Matthew Centrowitz learns the strategy behind speed

a chess match and roller derby. The race is just long enough to provide opportunities for nudging, clustering and tripping, and short enough to allow for furious late sprints. And it allows plenty of time for monumental mental breakdowns. Some of the world’s fastest milers have struggled to win Olympic or world championship races simply because they panicked or were outmaneuvered. Certain basic precepts govern the discipline; however, the best approach in any particular race is always a fluid concept, subject to change. A few of the fundamentals: ●Running in the lead, which requires making decisions about pace and surrendering the ability to watch your race rivals, keeps a runner out of traffic but can be mentally and physically taxing. ●Hanging in the pack, while offering the benefit of drafting, subjects runners to dangerous contact and possible falls or trips. ●Running on the outside of the pack removes the threat of collisions, but it lengthens the race. ●A fast pace spreads out the field but can hurt a runner’s ability to generate a hard sprint to the finish or ward off late challengers. ●A slow pace causes runners to bunch up, enhancing the chance of collisions, favoring the fastest sprinters and opening the door to underdogs. Those truths will help shape the split-second analysis and evaluation of ever-changing race conditions; Centrowitz said he has done nearly all of his learning through trial and error. Perfect execution demands some combination of experience, preparation, relaxation, aggressiveness, flexibility and good sense. “With me, you don’t want to give me a strategy because there’s a million different things that can happen,” Matthew Centrowitz said. “So going into a race with a set strategy can only set you up for failure.” A lot to learn The younger Centrowitz, 22, looks smaller and slighter in person than he does on the track. He’s listed by USA Track and Field at 5 feet 9 and 133 pounds, but the temptation is to demand a remeasurement. His short-cropped hair, bright, dark eyes, dimples and thin shoulders ensure he will be carded for years to come, and belie his increasingly calculated approach to his sport. The elder Centrowitz, a larger, gruffer and more profane version of his son, competed in the 1,500 in the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal and made the 1980 U.S. Olympic team that did not travel to Moscow because of the U.S. boycott. He won


Post-ABC News poll shows drop in Republican support for Afghan war

A majority of Republicans say for the first time that the war in Afghanistan has not been worth fighting, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll that comes as the continuing U.S. presence in that country is emerging as a key point of contention in the presidential race. The poll findings are likely to present a challenge for Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, who has said that the goal in Afghanistan should be to defeat the Taliban on the battlefield. President Obama stepped back from that goal during his 2009 strategy review and has set the end of 2014 as the departure date for all U.S. combat forces. Overall, the Post-ABC News poll reflects a country bone-weary of war after more than a decade of fighting in Afghanistan and, until late last year, an almost nine-year engagement in Iraq. Public support for the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan has fallen to an all-time low, with only 30 percent of respondents saying it has been worth fighting. Since the 2001 invasion, almost 2,000 U.S. troops have been killed and more than 15,000 have been wounded in Afghanistan. According to the poll, two-thirds of Americans think the war has not been worth fighting, equaling the most negative public assessments of the U.S. war effort in Iraq. Although foreign policy has been a peripheral issue in the presidential campaign, the poll’s findings highlight the difficulty Obama and Romney face in explaining U.S. policy to an increasingly war-weary electorate. Obama, who announced the deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan at the end of 2009, is now drawing down those forces with the goal of turning over security responsibilities to Afghan troops by the end of next year. The president intends to bring home all U.S. combat troops by the end of 2014 — and he is tapping into the nation’s war fatigue on the campaign trail. “For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq,” Obama told an audience in Hollywood, Fla., at a campaign fundraising event Tuesday. “And we’ve begun to transition in Afghanistan to put Afghans in the lead, bring our troops home.” But Romney, whose résuméis thin on foreign-policy experience, has criticized Obama’s management of the Afghanistan war. In particular, the former Massachusetts governor has said that he would have listened more closely to his commanding generals, who have urged Obama to keep troops in place


