Some New Facebook Goodness

April 4, 2008

How do you know your love is real? Check Facebook

By Michael Hernandez

DENTON, Texas (CNN) -- Ashley Shinn didn't know she was in a relationship until asked to confirm it in a message from Facebook. On Facebook users can share everything from photos to intimate relationship details with 67 million users.

The 22-year-old University of North Texas senior received a Facebook request from her new beau after a kiss.

"We didn't talk about it, then we kissed and then that night he sent me that request," on Facebook, she said. "Without discussing it. I was like, 'Oh, OK, I guess.'"

Shinn is one of more than 67 million Facebook users. The social networking Web site has redefined privacy online by allowing users to create profiles with photos, quotes, personal information and relationship statuses. Facebook users list themselves as single, in a relationship, married, engaged, in an open relationship or to say "It's complicated."

In order to be listed online as a couple, both people have to agree to the designation. For many college students, a new relationship isn't real until it's on Facebook. It sometimes seems users' relationship statuses change just about every time you log on to the Web site.

Thanks to the main page's "news feed," which keeps tabs on everyone a user has listed as a friend, users can see every change their friends have made to their account, including up-to-the-minute reports on whether couples are still together.

Little red broken hearts appear next to a user's name if he or she recently went from "in a relationship" to "single." Chris Neal, 20, a sophomore at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, said listing relationships online solidifies the commitment. When it's listed on Facebook "it's public knowledge," he said. "Guys won't try to come get with a girl in a relationship and girls won't come to get with a guy. It's like marking your territory."

Neal, along with Taikein Cooper, 19, a fellow sophomore at the UNC-Chapel Hill, started the Facebook group "If your relationship isn't listed on Facebook...it doesn't count!" almost a year ago as an inside joke.

The group has almost 700 online members, most of whom agree with the statement, Neal said. "You got a Facebook and it's not on there, then it's not official," he said. Cooper echoes: "If you want him or her to be exclusive then you need to put it out there."

Matt Pestinger, 18, started his group, "Your relationship doesn't count unless it's posted on Facebook," as a commentary on today's world, he said in an e-mail. "I decided to start this group to point out what our world has come to and it cracks me up," the University of Oklahoma freshman said. His group has 468 members. "People love the group," he said. "One thing everyone says is, 'That's hilarious and true.'"

Samantha Majka wants to let people know a little more about her relationship. Majka, 18, is a sophomore at Towson University in Towson, Maryland. She created the online group "Facebook relationship status options are insufficient." The group, which has nearly 2,000 members, boasts ideas for Facebook to add to its lists of options for relationships. Some of the ideas are "Has [insert name] wrapped around his/her finger," "Is seeing [...] but sssh don't tell" and "Is trying to figure out a way to break up with [...]" Majka has some ideas of her own. "I wanted to be able to put multipeople" on the relationship status, she said. "Not for polygamy or anything, but for multiple dating."

She said she started her group for fun after realizing the default statuses listed on Facebook don't fit every relationship. On other social networking Web sites, such as MySpace, users list their significant others and post photos and videos. "Our generation is much more open with these types of things being on the Internet, Facebook and MySpace," Shinn said. "We don't have any secrets or anything. We don't hide anything. We show everything to each other. Since we don't have any shame in anything, we don't hide it."

Majka said she thinks people are so free with their personal information on Facebook and MySpace because it's a form of self-expression. "I think it's just wanting to share a part of yourself in life," she said. Users just want other users to know more about them and see who they are, Neal said.

Other people aren't so sure. "I have no clue why people are so free to be so open on Facebook," Pestinger said. Shinn is open enough to list her relationship while Pestinger and Majka are listed as married even though neither has tied the knot. "I have been in the same relationship that it seems like I am married," Pestinger said. "I listed my relationship to show everyone else that I am not single. It lets them know who my significant other is." Neal and Cooper don't have relationships listed on their profile pages. "I don't even have single listed on my Facebook," Neal said. "I'm not specifically exclusive to one female. Until I get with one exclusive girl, I won't put it on there." Cooper said he has listed relationships before on Facebook. "It was her decision at the time," he said. "She said it'd prevent a lot of issues if we put it on Facebook."

Some issues, Cooper said, include users not listing their relationship and using Facebook to try to meet other people. Facebook has become a way not only to meet people but to stay connected with family and friends, Neal said. "If you're in college, you kind of need this to keep up with people," Neal said. "I have relatives that I don't even have their phone numbers but I can keep up with them on Facebook."

Shinn said Facebook has helped her keep in contact with all of her friends, including one studying abroad in Scotland. "We're so busy with school and work that we isolate ourselves," she said. "It's probably a much easier way to keep in touch with people." Facebook is a good way to stay in contact with people without having to be face-to-face, Majka said.

"Plus if you don't like talking on the phone then it's a good option," she said. Cooper would be lost without Facebook. "I'm not sure what they did before Facebook," he said

You'd better THINK

March 30, 2008

‘With a Few More Brains ...’

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Ten days ago, I noted the reckless assertion of Barack Obama’s former pastor that the United States government had deliberately engineered AIDS to kill blacks, but I tried to put it in context by citing a poll showing that 30 percent of African-Americans believe such a plot is at least plausible.

My point was that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is not the far-out fringe figure that many whites assume. But I had a deluge of e-mail from incredulous whites saying, in effect: If 30 percent of blacks believe such bunk, then that’s a worse scandal than anything Mr. Wright said.

It’s true that conspiracy theories are a bane of the African-American community. Perhaps partly as a legacy of slavery, Tuskegee and Jim Crow, many blacks are convinced that crack cocaine was a government plot to harm African-Americans and that the levees in New Orleans were deliberately opened to destroy black neighborhoods.

White readers expressed shock (and a hint of smugness) at these delusions, but the sad reality is that conspiracy theories and irrationality aren’t a black problem. They are an American problem.

These days, whites may not believe in a government plot to spread AIDS, but they do entertain the equally malevolent theory that the United States government had a hand in the 9/11 attacks. A Ohio University poll in 2006 found that 36 percent of Americans believed that federal officials assisted in the attacks on the twin towers or knowingly let them happen so that the U.S. could go to war in the Middle East.

Then there’s this embarrassing fact about the United States in the 21st century: Americans are as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution. Depending on how the questions are asked, roughly 30 to 40 percent of Americans believe in each.

A 34-nation study found Americans less likely to believe in evolution than citizens of any of the countries polled except Turkey.

President Bush is also the only Western leader I know of who doesn’t believe in evolution, saying “the jury is still out.” No word on whether he believes in little green men.

Only one American in 10 understands radiation, and only one in three has an idea of what DNA does. One in five does know that the Sun orbits the Earth ...oh, oops.

“America is now ill with a powerful mutant strain of intertwined ignorance, anti-rationalism, and anti-intellectualism,” Susan Jacoby argues in a new book, “The Age of American Unreason.” She blames a culture of “infotainment,” sound bites, fundamentalist religion and ideological rigidity for impairing thoughtful debate about national policies.

