abroad, ordinary investors and providers, such as small companies occupying their own property, will have to wait.

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8) Houston Chronicle: Stolen lunches? [Vos collègues vous piquent votre déjeuner?]
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/sixel/4137785.html?rid=23n
WORKING
Stolen lunches? Substitute cat food for tuna on wheat

By L.M. SIXEL
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

SOMEONE stole my lunch from the office refrigerator the other day. It was a really good lunch — leftovers from dinner the night before accompanied by caramel flan, yogurt, a peach and delicate French cookies from a previous brown bag seminar.

Now, it could have been nicked [stolen] accidentally. Or maybe someone was really hungry and needed the food. Either way, I was annoyed, and after taking an informal survey, it turns out I'm hardly the only victim.

When Patty Kingan was working as a secretary for a utility in Houston, she'd stock the communication's department refrigerator with sodas. But every morning when she'd come in, Kingan would find entire six-packs missing. "We didn't know who was taking them," recalled Kingan, who began to notice that the "good drinks" — the Cokes and Diet Cokes, along with the root beer and orange drinks — disappeared the fastest. "We'd put in Perrier every now and then — they didn't go for that," she said.

Kingan tried to stop the soda thief — or thieves — by writing notes. She started out nice: "The soft drinks are for the department only." Then got increasingly nasty: "We're going to report you." But to no avail. Taping the refrigerator shut didn't work either, so Kingan eventually called maintenance to attach a lock. "We'd laugh," she said, speculating that the culprits were contractors who worked at night. "We never did figure it out."

When Nora Dool was director of marketing for a career management firm, job seekers continually paraded in and out to take workshops and meet with consultants. The office refrigerator was fairly accessible, and Dool heard plenty of complaints from her co-workers about missing sandwiches, restaurant leftovers and desserts. But Dool said she was never a victim, and she attributes that to her diet. "I only brought in frozen dinners," she said. "I guess no one wanted Lean Cuisine."

Maybe it's a matter of packaging, a point that was lost on me when I brought my lunch. I packed it in a cute sack with handles, and I placed it prominently on the front shelf. If I had only put it in ragtag plastic grocery sack and shoved it in the back of the refrigerator so it looked like it had been there since New Year's, maybe no one would have touched it.

Taking revenge

After you've been the victim a few times, thoughts of revenge can begin to take shape. When Dennis Hoard was an electrician apprentice, he'd bring a meatloaf sandwich every Thursday. But every week the sandwich would disappear by lunchtime. Hoard suspected the foreman, a big guy who liked home cooking. So Hoard poured a laxative oil on his tasty sandwich one day.

"I thought I'd teach him a lesson," said Hoard, who is now a retired contractor in Willis. "He spent the rest of the day in one of the port-a-cans." The foreman had some harsh words when he emerged from the toilet, but the two later became good buddies, Hoard recalled. And it established Hoard's reputation as someone not to be messed with.

Sometimes the subtle approach can be just as effective. Brian Hill recalled the time when he worked at a local radio station and someone would regularly raid the weekend provisions of one of the anchors. So the next time the weekend anchor made her popular tuna fish sandwiches, she changed the recipe a little, said Hill, who was an editor at the station.

"There was no tuna," said Hill, who is now director of public affairs for the Houston Zoo. "It was all Little Friskies." And like usual, the nicely wrapped cat food salad sandwiches disappeared, so the anchor wrote up the popular recipe — including her secret ingredient — and posted it on the station's bulletin board for all to see. "I always thought that was the most beautiful thing," said Hill, who said that from that point on, food was safe in the linoleum lounge.

Eight out of 10 people want to feel they're part of a team, said John Buffini, president of Buffini Communication Systems in San Diego, which does personality testing for corporate clients. It's the other two who are not part of the team who can be a problem and are the likely culprits when confronted with the vast richness of the "office Serengeti,"as Buffini describes it.

Sometimes they're angry in a passive-aggressive way and act out by sabotaging the personal property of others, Buffini said. Others take lunches as a way to be funny or provocative. And then there's a group that lacks integrity, rationalizing that there's no name on the bag or that the owner is overweight and could stand to skip a meal anyway.

So which department is most likely to steal a lunch? Accounting, Buffini said, drawing on his experience with personality traits at work. They have to do things by the book, but they're often mad in a passive-aggressive way. Another likely candidate is the customer-service department, because personnel there are under constant pressure and have to handle angry people, he said.

As for the least likely lunch bandits, Buffini said, it's managers because of the scrutiny they're under from all sides, as well as "hero" departments like information technology, which come to your aid when you're down. And the mellow marketing folks get so many gift baskets that they're not interested in someone else's tuna sandwich, he added.