For the metro area, a show-stopping fly-around of America’s spaceship

must be willing and able to hang around outside for nearly an hour midmorning. That’s because the 747 will be zooming by very quickly. NASA did release a list of locations the plane was scheduled to fly near or over, including much of the Potomac River in the District, Ronald Reagan National Airport, National Harbor, the U.S. Capitol, the Mall, Andrews Air Force Base and much of the Capital Beltway on the Maryland side. Views from atop downtown buildings should be spectacular. Except for a few swoops, the 747 will cruise at 1,500 feet, high enough so that it isn’t looming like a menace. Anyone in Washington in November 1985 may remember a similar flyover, when NASA showed off the prototype space shuttle Enterprise before it landed at Dulles and the Smithsonian took possession. NASA’s experienced flight crew may cancel or modify the extraordinary fly-around at any time. Rain or wind could stop the show, sending the behemoth duo to an early landing. The parking lot at the Udvar-Hazy Center will open at 8 a.m. for “guaranteed viewing,” said Valerie Neal, the National Air and Space Museum curator who procured Discovery. Even if the flyover is canceled, the plane does, after all, have to land. BEST PLACES TO WATCH District of Columbia ●The Mall, including Memorial Bridge, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument and the east end. ●Hains Point at East Potomac Park, south of Jefferson Memorial and 14th Street Bridge. ●Southwest Waterfront Park. Virginia ●Long Bridge Park, 475 Long Bridge Dr., Arlington. ●Old Town Alexandria waterfront. ●Gravelly Point, just off George Washington Parkway, near National Airport. Maryland ●National Harbor, just off the Woodrow Wilson Bridge in Prince George’s County. Details are available online at www.airandspace.si.edu/collections/discovery/. Thursday, April 19 (weather dependent) After a NASA crew hoists Discovery off its carrier 747, they’ll tow the shuttle to the Udvar-Hazy Center for an all-day celebration Thursday. An 11 a.m. public ceremony will feature 14 of Discovery’s living commanders, former astronaut and Ohio senator John Glenn, and music by the U.S. Marine Drum and Bugle Corps. After the ceremony, visitors can see Discovery and the Smithsonian’s current shuttle, the prototype Enterprise, nose-to-nose outside the museum until 5:30 p.m., when Discovery will be rolled into its retirement home, the museum’s James S. McDonnell Space Hangar. Special events and displays will continue inside and outside the museum through Sunday , keeping space fans occupied with


Fans of Bo Xilai rally to ousted chief in China

Supporters of China’s “new left” take to the Web to show their dismay after Chongqing’s former Communist Party secretary Bo Xilai fell from favor. (Feng Li/Getty Images) HONG KONG — “We support the Chongqing Model and Bo Xilai,” declared a call to arms posted on the Web site of the Progress Society, a pugnacious “new left” fraternity that trumpets the ousted Chongqing Party boss as a hero. Its logo features a panda wearing a Mao cap and clutching a rifle in front of a Chinese flag. Bo, who until just a few weeks ago had a shot at joining the supremely powerful nine-member Politburo Standing Committee, has now been stripped of all his posts and is under investigation for “serious violations of discipline” while his wife is in detention on suspicion of murdering a British business consultant. China’s new left is a disparate, volatile force, united only by a vague sense that the country has taken a wrong turn by pursuing economic growth above all else. Members range from nationalist firebrands and prominent intellectuals to discontented princelings, such as Hu Yingmu, the elderly daughter of Mao Zedong’s longtime secretary. “The real concern in Beijing is that the links here are unpredictable, difficult to gauge and largely underground,” said Patricia Thornton, a scholar of Chinese politics at the University of Oxford. The jittery mood in Beijing, heightened by unfounded recent rumors of a coup, gives the new left “more heft than it would otherwise have in normal times and contributes greatly to sense of uncertainty as the next transition looms” at the Party’s 18th Congress later this year. Most of Bo’s previously outspoken supporters have now fallen silent in the face of a steamroller of official denunciation. But hit-and-run polemic strikes are being made on Web sites and Twitter-like micro-blogs. The Progress Society site, which is officially blocked in China but is still accessible to legions of Internet users who know how to skirt the “Great Firewall,” froths with bile and often personal attacks on Party leaders, particularly Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, a relative liberal whom Bo’s supporters blame for his downfall. “Fake communists have seized power in new China,” read a message flashing across the top of the home page Friday. Who stands behind the site, first registered to an address in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou in 2010, is not known. There have been rumors of a connection