Even insults have degenerated along with other discourse, Ms. Jacoby laments. She contrasts Dick Cheney’s obscene instruction to Senator Patrick Leahy with a more elegant evisceration by House Speaker Thomas Reed in the 1890s: “With a few more brains he could be a half-wit.”

Her broader point is that we as a nation will have difficulty making crucial decisions if we don’t have an intellectual climate that fosters an informed and reasoned debate. How can we decide on embryonic stem cells if we don’t understand biology? How can we judge whether to invade Iraq if we don’t know a Sunni from a Shiite?

Our competitiveness as a nation in coming decades will be determined not only by our financial accounts but also by our intellectual accounts. In that respect, we’re at a disadvantage, particularly vis-à-vis East Asia with its focus on education.

From Singapore to Japan, politicians pretend to be smarter and better- educated than they actually are, because intellect is an asset at the polls. In the United States, almost alone among developed countries, politicians pretend to be less worldly and erudite than they are (Bill Clinton was masterful at hiding a brilliant mind behind folksy Arkansas sayings about pigs).

Alas, when a politician has the double disadvantage of obvious intelligence and an elite education and then on top of that tries to educate the public on a complex issue — as Al Gore did about climate change — then that candidate is derided as arrogant and out of touch.

The dumbing-down of discourse has been particularly striking since the 1970s. Think of the devolution of the emblematic conservative voice from William Buckley to Bill O’Reilly. It’s enough to make one doubt Darwin.

There’s no simple solution, but the complex and incomplete solution is a greater emphasis on education at every level. And maybe, just maybe, this cycle has run its course, for the last seven years perhaps have discredited the anti-intellectualism movement. President Bush, after all, is the movement’s epitome — and its fruit.

Movie Industry

Recession, post-strike blues grip town

TV industry feeling brunt of WGA woes

By JOSEF ADALIAN

The wave of euphoria that swept over Hollywood following the end of the WGA strike has been replaced by a whole new set of emotions: anxiety, depression, fear, nervousness -- and anger.

One month after scribes put down their pickets, a March malaise has set in, with folks in town wondering when -- or if -- things will get back to "normal."

There are significantly fewer TV pilots, budgets for series are being cut back, feature films are being put on hold in fear of a SAG walkout, and the shifts in the TV and film skeds have meant either accelerated workloads or prolonged unemployment.

And all this is occurring as everyone is feeling the pinch of an overall economy that’s in or heading into recession.

On the TV side, dramatically fewer pilots are in production compared to most years, resulting in reduced employment for helmers and thesps already hit hard by the WGA strike. Many of those pilots that have been picked up are being hastily assembled to be ready for the May upfronts, creating extra stress and pressure for scribes and development execs.

Meanwhile, to make up for revenues lost during the strike, networks and studios are holding onto each penny as if it were their last, cutting back on development deals and being stingy with raises. "There’s a real sense that faucets are not fully open," one scribe on a top network drama said.

On the film front, the mood is a bit less glum, with reports of brisk business in the spec and book markets, as well as numerous projects just waiting to be cleared for takeoff.

What’s more, the expected flurry of post-strike films are in a holding pattern -- in part because fear of a SAG walkout this summer is causing execs to think twice about greenlights.

Thunder Road producer Basil Iwanyk said that the overall level of anxiety and stress around town is "very high," and that anyone who claims otherwise "is lying."

"Everybody is shocked there wasn’t a barrage of scripts," he said. Iwanyk, who also works in TV, said the small-screen biz is "a complete catastrophe."

As if there weren’t enough bad news, many observers worry that the meltdown of the larger U.S. economy will soon hit Hollywood hard, resulting in even tougher times. Observers cite everything from Time Warner’s downsizing of New Line to CBS supremo Leslie Moonves’ decision to ax the Eye’s annual Tavern on the Green upfront bash as evidence of the sort feeding Hollywood’s current anxiety.

"There’s a huge amount of crankiness right now, and everybody -- particularly agents -- feels like they’re getting screwed," one top lawyer said.

A studio chief laments what’s been "a very upsetting year. The pressure and the anxiety are getting to people."

A network chief, meanwhile, said Hollywood’s mood simply echoes what’s going on in the real world.

"It’s a reflection of the national psyche," he said. "We’re in a very tenuous place in this country right now, and Hollywood is no different."

In such a toxic environment, it’s easy for some to start ascribing the worst of intentions to various parties’ actions. In the same way that some execs were convinced that WGA leaders were hell-bent on striking, some writers’ reps believe the cost-cutting and downsizing taking place in Hollywood isn’t a mere matter of economics.

"The studios are punishing writers for going out," one partner at a major talent agency argued. "They want to take their pound of flesh, so they’re pushing back deals and not making new ones."

That point of view is dismissed, however, by almost all execs and even many talent reps. As annoyed as they are by the new belt tightening, many believe there’s nothing more sinister behind the reduced largess than congloms taking advantage of the fact that they have more leverage in a post-strike environment.

"The market needed a correction, and that’s what’s been happening," one rep said. "When your guy goes from $4.5 million for three years to $1.5 million for three years, that’s going to be painful. But the ultimate revenues from these deals weren’t justifying the money for what’s essentially research and development."

Hart Hanson, creator of Fox’s "Bones," also hasn’t seen any evidence of companies out to "get" scribes. He describes a "general atmosphere of parsimony in the air."

"Nobody’s getting a big fat raise, at least not easily or automatically," he said. "I feel I have to justify expenditures even more than usual. I have to say, though, I don’t get the sense of the companies ‘taking revenge.’ The strike hurt their bottom line, and they are trying, as corporations, to mitigate the financial hit they endured. There’s not the feeling of personal vengeance behind it."

A TV studio chief is less generous in responding to the notion that companies are out for payback, calling those who make such accusations "crybabies."

"I’m not trying to get back at anyone," the exec said. "This is just the ebb and flow of any market and being true to what people’s value really is."

While execs like to maintain the appearance that they have no other choice but to be frugal, occasionally one will cop to taking advantage of the fear and anxiety that has resulted from the strike. One studio chief even conceded that congloms are purposely taking a hard line, even when they can afford to be a bit more generous.

"To a degree, everyone’s involved in a game of chicken," the exec said. "I have been sort of laying down the law to see if I can get away with it. I’m telling people, ‘You’re only getting a show deal’ (with no extra coin for development). And it’s mostly been working. I’m sure that’s part of the reason people feel so crabby. But if I can get something for a little under retail price, why not?"

No wonder then that TV overall deals, while still being made, are an endangered species on most studio lots. Many of the scribes who saw their overalls eliminated during the strike are slowly realizing that they’re not going to get a new pact somewhere else (though reports of bidding wars for a few scribes make clear there will continue to be exceptions for top talent).