Caught in the act

And don't think home-office workers are immune from missing out on lunch. Freda Blackwell, who works from home in Katy as a sales associate for DBM, was eating her carefully prepared ham and cheese sandwich at her kitchen table when the phone rang, and she ran to answer it. When she returned, Blackwell found that Henry, her dachshund, had taken her place. He was sitting on the chair with his paws on the desk, munching away. "He loves cheese," Blackwell said with a laugh. "You still have to guard your lunch."

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9 ) The Economist: Publish or perish [Pourquoi les hommes poliques français ont la manie de la plume.]
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_SNNQQNT

French politicians: Publish or perish

Jul 27th 2006 | PARIS
Why French politicians produce so many books

IN AMERICA, it might be kite-surfing, mountain-biking or anything masculine and muscular. In Britain, it would be sipping warm beer. In France, the required ritual for an aspiring politician is literary: writing a book, or preferably many. The latest to hit the shops is “Testimony” by Nicolas Sarkozy, the leading centre-right candidate in next year's presidential election. This is his pre-election diagnosis of the French—too work-shy, too gloomy, too anti-American, among other things—mixed with a personal pitch to be understood as a straight-talking guy who wants to put things right. It is his fifth publication.

Mr Sarkozy's book has grabbed the most publicity, but it is far from alone. Michèle Alliot-Marie, the defence minister, brought out a volume last year. The prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, may be the most prolific (and florid) of all, with eight books to his name, including two of poetry and a history of Napoleon's 100 days. Nor is writing confined to the right. In September, Ségolène Royal, the left's leading presidential hopeful, will publish a book of ideas. A host of other Socialists will follow this autumn, including Jack Lang, whose book is called “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Me”. Dominique Strauss-Kahn published his latest book in May; Lionel Jospin, a former prime minister, did so last year; Laurent Fabius, another, did it a year earlier.

“It is almost impossible to be a politician in France and not to publish at least one, and usually several, books,” comments Dominique Reynié, a political scientist at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques. Some of these works end up unsold in the store-room, but many do well. XO Editions, Mr Sarkozy's publishers, says that, after an initial run of 130,000 copies, it has already had to reprint another 120,000. In the Virgin Megastore on Paris's Champs Elysées, the book is on display even in the music section.

One explanation for all this is cultural. Unlike the British, to whom the word “intellectual” is an insult, the French cherish theirs, inviting them on television talk-shows and clearing space for them on op-ed pages. One poll found 36% of French claiming to read political books, at least occasionally. In Britain or America, politicians pen memoirs only in retirement. Nobody in France asks how a minister has time to write a book. To publish is to exist.

Another explanation is the language. The elite considers the command of written French as an expression of national identity. This also reflects the shadow of de Gaulle, who was a prolific wordsmith before he became a resistance hero and politician. Since his time, every president has tried to follow suit. Pompidou published an anthology of poetry; Mitterrand wrote over 20 books. The most reluctant seems to be Jacques Chirac. According to the Elysée, he has written just five; and one of them is his 1954 student thesis, on “The Development of the Port of New Orleans”.

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10 ) Washington Post: Just Deux It [Un couple américain redécouvre les joies de voyager sans les gosses en venant à Paris.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/07/AR2006070700423.html 

Just Deux It 
When they went to Paris without the kids, their only goal was to relax. And then something wonderful happened. 

By Pamela Gerhardt 
Special to The Washington Post 
Sunday, July 9, 2006; P01 

We booked the apartment in Paris. And that was it. We hadn't planned anything past the point when my husband and I set foot on the plane last summer -- our first trip without our children, domestic or abroad, in a car, plane or train. 

Having flown internationally with the kids in recent years -- France, Budapest, Austria, Italy -- a kind of auto-dread descended as we shuffled our way through security. I remembered one eight-hour zombie promenade through narrow aisles with a squirming toddler on my hip. Stress crawled up my spine as I recalled two hours stuck, and seat-belted, on the Dulles tarmac while my 3-year-old's bladder filled beyond endurance. 

On this flight, however, something really weird happened. We fell asleep. 

And woke up over Paris, cuddled under the synthetic fibers of an airplane blanket. We pushed up the plane's window shade, smiled at the nice-smelling French flight attendant and licked full-cream yogurt off plastic spoons. So far, so good. 

A French friend once told me, "The French, we are more approximate than the Americans." Perhaps our dearest hope for this trip was to let go, feel free, get lost. What better destination than France? 

My sister had agreed to watch the kids. I was a wreck in the weeks leading up to the departure date. Little arms break. Drivers ignore small, pink bicycles. Oceans loom large. What if they needed me in the middle of the night? What if my sister hated me afterward? She was driving eight hours from South Carolina just to baby-sit. I made lists: Foods the kids like. Numbers for friends. Directions for Metro. 