European Youth Orchestra to tour United States

Trumpet player Victor Koch Jensen, of the European Union Youth Orchestra. (Courtesy of European Union Youth Orchestra) Two weeks before their six-city American tour, the musicians of the European Union Youth Orchestra are holed up, practicing Richard Strauss’s “Alpine Spring,” among the snow-capped peaks of Interlaken. They’re not there to set the mood — although, “Alpine Spring” must sound crisper in Switzerland — but because Vladimir Ashkenazy, their six-time Grammy Award-winning conductor and music director, lives nearby, outside Lucerne. Some of the orchestra members are meeting in this scenic tourist hub for the first time, while others are old hands at the age of 20. But all the members, ages 15 to 24, are grateful to be part of an orchestra that recruits promising young musicians from schools and conservatories around the continent. On April 15, the EUYO will perform a program of Copland, Bruch and Strauss at the Kennedy Center, its first American tour since 1988. The orchestra also will visit the Big Apple and the Windy City and meet musicians from the University of North Carolina and Indiana University. For their travels and good will, they’re rewarded with a program that reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of classical. Many of these young talents will make their American debut with Itzhak Perlman in Carnegie Hall and Pinchas Zuckerman at the Kennedy Center. Not a bad welcome to the United States. “We’ve been here for only three days, and already we’re so excited,” said Andrei Mihailescu, 21, a principal bassist from Romania. “The orchestra influences your life so muc. . . . How many people at this age can say, I’ve played with Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman? It’s one in a million for us.” Yet the odds of becoming one of the privileged young musicians aren’t so stacked. About 4,000 amateur musicians audition each year. Naturally, competition is tough and competitive. Besides its reputation for snazzy, glamorous tours — this one is costing about $90,000 — the EUYO is a renowned feeder orchestra, bolstering the burgeoning careers of its 117 young members, who hail from all 27 countries in the E.U. Double bass player Andrei Mihailescu, of the European Union Youth Orchestra. (Courtesy of European Union Youth Orchestra) “If you’ve been in the EUYO, it is like a diploma,” said Joy Bryer, co-founder and secretary general of the orchestra. “You can go on to join the London Symphony or any


Book review: ‘The Social Conquest of Earth,’ by Edward O. Wilson

by the Nobel Prize. A professor emeritus at Harvard, he has produced a body of work that has withstood scientific critics, including those who rejected his assertion that both animal and human social behavior is based on biological and evolutionary principles. (Activists dumped a pitcher of ice water on him during a 1978 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.) Others rejected his prediction in “The Diversity of Life” (1992) that more than a quarter of all species on Earth would vanish by mid-century, but subsequent research has supported the notion that we are in the midst of the Earth’s sixth great extinction. ”The Social Conquest of Earth” by Edward O. Wilson (W.W. Norton) To build his latest argument, Wilson first sets about exploding an important theory of evolutionary biology that he once championed. The key to understanding the human condition is to understand how our species developed advanced social lives and the altruistic behaviors they require. If evolution is driven by the survival of the fittest — individual selection — how does one explain the self-sacrifice seen among the workers of an ant colony or a bee hive, or in the person who runs into a burning house to save a stranger? The current explanation — kin selection, or “inclusive fitness” — is that altruism evolved among closely related individuals as a way to ensure the survival of the shared portions of their genetic heritage. But Wilson describes in considerable detail how the insect studies on which this theory was built have since been shown to be incorrect. (Many scientists in the field disagree, and dozens have denounced him in letters to the scholarly journals in which he first aired his critique.) Instead, Wilson argues that altruism is a result not of individual or kin selection, but of group selection. Charles Darwin himself proposed that a tribe that had many members willing to contribute to or sacrifice themselves for the common good “would be victorious over most other tribes.” Drawing on recent evidence from social psychology, archaeology and evolutionary biology, Wilson builds a compelling and multi-faceted case that Darwin was right. Species that have developed advanced social lives, or eusociality — certain bees, ants, termites and ourselves — have been staggeringly successful and extremely rare. “Our ancestors were one of only two dozen or so animal lines ever to evolve eusociality, the next major level of