Even those with jobs and deals aren’t immune to the pain.

Mid-level scribes looking forward to the usual pay bumps that accompany the start of a new season have also received bad news in recent weeks: Forget about the raises. Because the strike resulted in far fewer episodes being produced this season, execs believe segs that will air next fall should be treated as this season’s episodes.

"Why should someone who’s rendered services for eight or 10 episodes instead of 22 be bumped up?" one studio chief asked. "Why would I want to increase costs like that? We’re dealing with things in an appropriately tougher manner."

TV actors, many of whom lost significant income because of the strike, now find themselves contending with the fallout from TV’s strike-altered production schedules. Rather than going on summer break, many shows will be in production throughout the next few months -- a big problem for thesps who had committed to do features during their now-canceled hiatuses.

"I’ve had more requests from actors looking to be let out to do feature films that I can ever remember," a studio exec said. "It’s causing a lot of challenges."

Adding to the chaos: the craziest pilot season anyone can remember.

Some networks, such as ABC, have greenlit just a few pilots this year. While that will change, nobody expects the Alphabet to be in a rush to get projects ready for the May upfronts.

At CBS and CW, however, things are proceeding almost as if there hadn’t been a strike, with plenty of projects in the pipeline. The problem, according to producers, is that CBS and CW execs want pilots or presentations delivered in about half the normal time.

"This is 100 times crazier than usual," said one frenzied studio chief. "We have no road map."

A network topper talked almostly longingly about the stability of the old system. "Pilot season was crazy, but it had a certain madness to it that created momentum," he said. "Everyone got addicted to it. Now, we’re all suffering from withdrawal pains."

While much of Hollywood’s current funk can be chalked up to fallout from the strike and the sagging national economy, several observers point to another cause -- particularly in the TV business.

Even as they caution against grand pronouncements -- "Pilots are dead!," "Overall deals don’t make sense!," "Streaming video is the future!" -- execs agree that the business is in the middle of a massive upheaval.

For example, it once made sense to sign a dozen comedy scribes to development pacts because odds were that one of those deals would result in a "Friends" or a "Two and a Half Men." But with networks measuring primetime success by a much smaller yardstick, and syndie revenue a fraction of its former self, having a large roster of comedy talent on staff now just seems stupid.

Such wholesale changes to the biz help explain the actions of Chris Barrett, owner of the Metropolitan Talent Agency. He recently revamped his business, getting rid of most of his agents and clients.

"This decision wasn’t made because of the writers strike or the de facto actors strike," he said. "This is symptomatic of a bigger situation, and became about what do I need to do over the next five years? There has been a disruption at the broadcast networks and cable delivery systems."

Some agents, however, believe execs need to be careful about just how hard a line they take with talent. Push too hard, they argue, and creative types could just end up abandoning the studio system altogether.

"The studios are being short-sighted," one tenpercenter said. "They’re biting the hands that feed them. As long as content is controlled by creators, we’re going to be in the driver’s seat."

That's China

China Blocks YouTube After Videos of Tibet Protests Are Posted

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: March 17, 2008

BEIJING (AP) — Internet users in China were blocked from seeing YouTube.com on Sunday after dozens of videos about protests in Tibet appeared on the popular American video Web site.

The blocking added to the Communist government’s efforts to control what the public saw and heard about protests that erupted Friday in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, against Chinese rule.

Access to YouTube.com, usually readily available in China, was blocked after videos appeared on the site Saturday showing foreign news reports about the Lhasa demonstrations, montages of photos and scenes from Tibet-related protests abroad.

There were no protest scenes posted on China-based video Web sites like as 56.com, youku.com and tudou.com.

The Chinese government has not commented on its move to prevent access to YouTube. Internet users trying to call up the Web site were presented with a blank screen.

Chinese leaders encourage Internet use for education and business but use online filters to block access to material considered subversive or pornographic.

Foreign Web sites run by news organizations and human rights groups are regularly blocked if they carry disapproved information. Operators of China-based online bulletin boards are required to monitor their content and enforce censorship.

China has at least 210 million Internet users, according to the government, and is expected to overtake the United States soon to have the biggest population of Web users.

Beijing tightened controls on online video with rules that took effect Jan. 30 and limited video-sharing to state-owned companies.

Regulators backtracked a week later, apparently worried they might disrupt a growing industry, and said private companies that were already operating legally could continue. They said any new competitors would be bound by the more stringent restrictions.

Situation in Tibet

Dalai Lama Won’t Stop Tibet Protests

MCLEODGANJ, India — The Dalai Lama said Sunday that he would not instruct his followers inside Tibet to surrender before Chinese authorities, and he described feeling “helpless” in preventing what he feared could be an imminent blood bath.

“I do feel helpless,” he said in response to a question at a wide-ranging, emotionally charged news conference here in what has served as the headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile for nearly 40 years. “I feel very sad, very serious, very anxious. Cannot do anything,”

His aides said they had received reports from Tibet of 80 killings on Thursday and Friday alone, in and around the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, including 26 slain just outside a prison called Drapchi. Chinese state media has reported 10 deaths and characterized most of them as shopkeepers ”burned to death” during protests.

Tibetan exiles here said they had also received news of at least two Buddhist monks who set themselves on fire as an act of protest; that claim could not be independently confirmed.

For the second straight day on Sunday, protests spread into different Tibetan regions of China. Buddhist monks and police reportedly clashed in a Tibetan region of Sichuan Province. A crowd of 200 Tibetan protesters burned down a local police station, news agencies reported.

One witness said a police officer was killed in the confrontation. But the India-based Tibet Center for Human Rights and Democracy reported that the police in the region had killed at least seven Tibetan protesters.

The Dalai Lama, who heads the government in exile and serves as the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, called Sunday for an independent international inquiry into the recent violence.

He endorsed the right to peaceful protest, called violence an “act of suicide,” and accused Beijing of carrying out “a rule of terror.”

Asked if he could stop Tibetan protesters from flouting Beijing’s deadline to surrender by midnight on Monday, the Dalai Lama, 72, replied swiftly: “I have no such power.”

He said he had received a call on Saturday from Tibet. “‘Please don’t ask us to stop,’” was the caller’s request. The Dalai Lama promised he would not, even though he said he expected the Chinese authorities to put down the protests with force.

“Now we really need miracle power,” he said, and then laughed. “But miracle seems unrealistic.”

As he entertained questions for over an hour here inside a temple in the lap of snow-capped Himalayas, the limits of his influence, and even his “middle path” message of freedom for Tibetans, rather than total independence for Tibet, came into sharp relief, as thousands of mostly young Tibetan exiles raised a chorus of stridently anti-Chinese slogans and called for secession.

“We the young people feel independence is our birthright,” said Dolma Choephel, 34, a social worker active with the Tibetan Youth Congress and who gathered Sunday morning at a demonstration outside the gates of the main town temple. “We understand the limitations of the Dalai Lama’s approach. What we got after six rounds of talks — this violence?” She was referring to the six negotiating sessions between the Dalai Lama and Chinese authorities since 2002.