Four days before departure, I made my husband rent an international cell phone for $140 a week. "That way, my sister can call while she's making a peanut butter sandwich and ask which kind of jelly the kids like," I said, feeling quite good. 

"At $1.70 a minute," he gently reminded, then added, "Our kids are nearly 8 and 5. They can talk to her about jelly." He got the phone. 

Finally, I finished the lists. I secured all details. I took a breath. Something still nagged me. A real monster, hunkering beneath all those little worries slowly reared its ugly head. Something dark and unique to a 15-year relationship with kids. 

"What if we run out of things to say after one hour in the first cafe?" I asked him. "What if," I added, "we find out we can't stand each other?" 

Oceans loom large. Perhaps there is nothing like international travel to separate you from what you know. And force you to face what you don't. 

When my more relaxed sister arrived, she laughed at the three-foot-long schedule I'd spread out across the dining room table. Surely, she seemed to say, you don't expect . . . She suddenly developed Euro articulation. "Nice shed-ules," she said. 

* * * 

On previous international trips, we spent an inordinate amount of time standing around in playgrounds and searching for the international bathroom symbol. We dubbed our 2004 trip to Austria the Toilet Tour. 

This trip? The answer to my monster-size question came quickly. The sleepy airplane joy gave way to giddiness. We stood in the airport, completely lost in time and space, and said, "Hmm. Where's the subway?" It was so nice to not really know. I began to remember that my husband and I were different before kids, before living in Washington, where a good deal of our time is devoted to cussing at traffic. We were . . . more approximate. 

Still in the airport, two funny, good-looking men, one Parisian, the other Italian, joked with us as we pondered the automated subway ticket machine and tried to make it work. Modern technology is absurd. Language differences are silly. A kind of Sartre absurdism took over the moment, and the four of us could not stop laughing. I suddenly felt 25 and wondered if the airplane yogurt had contained cannabis. 

The good vibe continued on the train as we laughed with more locals and verified our impression from previous trips to France: The French are friendly. Really. 

Later, we met the apartment owner at the building's doorstep in the Latin Quarter, on a street between the Pantheon and the Luxembourg Gardens. I was overjoyed with the location. Pigeons flapped across the narrow side street. From our window -- which opened, of course, French style -- we could see a student studying in her apartment across the courtyard. 

We speak very little French. The owner spoke no English. But we managed a lively conversation about the unusually hot weather and about his daughter, who was studying to be a scientist like my husband. 

That day we ate salade paysanne -- layers of greens, ham and potatoes topped with an egg and served with toast and a wedge of very warm goat cheese. We checked out the Pantheon, took a short nap, woke to the sounds of our neighbors getting dinner, watched the student still studying, walked through the Latin Quarter and stopped in a few cafes for beer. The sun was still up at 10 p.m. (Paris is on the same latitude as Newfoundland), and the juxtaposition of light and time only added to our goal of getting lost. 

We decided to walk to the Eiffel Tower, arriving just moments before it closed at midnight. We rose through its golden tiers of light as happy as two beetle bugs in June. Afterward, in another cafe, we ordered a dessert of baked egg whites floating on a pool of sweet creme. At 3 a.m. We wondered at what point in our lives such pleasantries had become radical. 

Back at the apartment, I felt comforted by the soft glow of the student's lamp across the alley. During our four days in Paris, she never stopped studying except to sleep a few hours in the early morning. Probably a student at the Sorbonne, just one street over. Studying something classical, lyrical, lovely. I liked having her around. 

Over the next two days we visited Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, Sainte Chapelle and other sites -- whenever we felt like it. During the heat of two afternoons, we could not pass up a pair of exhibits we would have missed in a more rational state of mind, especially with young kids: Montmartre's Musee de l'Erotisme, which features hundreds of phallic symbols of many shapes and sizes from a variety of dates and cultures, and the Catacombs, burial grounds more than 65 feet below Paris that feature tunnels lined with the skulls and femurs of 6 million dead and signs that read, "Stop! This is is the empire of death!" 

We stayed out late. We slept late. We found margaritas, mojitos. We found way more ice than I remembered from previous trips. We bought Gauloises. We smoked them. 

The Fete de la Musique, an unofficial national holiday, took place while we were there, and from dusk until dawn the streets filled with people and music. After watching a street crowd sing along to Queen's "We Are the Champions," we ended up at an English-style pub in front of an ancient church near the Pantheon and watched a priest and several nuns belt out French evangelical youth rock while we sipped a pint. 

* * * 

The liberating moment of the trip, a kind of quivering crescendo, occurred on our final day in Paris in front of the "Mona Lisa." Reasonable, seasoned travelers, we meant to get to the Louvre early in the morning. No way were we going to get trapped in long lines with bus people from Ohio. 

We woke up four hours late. Oops, we said, then took leisurely showers and wandered over to the patisserie for croissants. 