Discover some facts about Discovery

The space shuttle Discovery lifts off from Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 2005. The next stop for the shuttle is the Smithsonian. (DAVE MARTIN/Associated Press/AP) Look, up in the sky. Tuesday morning, if the weather if good, the space shuttle Discovery will fly piggyback on a 747 jet over parts of the Washington area on its way to landing about 10:40 a.m. at Dulles International Airport. Then on Thursday, the shuttle will be moved to the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center, where it will be on display for everyone to see. If you’re thinking “but I’ve already seen a shuttle at the museum,” you’d be right. But that is the shuttle Enterprise, which never actually flew in space. Discovery went on lots of fascinating and historic missions. Here are just a few facts about Discovery that you can use to amaze your siblings, classmates, parents and teachers. ●Shuttle Discovery flew its first mission on August 30, 1984, and landed after its last mission on March 9, 2011. Buzz Lightyear at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. The doll traveled on Discovery, though not quite to infinity and beyond. (NASA/Paul E. Alers) ●It flew 39 missions and spent a total of one year (365 days) in space. ●Discovery took the Hubble Space Telescope, which is about the size of a school bus, into space. ●It got its name from four British exploring ships, all named Discovery. ●Discovery was the shuttle that was launched after the tragic disasters involving the shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the Columbia in 2003. It earned the nickname the “Return to Flight” orbiter. ●Discovery carried former astronaut John Glenn, who was the first American to orbit Earth in 1962, back into space in 1998. At the time, Glenn was 77 years old, making him the oldest person in space. ●Discovery carried a Buzz Lightyear toy into space in 2008. Buzz spent 468 days on the international space station before returning to Earth aboard Discovery in 2009. (Last month, Buzz found a new home at the Air and Space Museum on the Mall as part of the popular-culture collection.) ●The only president to attend a shuttle launch was Bill Clinton. He watched Discovery blast into space in October 1998.


Diplomats cautiously hopeful after talks on Iranian nuclear crisis

ISTANBUL — The day-long talks at an Istanbul conference center did not yield an agreement on specific curbs to Iran’s nuclear program, but U.S. and European officials described the negotiations as “constructive and useful” and said a second round had been set for May 23 in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. “We want now to move to a sustained process of serious dialogue,” said Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief and lead negotiator for a bloc of six world powers engaged in the first direct nuclear talks with Iran since January 2011. A senior U.S. official described the tone of the discussions as encouraging but stressed the need for rapid progress on steps to ease concerns about Iran’s nuclear intentions. “While the atmosphere today was positive, and good enough to merit a second round, there is urgency for concrete progress, and the window for diplomatic action is closing,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe diplomatic deliberations. The official added that there were no expectations for immediately lifting sanctions against Iran. The chief Iranian representative, Supreme National Security Council Secretary Saeed Jalili, called the talks a “success” and said he believed the atmosphere was now conducive to progress. “We saw a positive approach,” said Jalili, speaking through an interpreter. “We consider it a step forward. For Iranian people, the language of threats and pressure don’t work. But the approach of cooperation and talk could be fruitful.” The senior U.S. official said that during the meetings, Jalili “repeated what they said in the past, that it is un-Islamic to have a nuclear weapon.” Both Ashton and Jalili said the two sides would begin work immediately on an arguably harder task: drafting concrete proposals for resolving the crisis. The proposals and counterproposals will address an array of complex and emotionally laden issues, including Western demands for suspension of parts of Iran’s nuclear program as well as Iranian calls for easing economic sanctions. Signaling Iran’s intention to take a tough line in the future talks, Jalili said Tehran would insist on having “full rights under the non-proliferation treaty,” implying that it will continue to maintain its right to enrich uranium, which it says it needs for peaceful nuclear energy uses. Before taking the podium, Jalili’s aide displayed a poster of Iranian scientists killed in bomb attacks over the past four years — assaults Jalili denounced as terrorism.