Just behind where Ms. Choephel stood, Buddhist monks began a hunger strike. Protesters laid down Chinese flags on the road, inviting cars and pedestrians to trample on them. Later, thousands streamed down the hill, to Dharamsala town, the largest Tibetan settlement in India. Many of them had painted their faces with the colors of the Tibetan flag. “Long live the Dalai Lama,” they chanted, which made it plain that despite their far more radical calls, they remained loyal to his spiritual leadership.

Late Sunday evening, candles were lit on window sills and balconies across these hills. Tibetan-owned shops were closed in solidarity with the demonstrations across the border.

The Indian authorities, meanwhile, found themselves in an uncomfortable diplomatic spot. The Indian police earlier last week had arrested a group of demonstrators who vowed to walk roughly 900 miles from here to Lhasa, but allowed a second group to set off Saturday morning unimpeded.

India has hosted Tibetan refugees since the Dalai Lama’s exodus in 1959, but on condition that they not protest against Chinese government on Indian soil. New Delhi’s efforts to warm up to Beijing in recent years has made the Tibet issue an exceptionally tricky matter. The Dalai Lama, while acknowledging Indian hospitality to Tibetan refugees — there are an estimated 130,000 Tibetans in India — described the official government position on Tibet as “overcautious.”

A young Tibetan monk was less circumspect about government restrictions on the proposed march from India to Tibet. After all, said Tenzin Damchoe, the Indian-born child of Tibetan refugees, Tibetans had learned the art of the peaceful protest march from Gandhi. “It’s a little bit disgrace,” Mr. Damchoe, 30, said.

As for the revolt inside Tibet, he said he could only imagine the worst. “They crushed their own people,” he said of the Chinese response to the Tianemen Square pro-democracy protests in 1989. “There’s no doubt they will crush the Tibetan people.”

The Dalai Lama, for his part, seemed unfazed about the dissent among Tibetans over full independence versus greater autonomy. Even his elder brother, he recalled, had admonished him many years ago for not advocating independence from China. “ ‘My dear younger brother, the Dalai Lama,’ ” his brother told him. “ ‘You sold out the Tibetan legitimate right. Like that.’ ”

The Dalai Lama described dissent as “a healthy sign of our commitment to democracy, open society.”

Chuckling, he added that the idea might come as “a surprise to our Chinese brothers and sisters.”

He described himself as a Marxist Buddhist, quoted Mao Tse Tung’s endorsement of dissent in the party, and blamed local Communist Party officials inside Tibet, rather than the party leadership in Beijing, for what he called the rise of government repression against Tibetan Buddhists in the last couple of years.

He accused Chinese officials of resorting only to force when confronted with a crisis. “They have no experience how to deal with problems through talk, only suppress,” he said.

Asked several times whether he endorsed the protests, which had at times had turned violent over the last week, the Dalai Lama said Tibetans were entitled to air their grievances peacefully. “Protest, peaceful way, express their deep resentment is a right,” he said.

He said he was aware that the Chinese government blamed him for fomenting rebellion. “I’m happy they found some scapegoat,” he said, in half-jest, and then described what he said were deep-rooted grievances.

“Whether the Chinese government admits it or not, there is a problem. The problem is a nation with ancient cultural heritage is actually facing serious dangers,” he said. “Whether intentionally or unintentionally, some kind of cultural genocide is taking place.”

He maintained that he was not calling for secession from China “in terms of material development is concerned.” “We get much benefits,” from being a part of China, as he put it and said he could endorse only nonviolent protest. He said he remained supportive of China’s hosting of the Olympic Games, but called on the international community to exercise its “moral responsibility” to remind Beijing about human rights.

Guns In America

March 10, 2008 -- the NY Times Blog

Guns

By Will Okun

Will Okun is a Chicago school teacher who traveled with Nick Kristof in June to central Africa, on the win-a-trip contest. He blogged and vlogged as he went, and you can see his reports at www.nytimes.com/twofortheroad. He teaches English and photography in a Chicago school with many students from low-income and minority homes.

Like most schools in America, our high school on the Westside of Chicago has fights. When teachers or security finally break through
the circular mob of agitating spectators, we are usually separating two female students clinging to each other’s hair. Whether the conflict is over a boy, “he said she said,” disrespect, gangs, money or property, female fights at our school can be as commonplace as once a week. Although the students are suspended and must attend mediation upon their reinstatement, the physical results of their skirmish are usually minimal. Frequently, the girls are able to coexist in class and in school after their initial clash.

In my nine years of teaching, there has been less than one male fight per year. A major reason for the rarity of male fistfights is
that the potential for escalation is just too great. Conflicts do not end in mediation or fights, but rather in mob action or guns. In sickening irony, the omnipresence of gun violence is a deterrent to male conflict at our school.

Although it is illegal to own or possess a gun in Chicago, guns are everywhere on the Westside. I asked a 17-year-old student who is in a gang about his ability to obtain a gun and he confidently replied, “Easy.” I asked the same question of one of the school’s highest achieving males, and he too asserted that he could easily buy a gun from a childhood friend. A different student volunteered that he could get me a gun in two days.

“When I was growing up, we fought when there was a problem with someone else. But it was just a fistfight between the two people,
and when it was over, that was the end of it,” explains our school’s security guard, Officer William Smith. “Nowadays, most of these kids don’t even know how to fight. They just rely on these guns. You really have to watch who you talk to because you don’t know who is going to be the crazy one trying to prove themselves with a gun. It’s ridiculous.”

Former student Fred Reed has lost several friends and relatives to gun violence. “You have to walk away from a lot. For instance, dude deserves to be beat and I know I could beat his ass, but then what? No one is just going to take an ass-beating, they’re going to want to do something about it,” observes Reed. “Then you got to worry about him and his guys jumping on you. Or more than likely, he’s going to get a gun to show that he’s not a punk. That’s how a lot of these shootings happen, it’s over nothing.”

This past Friday, 15[-]year-old sophomore DeVonte Smyth tragically used a gun to end a feud with 18-year-old Ruben Ivy. In front
of school security and hundreds of witnesses, Smyth shot and killed Ivy as school let out at Crane Tech High School on the Westside of Chicago.

Ivy is the 18th Chicago Public School student killed this school year. Last week alone in Chicago, five people under the age of 18 were killed in gun violence (six more were wounded). A 20-year-old woman shot a 15-year-old honor student at a different Westside high school in a family dispute over a boy. “She took something that was so precious away from me,” said the girl’s mother, Kimberly Marsh. (We can only hope that females do not begin to also address their disputes with guns, although I bet gun violence among teen females will become a more common occurrence.)