Finally, a few hours later, we followed the museum map's convenient but cheesy arrows (What? The other 34,999 pieces of art are no good?) straight to the source. Sweating heavily, I wedged my way into a sea of pungent tourists to glimpse the portrait featuring those fabulous curling lips. Tourists heavily armed with phone cameras, digital cameras and video recorders swarmed like paparazzi toward the little painting. Shoulders bumped against mine. Breasts pressed into my back. 

Suddenly, I began to giggle and could not stop. A stranger's male voice in back of me said in American English, "I'm moving up. I came all the way to France to see this damn painting. I'm getting in front no matter what." I laughed harder. The people pushed on -- Portuguese, Japanese, American. Above head level, hundreds of cell phone cameras, brandished like battle swords, recorded a piece of the Renaissance world. 

My husband got to the front before me. I was faltering, laughing too hard, letting the moment take over. Then I saw him. There he was, a tall guy by European standards. He turned his back to the painting and held his digital camera at arm's length for a self-portrait of himself in front of the painting. Then he did the unthinkable. He made a goofy face. Then another. And another. 

I held up my regular camera, shaking with laughter, and snapped a shot of him taking a picture of himself in front of the painting that Leonardo da Vinci adored -- so much that he carried it around with him. The American behind me grew agitated and pushed on. I was in tears. I had to cross my legs. And it dawned on me that this moment of delirious stupidity was exactly what I needed, exactly what we came for and need more of in a life so driven by Palm Pilots and paper calendars, carpools and PTAs. 

Shed-ules be damned. My Mona Lisa Moment. It's a keeper. 

Pamela Gerhardt last wrote for Travel about renting a cottage in Tuscany.

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11) New York Times/The Ethicist [La réponse d'un déontologue officiel aux questions des lecteurs.] 
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/magazine/16wwln_ethicist.html?_r=1&oref=slogin 

April 16, 2006 
The Ethicist: Office Politics 
By RANDY COHEN 

Q: 
I am married to a wonderful man with whom I share moral and political values. He runs a managed-health-care company that sometimes supports political candidates we believe are taking this country in the wrong direction. To my chagrin, he has also given these candidates contributions from our personal account. How can we reconcile his obligations to his company with our values? Anonymous 

A: 
You can't, not if his duty to act in the best interests of his company compels him to give strong support to candidates you and he detest. If that's so, then something's got to give — his job or his self-respect. Even if he stopped writing personal checks to dubious candidates after work, he'd still be on the hook for his company's political activities. Life cannot be so neatly compartmentalized: our actions in the evening do not erase what we do during business hours. 

What's needed, however, may not be reconciliation but forbearance. If the gap between your husband's personal and professional political activities is narrow, that is something to be tolerated. We all vote for imperfect candidates, with whom we agree on some issues but not others. Also significant is the amount of support your husband gives. Nobody must resign because a company's PAC donates $10 to a weasel. Political life — all life — compels us to weigh the difference between realism and hypocrisy. The quest for purity leads only to paralysis (or divorce court). 

This approach has its pitfalls. What constitutes strong support? What distinguishes an "imperfect" candidate from a villain? Such things cannot be precisely calibrated. If you and your husband are unable to form a consensus here, the best you can do is remember that in the realm of marital Realpolitik, bedfellows make strange politics. 

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Q: 
My young sons' toys often break right after the receipt is chucked and the 30-day guarantee expires. When a toy breaks because of its low quality, we buy a new one, put the broken one in its box and return it using the new receipt. (We never do this with a toy the boys themselves actually break.) This burdens the store and the unknowing person who buys the broken one we reboxed — the store returns it to the shelf — but it pressures the manufacturer to stop selling defective products. Ethical? Tim Mummers, Port Washington, N.Y. 

A: 
Would that it were. I love this tactic: if you don't like the terms of a warranty, simply defraud the manufacturer. I've always believed that computers should last, oh, 10 trouble-free years. Now I can do the old repackaging switcheroo that you eloquently defend, and I'm set! 

Alas, your ingenious deception is not ethical. As you note, it penalizes the unsuspecting customer who buys your reboxed rubbish. And you deal deceitfully with the retailer and with the manufacturer, whose questionable business practices do not justify your own. Nor am I persuaded that your return plan has the effect you desire. The manufacturer is more likely to regard the repacked scrap as the work of a crank than of a social reformer. 

It's vexing that manufacturers are insulated from customer reactions, but you'd do better to write them angry letters, join with consumer groups, read product reviews before purchasing or, when you suspect actual fraud, talk to consumer-affairs officials. Or pack up the bits and pieces and mail them to the home of the appropriate C.E.O.: costs a few bucks, but you can't put a price on catharsis (or petty vengeance). 

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