Think True Value — but for banks

In a city where special-interest pleading and finger-pointing has been developed to a high art form, there are no bigger whiners than the community banks. When they’re not complaining about excessive regulation, misguided monetary policy and inflated deposit insurance premiums, they’re railing against unfair competition from big banks, savings and loans, credit unions, credit card companies, finance companies and other unregulated lenders. Considering this mountain of injustice that has been heaped upon them, it’s a wonder these bankers are able to get out of bed in the morning, let alone show up smiling at the weekly Rotary luncheon. The latest woe to befall community bankers, of course, has been the collapse of the housing and commercial real estate markets, which hit particularly hard since that is where they’ve put the vast majority of their money over the past 15 years. But who can blame them? After all, much of their consumer lending business has been stolen away by bigger and more efficient lenders who have easy access to cheaper funding through Wall Street and the “shadow” banking system. In the process, many had become addicted to the higher yields offered by asset-backed securities and loans to local home builders, developers and land speculators. Now, with their balance sheet weighed down by under-performing real estate loans and underwater securities, community banks find themselves in something of a pickle. New regulations that limit the fees they can charge depositors for things such as debit card transactions, overdrafts and ATM withdrawals threaten to dramatically reduce their fee income. A relatively flat yield-curve has reduced the “spread” between the interest they pay to depositors and the interest they can charge borrowers. And although they still have money to lend, many now find they have lost the expertise, risk appetite and customer relationships to make to small- and medium-size firms in sectors other than real estate. A couple of Washington financiers have come up with a clever answer to their prayers. One is Lee Sachs, a former Treasury Department official in the Clinton and Obama administrations. The other is John Delaney, the just-nominated Democratic candidate for Congress from western Maryland and founder of CapitalSource, a commercial lender based in Chevy Chase. Their new venture, BancAlliance, is a cooperative of community banks that aims to make loans to mid-sized and large businesses that none of its members has the size, expertise or risk appetite to make


Online comparision-shopping tool makes costs of college clearer

My oldest daughter just returned from touring several colleges she’s interested in attending next year. I’m hoping the school on the top of her list will be one of my favorites, North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro. I’m also pulling for my alma mater, the University of Maryland at College Park, but she says it’s too close to our home, about 17 miles away. “You won’t think it’s too close if you have to walk,” I said. Olivia was not amused. My husband and I have told our daughter that she can apply to any college she likes — state or private, large or small. But we have saved just enough to cover tuition plus room, board and books for four years based on estimated in-state school expenses. If she gets accepted to a school where the cost is more than the money we have set aside, she has to get scholarships or grants to make up the difference. She cannot take out any student loans. Nor will we. So all of us need to weigh Olivia’s college offers. This process should be a lot easier, thanks to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It has introduced one of the best college-cost tools I’ve seen, a Financial Aid Comparison Shopper. In April, about 1.5 million students will be receiving multiple admissions letters, the bureau says. But once they’re accepted to a school, their families have to figure out how to pay for it. With total education debt crossing the $1 trillion mark, it’s the second-largest source of consumer debt after mortgages, according to CFPB director Richard Cordray. Students excited about getting into their top pick might not focus on the fact that most of the financial aid they’re being offered is in the form of loans. Or the reverse could be true. An elite, expensive school might be more affordable when scholarships and grants are added. The problem is that the financial aid information that families receive is presented differently, and it’s often incomplete and hard to figure out. “We know that putting student loan debt into context is particularly important for students and parents,” Cordray said. As part of its “Know Before You Owe” student loan project, the bureau’s shopping tool allows you to select three schools at once and then compare tuition, fees and other expenses for first-year, full-time undergraduates. The database includes information from more than 7,500