On Saturday, Mayor Richard Daley, Police Supt. Jody Weis, Chicago Public School C.E.O. Arne Duncan and other community leaders hosted an anti-violence rally at an elementary school on the Southside. As expected, the meeting was poorly attended and there were very few teenagers or young adults in the crowd of less than 300.

“What is happening to America? We are talking about young offenders and young victims. Children are killing children. That young people are getting shot and killed is a disgrace to humanity,” steamed Mayor Daley. “In Washington they are having hearings about steroids. How does this help us? What does this have to do with the violence throughout America? It’s all about entertainment. But it’s not entertainment when the gun manufacturers own the legislature.”

Supt. Weis reiterated the essay of 1st grader Treyveon McCotrell by exclaiming, “Being able to able to play in a park or walk down the street should not be the goal of a child. These are not goals. Going to college, getting a job – those are the goals our children should have.”

Like Mayor Daley, C.E.O. Duncan argued the importance of parental responsibility before attacking gun violence. “Too many children speak of their goals with the phrase ‘if I grow up.’ We live in a society that values the right to bear arms over the lives of our children,” he concluded. “This is a problem throughout America that is different than other diseases because we know the solution. We must have gun reform but we lack the political courage to make the changes that are needed.”

On his website, Barack Obama writes that he is “in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over.” But does Obama have the “political courage” to stand-up against the N.R.A.?

In a now infamous 1996 questionnaire, an Illinois voter organization asked if Obama supported banning the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns in Illinois. Not surprisingly, his campaign answered, “Yes.” As a community organizer in low-income communities of Chicago, Obama surely saw firsthand the easy availability of guns as well as their devastating wrath. In his heart, I am convinced that Obama agrees with Mayor Daley, Arne Duncan and other urban community leaders who believe there is no positive role for handguns in our society. How can anyone witness the weekly execution of our nation’s students and believe otherwise?

Recently, however, Obama aides claim that the 1996 questionnaire was erroneously completed by a staffer, and that the answers are not reflective of his position on the issue of gun control. As many columnists have already noted, it is somewhat difficult to gauge Obama’s current position on gun control as there is no information about this volatile subject on his otherwise comprehensive website. Nor does he speak in detail about gun control in his campaign speeches. How can Obama speak so passionately about such a range of important issues and all but ignore the gun violence that is terrorizing his own city?

What would happen to Obama’s campaign if he supported stringent gun control laws, including a ban on handgun or assault gun manufacturing and ownership? Must a progressive leader still cower to the power of gun advocates in order to be elected to national office? Is Arne Duncan really correct, do “we as a society value the right to bear arms over the lives of our children?”

MME2 -- SPAM ALERT

Hey class,

It has recently been brought to my attention that my class email was getting spammed by some mailboxes... please make sure you received it alright.

** CLASS HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED TO 1:30 PM** -- so you need to be there at 1:30, we'll take a break at 3 and you'll be out by 4:30.

** WE WILL HAVE CLASS ON THUR. MARCH 13 at 1:00PM** -- we needed to add an extra class to make up for the one we missed in early Jan. It has been decided it will be held on Mar 13 at 1:00pm. I NEED ALL STUDENTS PRESENT (teacher's evalution day, you need to be here if you wanna get your revenge for months of quizzing torture :) It will also be show time for Hilaire & Cyril and Clarisse & Will and they will need your support.

your homework reminder for Tuesday:
the P&G text p. 110
C p. 110
D p. 111

Presenting students:
Coralie & Margaux
Victoria & Thomas
---- I also need to remind all presentors that anyone who hasn't been excused will be granted a 0 for the oral ability (35% of the grade) -->which would hurt, so don't try &sneak out and just come & play.

Board members appointed by students:
JB
Milena
.....
..... -(Margaux & Coralie haven't chosen yet)

Best,

ps: I will not quiz you this Tuesday, you're safe ;)

An American Inmate

1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars, New Study Says

By ADAM LIPTAK Published: February 28, 2008

For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars, according to a new report.

Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails. The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.

Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.

The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that only one in 355 white women between the ages of 35 and 39 is behind bars, but that one in 100 black women is.

The report’s methodology differed from that used by the Justice Department, which calculates the incarceration rate by using the total population rather than the adult population as the denominator. Using the department’s methodology, about one in 130 Americans is behind bars.

Either way, said Susan Urahn, the center’s managing director, “we aren’t really getting the return in public safety from this level of incarceration.”

“We tend to be a country in which incarceration is an easy response to crime,” Ms. Urahn continued. “Being tough on crime is an easy position to take, particularly if you have the money. And we did have the money in the ’80s and ’90s.”

Now, with fewer resources available to the states, the report said, “prison costs are blowing a hole in state budgets.” On average, states spend almost 7 percent on their budgets on corrections, trailing only healthcare, education and transportation.

In 2007, according to the National Association of State Budgeting Officers, states spent $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections. That is up from $10.6 billion in 1987, a 127 increase once adjusted for inflation. With money from bond issues and from the federal government included, total state spending on corrections last year was $49 billion. By 2011, the report said, states are on track to spend an additional $25 billion.

It cost an average of $23,876 to imprison someone in 2005, the most recent year for which data is available. But state spending varies widely, from $45,000 a year for each inmate in Rhode Island to just $13,000 in Louisiana.

The cost of medical care is growing by 10 percent annually, the report said, a rate that will accelerate as the prison population ages.

About one in nine state government employees works in corrections, and some states are finding it hard to fill those jobs. California spent more than $500 million on overtime alone in 2006.

The number of prisoners in California dropped by 4,000 last year, making Texas’s prison system the nation’s largest, at about 172,000 inmates. But the Texas legislature approved broad changes to the state’s corrections system, including expansions of drug treatment programs and drug courts and revisions to parole practices.

“Our violent offenders, we lock them up for a very long time — rapists, murderers, child molestors,” said John Whitmire, a Democratic state senator from Houston and the chairman of the state senate’s criminal justice committee. “The problem was that we weren’t smart about nonviolent offenders. The legislature finally caught up with the public.”

He gave an example.

“We have 5,500 D.W.I offenders in prison,” he said, including people caught driving under the influence who had not been in an accident. “They’re in the general population. As serious as drinking and driving is, we should segregate them and give them treatment.”

The Pew report recommended diverting nonviolent offenders away from prison and using punishments short of reincarceration for minor or technical violations of probation or parole. It also urged states to consider earlier release of some prisoners.

Before the recent changes in Texas, Mr. Whitmire said, “we were recycling nonviolent offenders.”

Investing, or Not -- cf. InClass Presentations

Keep It Simple, Says Yale’s Top Investor

By GERALDINE FABRIKANT Published: February 17, 2008

IT has been a time to worry even the savviest investors. The credit markets have been in a crisis, the domestic stock market has been shaky and overseas markets haven’t been much better.

What should an individual investor do?

Don’t try anything fancy. Stick to a simple diversified portfolio, keep your costs down and rebalance periodically to keep your asset allocations in line with your long-term goals. That is the advice of David F. Swensen, who has run the Yale endowment since 1988, relying on a complex strategy that includes investments in hedge funds and other esoteric vehicles. The endowment earned 28 percent in its last fiscal year, which ended June 30, beating all other endowments. It finished the year with $22.5 billion.

For most people, he recommends a very basic approach: use index funds, exchange-traded funds and other low-cost instruments, and stick to your long-term asset allocation — even when the markets are in tumult.

Don’t be distracted by market forecasts, he said. “You have to diversify against the collective ignorance,” he said. “I think nobody is in a position to react to these big macro-issues. Where is the dollar going to be or what is G.D.P. growth going to be in China? For every smart person on one side of the question, there is another smart person on the other side.”

For most individual investors, he said, copying the strategies of institutions like Yale is virtually impossible: big investors have access to fund managers and arcane strategies that are beyond the reach of most people.

“The only people who should get involved are sophisticated individuals who have significant resources and a highly qualified investment staff,” Mr. Swensen said.

“Most people do not have the resources and time to pick market-beating managers” of hedge funds, private equity funds or funds of funds, he said. And he said that the techniques used by hedge funds often result in higher taxes than those of index funds.

So he advocates another approach, which he outlined in the book “Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment” (Free Press, 2005). He proposes a portfolio of 30 percent domestic stocks, 15 percent foreign stocks, and 5 percent emerging-market stocks, as well as 20 percent in real estate and 15 percent each in Treasury bonds and Treasury inflation-protected securities, or TIPS.

The real estate investment can be made through real estate index funds. Though the real estate market has declined and your portfolio is below its target allocation to it, he said, don’t try to time the market. Go ahead and rebalance because no one really knows where the market’s bottom is.

Diversification will buffer a portfolio from declines in specific asset classes. For example, he said: “If the dollar declines dramatically, you have foreign and emerging-market equities. And a declining dollar may well be associated with inflation, but a diversified portfolio would include TIPS,” to provide a hedge. “That means if any of these scenarios play out, an investor has sizable chunks of his portfolio that protect against them,” Mr. Swensen said.

When possible, he said, rebalancing should be done in a tax-sheltered account, like an I.R.A. or a 401(k), to avoid tax liabilities. “When you are putting fresh money to work,” he said, “you put it in an asset class where you are underweight and take money out of a class that is overweight.”

He says it is fruitless for individual investors to pick stocks. “There is no way that an individual can go out there and compete with all these highly qualified and compensated professionals,” Mr. Swensen said.

HE criticized the approach of Jim Cramer, the CNBC host, who encourages investors to trade stocks in strategies that Mr. Swensen says cost heavily in commissions and taxes.

“There is nothing that Cramer says that can help people make intelligent decisions,” Mr. Swensen said. “He takes something that is very serious and turns it into a game. If you want to have fun, go to Disney World.”

Brian Steel, a spokesman for CNBC, responding on behalf of Mr. Cramer, said Mr. Cramer “had a long history of success as a trader and fund manager.” He added that Mr. Cramer is a proponent of long-term investing and thorough research.

Mr. Swensen says investors should forget market timing entirely. Once an individual sets up a program, it should be rebalanced quarterly or semiannually, he said, “but it should be disciplined.”

When the markets decline, try not to pay attention, he said. “Let yourself off the hook,” he said. “If you pursue the sensible long-term policy, look at it over a 5- to 10-year period. Don’t look at five months.”

On America Intelligence

Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?

By PATRICIA COHEN

Published: February 14, 2008

A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from “American Idol,” appearing on the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?”

Ms. Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. “I thought Europe was a country,” she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. “Hungry?” she said, eyes widening in disbelief. “That’s a country? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I’ve never heard of it.”

Such, uh, lack of global awareness is the kind of thing that drives Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason,” up a wall. Ms. Jacoby is one of a number of writers with new books that bemoan the state of American culture.

Ms. Jacoby, whose book came out on Tuesday, doesn’t zero in on a particular technology or emotion, but rather on what she feels is a generalized hostility to knowledge. She is well aware that some may tag her a crank. “I expect to get bashed,” said Ms. Jacoby, 62, either as an older person who upbraids the young for plummeting standards and values, or as a secularist whose defense of scientific rationalism is a way to disparage religion.

Ms. Jacoby, however, is quick to point out that her indictment is not limited by age or ideology. Yes, she knows that eggheads, nerds, bookworms, longhairs, pointy heads, highbrows and know-it-alls have been mocked and dismissed throughout American history. And liberal and conservative writers, from Richard Hofstadter to Allan Bloom, have regularly analyzed the phenomenon and offered advice.

But now, Ms. Jacoby said, something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way.

Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.

She pointed to a 2006 National Geographic poll that found nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds don’t think it is necessary or important to know where countries in the news are located. So more than three years into the Iraq war, only 23 percent of those with some college could locate Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel on a map.

Ms. Jacoby, dressed in a bright red turtleneck with lipstick to match, was sitting, appropriately, in that temple of knowledge, the New York Public Library’s majestic Beaux Arts building on Fifth Avenue. The author of seven other books, she was a fellow at the library when she first got the idea for this book back in 2001, on 9/11.

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.

The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”

“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.

At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”

Ms. Jacoby doesn’t expect to revolutionize the nation’s educational system or cause millions of Americans to switch off “American Idol” and pick up Schopenhauer. But she would like to start a conversation about why the United States seems particularly vulnerable to such a virulent strain of anti-intellectualism. After all, “the empire of infotainment doesn’t stop at the American border,” she said, yet students in many other countries consistently outperform American students in science, math and reading on comparative tests.

In part, she lays the blame on a failing educational system. “Although people are going to school more and more years, there’s no evidence that they know more,” she said.

Ms. Jacoby also blames religious fundamentalism’s antipathy toward science, as she grieves over surveys that show that nearly two-thirds of Americans want creationism to be taught along with evolution.

Ms. Jacoby doesn’t leave liberals out of her analysis, mentioning the New Left’s attacks on universities in the 1960s, the decision to consign African-American and women’s studies to an “academic ghetto” instead of integrating them into the core curriculum, ponderous musings on rock music and pop culture courses on everything from sitcoms to fat that trivialize college-level learning.

Avoiding the liberal or conservative label in this particular argument, she prefers to call herself a “cultural conservationist.”

For all her scholarly interests, though, Ms. Jacoby said she recognized just how hard it is to tune out the 24/7 entertainment culture. A few years ago she participated in the annual campaign to turn off the television for a week. “I was stunned at how difficult it was for me,” she said.

The surprise at her own dependency on electronic and visual media made her realize just how pervasive the culture of distraction is and how susceptible everyone is — even curmudgeons.

Bill Gates Speech

This is an extract from Bill Gates' speech at the Davos conference. We mentioned it in class today when reading the NYT article "Anxiety crashes the party at Davos".