CoStar: Region’s retail, industrial vacancies drop in first quarter

for retail. With CoStar continuing to forecast positive absorption of available space and an exceptionally low level of new construction, the outlook is for a slow but sustained recovery, although rising energy prices and fiscal debt issues for both European and U.S. governments remain clouds on the horizon. Office In the first quarter of 2012, U.S. office markets posted nearly 11.5 million square feet of net absorption, less than the two previous quarters. But with very little new construction, the office vacancy rate continued to trend downward, dipping under 13 percent for the first time since 2008. After eight consecutive quarters of positive absorption and very little new construction, the U.S. office market appears poised for the return of rent increases. Indeed, eight of the 10 largest U.S. office markets posted year-over-year increases in rent in the first quarter of 2012. Washington was the exception among the largest U.S. office markets. With negative 421,909 square feet of net absorption during the first quarter, Washington recorded the lowest level of office absorption among the top metros. Warehouse The U.S. warehouse sector also saw positive net absorption and declining vacancy rates behind a slight increase in asking rents. In the first quarter, warehouse vacancy fell to 9.4 percent , down 0.7 percentage points from one year ago. The reduction in vacancy was driven by positive net absorption of 20.9 million square feet in the first quarter. However, this amount was actually a slight disappointment given the acceleration in leasing activity toward the second half of 2011. In the Washington region, the Manassas/I-66 and South Prince George’s County submarkets accounted for the majority of industrial space demand growth during the first quarter. Retail The U.S. retail sector did achieve positive net absorption in the first quarter, preserving a streak of 11 consecutive quarters of positive absorption, along with a stabilized vacancy although still declining rents. In Washington, the retail vacancy is much lower than the national average at 4.9 percent, a slight increase from the previous quarter. Area retail rents have stabilized and even increased in certain in-demand markets. The Washington market’s demographics continue to attract interest from national retailers. Recent major retail leases signed in the area include a 125,875-square-foot deal signed by grocery store operator Wegmans at Seneca Meadows; a 57,252-square-foot lease signed by Kohl’s at 3901 Aspen Hill Rd. and a 50,000-square-foot lease signed by Starplex Cinemas at Loudoun Station.


Deltek: Cloud opportunities will likely come in three forms

Federal cloud computing, while often viewed as a single opportunity, is actually a fractured market. Vendors hoping to find sales should focus on three categories: determining an organization’s cloud strategy, enabling an organization’s readiness to move to the cloud or implementing a cloud-based solution. In the first type, an agency might request guidance on how to set up plans to implement a cloud environment. These opportunities might include help developing policies and best practices. For example, the Food and Drug Administration is expected this year to release a solicitation for “scientific computing support,” meaning the FDA is looking for guidance on how to best use the benefits associated with cloud computing. It’s an opportunity that could help a contractor develop a particular solution it could then replicate for other agencies. In the second category, an agency has determined it will adopt cloud computing and is setting up the needed infrastructure. Work to consolidate data centers, create virtual systems that mimic physical technology or create a service-oriented architecture could all be included. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as one example, has a $3 billion contract vehicle for supporting a virtual data center that will be awarded to several small businesses. The agency, which is expected to issue a solicitation in May, wants to establish a group of geographically dispersed data centers owned and operated by a pool of companies under a single contracting program. A related solicitation for large businesses was released late last year. In the third type, an agency already has a cloud strategy and has readied its infrastructure. The next step is buying or developing applications in a cloud environment. Take the Social Security Administration’s request in February seeking sources for a Web analytics software service. The administration’s goal is to reduce costs and provide its Web masters with better metrics on Internet and intranet usage. As agencies continue to capture and store more data, more may try to tackle the challenge of how to use that data for decision-making. Jennifer Sakole is principal research analyst at Herndon-based Deltek, which analyzes the government contracting market and can be found at www.deltek.com.