The Jean Sarkozy Situation, according to the NYTImes

A Father, a Son and a Political Imbroglio in France

By ELAINE SCIOLINO Published: February 12, 2008

PARIS — He is a lieutenant so loyal that President Nicolas Sarkozy personally rewarded him with the party’s nomination for mayor of the affluent Paris suburb that Mr. Sarkozy himself long governed.

Nicolas Sarkozy meeting Monday with local dignitaries in Camopi, French Guiana, where he declined to discuss the political dispute in France.

But now, David Martinon, the president’s spokesman, has abruptly withdrawn from the race. And it was the president’s own son Jean who forced him out.

“The conditions are no longer in place for me to lead the municipal campaign in Neuilly,” Mr. Martinon told reporters on Monday. “I am pulling out.”

Adding to the intrigue, Mr. Martinon said that he submitted his resignation as spokesman — but that Mr. Sarkozy refused to accept it.

With Mr. Sarkozy’s poll ratings in free fall, the fiasco in the suburb, Neuilly-sur-Seine, is the freshest sign of turmoil in his presidency.

His hyperactive style, long regarded as a welcome change from the torpor of the last days of the presidency of Jacques Chirac, is increasingly seen as movement without a goal. “It’s the law of the boomerang — the harder and farther you throw it, the faster and more violently it comes back,” Le Monde wrote in its editorial on Monday afternoon.

On Monday, Mr. Sarkozy’s popularity plunged to a new low of 39 percent, according to the latest Ipsos-Le Point survey, a drop of 10 points in the last month and 19 points since December.

In a separate poll by IFOP last week, 31 percent of the French said that Mr. Sarkozy’s image had “deteriorated” since his marriage to model-turned-singer-turned-first-lady Carla Bruni on Feb. 2; only 4 percent said the marriage had improved his image.

Mr. Sarkozy is considered toxic enough that some candidates of the Union for a Popular Movement, the party he long headed, seem to be distancing themselves from him ahead of the municipal elections next month.

Some candidates, including former Prime Minister Alain Juppé, who is running for re-election as mayor of Bordeaux, are campaigning without the party logo.

Mr. Sarkozy, who was mayor of Neuilly from 1983 to 2003, has promoted many of his own ministers and aides as candidates in the municipal elections as a way to project the power of his presidency and his party.

But he enraged many loyalists of his party when he handpicked Mr. Martinon, who is known to have been close to Mr. Sarkozy’s second ex-wife, Cécilia, as the candidate for the mayoral race in France’s richest town. With neither political experience nor a residence in Neuilly, Mr. Martinon, 36, was greeted during his first visit there last year with boos and chants of “Martinon, no, no!”

When a secret poll suggested that Mr. Martinon would lose a race that should have been an easy victory, Jean Sarkozy, the president’s 21-year-old son from his first marriage, and two local allies from the party announced Sunday that they were setting up a breakaway campaign.

It is highly unlikely that the young Mr. Sarkozy would have acted without his father’s blessing. President Sarkozy was conveniently on a trip to French Guiana on Monday, and when asked about the political imbroglio, replied: “No, no, no comment for the moment. Take advantage of Guiana!”

The Martinon affair is not the only familial soap opera involving Mr. Sarkozy these days.

Last week, he took legal action against the Web site of the left-leaning weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, accusing it of “falsification, use of false documents and possession of stolen goods.”

The Web site reported that eight days before his marriage to Ms. Bruni, Mr. Sarkozy sent a text message to his former wife Cécilia asking her to return home. “If you come back, I will cancel everything,” the message supposedly said.

Mr. Sarkozy’s lawyer said he believed that it was the first time that a serving president had lodged such a complaint against a news media outlet.

The legal action against the Web site has opened Mr. Sarkozy to even more media criticism, as the Nouvel Observateur reporter, Airy Routier, said he stood by his story. “For me, it is set in concrete, I have my sources,” he told Canal+ television on Saturday.

Jean-François Copé, the head of the party’s bloc in the National Assembly, appealed Sunday for a “cease-fire” between the press and the president. But the recent events have given new political ammunition to political opponents and angered members of Mr. Sarkozy’s party.

“There’s plenty to laugh about — a presidential spokesman designated by Nicolas Sarkozy, a plot, a family intrigue,” said the Socialist Party leader François Hollande.

François Bayrou, the centrist who came in third place in last year’s presidential election, on Sunday called the Martinon affair a new illustration of the “monarchical” style of Mr. Sarkozy, with its “perpetual contest of servility” involving with those in and out of favor. “It is pathetic for France,” he added. “It makes you want to cry.”

Georges Tron, a member of Mr. Sarkozy’s party and deputy mayor of the Paris suburb of Draveil, on Monday criticized the nomination of Mr. Martinon as pure political “parachuting” that “shocked” him. Only months into Mr. Sarkozy’s presidency, Mr. Tron added, “We are in a political context where the loss of bearings is evident.”

How Mr. Martinon will continue to function as Mr. Sarkozy’s spokesman is unclear.

He is so devoted that he postponed his wedding last year to accommodate Mr. Sarkozy’s schedule, and he stayed in his job even after Mr. Sarkozy called him an “imbecile” during an interview on American television.

A cartoon on Le Monde’s front page showed Mr. Sarkozy holding the train of Mr. Martinon’s cloak and carrying his son Jean on his shoulders as Jean throws daggers into Mr. Martinon’s back.

“Ça va? It’s good like this, Papa?” Jean asks.

“I taught him everything!” the smiling president says.

More So-Gé & Kerviel News

Theory Gains That Trader Had a Helper

By NICOLA CLARK and KATRIN BENNHOLD

Published: February 11, 2008

PARIS — The police investigating the trading scandal at Société Générale were moving on Sunday toward a theory that its rogue trader, whom the bank blames for losing it nearly $7.2 billion, might not have acted alone, as he and the bank have claimed.

The police have been sifting through nearly 2,000 pages of instant message traffic that the trader, Jérôme Kerviel, had sent. The police believe that he may have been trying to protect a friend who appears to have helped him cover his tracks — until one final, forged e-mail message made to look as if it had come from Deutsche Bank brought the case to light last month.

The instant message exchange adds to doubts about Société Générale’s explanation that Mr. Kerviel had engaged in the furtive trades alone, although lawyers say it does not necessarily weaken the bank’s assertion that there was no systemic fraud.

“There is a difference between a situation where two or more separate, isolated individuals cooperate with Kerviel and a situation where you have participation of his superiors, as he alleges,” said Christopher Mesnooh, an international business lawyer based in Paris.

Investigators suspect that Moussa Bakir, a 32-year-old broker at the futures brokerage Newedge, a subsidiary of Société Générale, sent Mr. Kerviel a forged e-mail message from Deutsche Bank, purporting to confirm a sizable trade in German DAX index futures that did not exist.

Late on the afternoon of Jan. 18, the day Société Générale says it uncovered roughly $74 billion worth of fictitious trades by Mr. Kerviel, Mr. Bakir indicated in a message exchange over the Reuters terminal system that he would send Mr. Kerviel documentation for an unspecified transaction.

“I’m sending you the conf,” Mr. Bakir wrote, using the shorthand for the confirmation of a trade.

Their messages — along with evidence that suggests they continued many of their conversations on cellphones — suggest that Mr. Bakir had an intimate knowledge of Mr. Kerviel’s surreptitious trading.

“They appear to have had a very close friendship,” the person said, adding that in many of their electronic messages there were also signals that they should continue their conversation on their cellphones.

Mobile phones are generally banned from bank trading rooms for security reasons.

One person with knowledge of the investigation said the police were trying to verify if the trade confirmation Mr. Bakir sent on Jan. 18 was the forged one Mr. Kerviel gave his supervisors to cover up an earlier mistake that had raised the suspicions of the bank’s compliance department.

Mr. Kerviel, this person said, had reported a large DAX futures trade that morning with a small German lender, Baader Bank, which would have required Baader to make a margin payment to Société Générale that would have exceeded Baader’s credit limit.

When questioned about the trade, Mr. Kerviel said he had made a mistake, and that the counterparty was actually Deutsche Bank. Mr. Kerviel was asked to provide proof that the trade with Deutsche Bank was genuine, this person said.

Later that afternoon, Mr. Kerviel presented compliance officers with the Deutsche Bank e-mail message. But when Société Générale double-checked, Deutsche Bank would not acknowledge the trade.

“We think this is the forged document from Deutsche Bank,” the person said of the confirmation referred to in Mr. Bakir’s message to Mr. Kerviel.

Mr. Bakir, who was arrested last week, was released on Saturday after 48 hours of questioning by French financial police, but he faces further questioning in the case.

A person with knowledge of the investigation said that, unlike Mr. Kerviel, Mr. Bakir had been less cooperative with police investigators.

Lawyers said his release suggested that he was considered a second-tier player compared with Mr. Kerviel.

One top Société Générale executive has told investigators that Mr. Kerviel rarely used his office e-mail account, sending no more than 60 messages over the last 12 months. But the transcripts showed that he actively used instant messaging.

The transcript suggests that Mr. Kerviel was aware of the gravity of his actions.

As early as October, when Mr. Kerviel’s trades were still profitable, their exchanges reflected signs of nervousness, according to excerpts, first published on the Web site of the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur on Saturday and confirmed by two people with knowledge of the investigation.

Christophe Reille, a spokesman for Mr. Kerviel’s lawyers, declined to comment on the transcript and described Mr. Kerviel’s relationship with Mr. Bakir as only “a professional one.”

Isabelle Montagne, a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor, said Mr. Bakir would be summoned again by two judges, but that no dates had been set.

A spokesman for Mr. Kerviel’s lawyer, Elisabeth Meyer, said they would file an appeal this week to have Mr. Kerviel released. He was placed in detention Friday for up to 12 months as the investigation continues.

UC-Berkeley Stands Firm on the War Front

Berkeley Finds a New Way to Make War Politics Local

By JESSE McKINLEY Published: February 1, 2008

BERKELEY, Calif. — While the City Council here has little — read, no — sway over foreign policy and distant wars, local parking is a different matter. And so it was that a parking space directly in front of the recruiting station here for the Marine Corps was awarded on Tuesday night to an antiwar group in the hope of running the Marines out of town.

Having failed in recent years to impeach President Bush and stop the war in Afghanistan, members of the City Council approved a resolution that encourages people to nonviolently “impede, passively or actively,” the work of the recruiters.

To that end, the council awarded the group, Code Pink, exclusive use of the parking spot for four hours one afternoon each week, for the next six months, to stage its protests. “If you’re going to join the Marines, you’re going to join the Marines,” said Zanna Joi, an activist with Code Pink, which favors cotton-candy-colored garb and in-your-face tactics. “But you don’t have to join the Marines from our town.”

In taking on the Marines, the council also directed the city attorney to investigate legal means of ousting the recruiting station, calling the Marines “uninvited and unwelcome intruders” in this bastion of liberal politics, 1960s free speech and high-minded nonbinding resolutions.

Tom Bates, the city’s mayor and a former Army man himself, said the vote represented his constituents’ longstanding — and frequently vocal — distaste for current military activity.

“Berkeley has been opposed to the Iraq war since the beginning; it’s overwhelmingly unpopular in this community,” Mr. Bates said. “And people feel this is an opportunity to express their discontent.”

One of the nine council members, Gordon Wozniak, opposed the resolution and the parking spot.

“I believe in free speech, and I certainly respect the right of Code Pink to protest,” Mr. Wozniak said. “But I’m also concerned we treat all sides fairly, and I think the Marines recruiters are just doing their job. They’re not evil people.”

Mr. Wozniak, a retired nuclear scientist who opposes the war in Iraq, added that those advocating the parking spot were engaged in the same type of selective treatment that many war opponents object to.

“A lot of the same people who voted for this felt Bush bent the rules,” Mr. Wozniak said, referring to the president’s unfounded claims that Iraq had chemical, nuclear or biological weapons.

This is hardly the first attempt by Berkeley’s civic leaders, many of whom fondly remember the city’s antiwar heyday in the 1960s, to express their unhappiness with the whole concept of war. In 2006, the City Council and voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure calling for the impeachment of Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, citing “high crimes and misdemeanors” related to the war in Iraq and the fight against terrorism.

In 2001, the City Council also called for an end to the bombing of Afghanistan just weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, something that earned some council members anonymous death threats.

Despite the vote on Tuesday, Mr. Bates said it was not clear if the city could actually force the Marines to move out of town.

“They still have a year and a half on their lease,” he said.

That said, the resolution also calls for the city attorney to look into possible violations of the Berkeley municipal code regarding sexual discrimination by the Marines, and asks the city manager to write the Marine commandant and tell him that Semper Fi fans are “not welcome in our city.”

Maj. Wes Hayes of the Marine Corps Recruiting Command in Quantico, Va., said the corps had not immediately been aware of Berkeley’s actions, but added that they would have no effect on recruiting efforts.

“It’s business as usual,” Major Hayes said.

Inside the Berkeley office, a small storefront a block from the University of California campus, a pull-up bar sits near the window as does a pile of weights, part of the physical fitness test for any potential leathernecks. A poster on the wall reminds recruiters not “to fear the winds of adversity.”

After being open earlier in the day, the front door was locked and the window blinds drawn on Thursday afternoon, at least for a while, as Code Pink protesters chanted happily outside.

Brandon Rousseau, an information technology consultant who works across the street and has a cousin in the Marines, said both sides had a right to go about their business.

“Even if that were a Nazi recruiting station,” Mr. Rousseau said, “they have a right to do that in America.”