Contract to Watch: NIH readies IT contract vehicle

Contractors are readying for a new National Institutes of Health effort to buy computer hardware and commercially available software. The program would replace an existing contract vehicle called Electronic Commodities Store 3, or ECS3, which was first awarded in 2002, said Alexander Serbau, a senior research analyst for health and human services at Deltek, which studies the government contracting market. At the time, 66 contractors received a place on the contract vehicle, which is worth up to $6 billion, said Serbau. About $1.7 billion has been spent using it, according to the NIH. ECS3 is broken into six categories of work, from providing commercial desktops and laptops to software to telephone equipment. The program is focused on products, but includes some basic services such as maintenance, Serbau said. The NIH’s technology assessment and acquisition center is collecting contractor feedback about the replacement program, called Chief Information Officer New, or CIO-New, through a market survey originally released in February. The survey is meant to collect industry perspective on the contract vehicle’s scope and evaluation criteria. A solicitation for CIO-New likely won’t be released until mid-summer, he added. Still, Deltek users are already anticipating the program; nearly 500 have indicated the effort is of interest. At the same time, the NIH’s acquisition arm is preparing to award contracts for the hotly-anticipated Chief Information Officer-Solutions and Partners 3 contract, better known as CIO-SP3. That program, Serbau said, will likely be used to buy more technical services, such as developing software.


HMSHost chief executive settling into new role

airports and 101 travel plazas is paying off handsomely for HMSHost, he said. Sales rose 5.2 percent to $2.5 billion in 2011. And Fricke said he expects another prosperous year as the company rolls out new restaurant concepts and opens new travel plazas. “We’re off to a great start,” Fricke said, declining to comment on the lawsuit. “And I will not be deterred.” A LEARNING CURVE Coming off a stint as chief executive of Cartridge World, an ink and toner retailer with 1,700 stores in 63 countries, Fricke is well-versed in multinational operations, but not so much in food service. Spending hours at the elbow of the executive chefs in the company’s test kitchen is helping, as is dozens of visits to its airport eateries. Airport dining comprises at least 60 percent of the company’s business. Fricke sees the sector in the midst of transforming from a haven for fast-food joints to a place where higher-end concepts can thrive. “Consumer preferences don’t change just because they’ve gone through security or are stopping on the side of the road,” he said. HMSHost has developed a collection of restaurant concepts that it is opening at a handful of airports. In February, the company introduced Bubbles Wine Bar and Beaudevin Wine Bar at Chicago O’Hare International Airport. HMSHost said it will open more concepts this year that it is keeping under wraps for now. Innovation is important. In recent years, the number of passengers boarding aircraft has slipped from 7.5 percent annual growth in 2004 to 2.5 percent last year, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Fricke said that shift in consumer traffic because of fuel prices and the sluggish economy has meant being more creative in structuring concessions. These days, HMSHost places some of its Starbucks stands in baggage claims to capture more customers. HMSHost is also contending with rising food costs. Fricke, as a result, expects that margins may shrink. REMAKING REST AREAS The company has been tinkering with its highway rest area strategy. Two years ago, HMSHost entered into a joint venture agreement with Ontario-based Kilmer Van Nostrand to develop and operate 23 travel plazas along two highways in Canada. They have redeveloped 14 of those plazas. The company recently lost some rest stop contracts in Florida, but is opening the redeveloped South Somerset Plaza in Pennsylvania next month. “On any given day, we got four or five different sites


D.C. road rules won’t change for Emancipation Day

Monday is Emancipation Day in the District. In the past, D.C. officials have suspended the rush-hour traffic rules but not this time. As a result, drivers should anticipate the typical weekday traffic pattern of reversible lanes on Connecticut Avenue NW between Legation Street and Woodley Road; on 16th Street NW between Arkansas Avenue and Irving Street; on Canal Road between Chain Bridge and Foxhall Road; and on Independence Avenue between Fourth Street SW and Second Street SE. The National Park Service also will maintain the usual rush-hour pattern on Rock Creek Parkway. The District’s rush-hour parking restrictions will be enforced from 7 to 9:30 a.m. and from 4 to 6:30 pm. Vehicles that violate the restrictions are subject to ticketing and towing. On the holiday, the D.C. Department of Public Works generally will not issue tickets for expired meters, but there’s an important exception. Because the Washington Nationals will be playing a home game Monday evening, parking rules will be enforced in the neighborhoods around Nationals Park. Look carefully at the signs on the street poles and on the meters. The other D.C. rules that govern parking in residential areas and on streets scheduled for sweeping will be suspended for the holiday. Metro The biggest effect on bus service may result from the parade and festival downtown. Go to washingtonpost.com/drgridlock for the latest update on bus detours. Emancipation Day parade and festival The Emancipation Day Parade is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday on Pennsylvania Avenue NW between Third and Seventh streets. A festival is scheduled for 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. at Freedom Plaza, along E Street NW between 13th and 14th streets. Pennsylvania Avenue NW and the surrounding streets will be closed between Third and 14th streets NW from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. for the parade. These streets will be closed from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. for the parade and festival: ● Constitution Avenue NW and the surrounding streets between Seventh Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW. ●Pennsylvania Avenue NW and the surrounding streets between 12th and 14th streets NW. ● E Street NW between 13th and 14th streets NW. ● 12th Street NW between E Street and Constitution Avenue NW. There’s also a fireworks display, which will close 12th Street NW between E Street and Constitution Avenue from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. — Robert Thomson


Juilliard Baroque started weak but finished strong in District concert

The Juilliard Baroque, a 10-member period-instrument assemblage recently formed by British violinist Monica Huggett, made its area debut Saturday at the Library of Congress in an all-Bach program that started weak and ended strong. The second half offered vibrant performances of the Overture No. 2 (here in a reconstructed original version for oboe and strings) and the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto. In the latter, harpsichordist Kenneth Weiss navigated the huge cadenza with clean fingerwork and dramatic pacing. His ornamentation and agogic freedom in the slow movement were exemplary, as well, although it raised a question: Why was such playing so rare everywhere else on the program throughout the ensemble? The most impressive performance of the evening was from oboist Gonzalo Ruiz, who handled the marathon difficulties of the overture with something approaching relish, even though his balky instrument protested at times. Perhaps it was just greater familiarity with the repertoire, but the tutti ensemble in both works was also noticeably more precise, and more purposeful in inflection, than in the first half. Period-instrument groups get no special cachet from me; historical scholarship does not give anyone a leg up on musical artistry. But the Juilliard Baroque showed, in these two pieces at least, that even the most overplayed repertoire can sound fresh and new when fine musicians pull together in a unified vision. In the first half, a group of selections from “A Musical Offering” sounded slapdash; the aural novelty of hearing the plangent early woodwinds was not enough to compensate for the generic sameness of the playing. In the final “Ricercar a 6,” and even more so in the opening work (a concerto in A minor for the same forces as the Brandenburg), the conductorless ensemble lapsed into a tedious plod, with the players’ individual, random inflections amounting to a generic soup. A mixed bag, then, but a skilled, sturdy group. I hope we hear more from them. — Robert Battey


D.C. culinary start-up caters to dining enthusiasts, innovative chefs

year and the fireside chats that they host and the literature-inspired dinners. But there are also the dining elements, and being part of the group really lets you see what can be special about a restaurant.” The idea stemmed from what was called the Number 68 project at 68 Boleyn Rd. in London. Richmond’s friend, a chef, backed out of the venture with several weeks of pre-sold dinners remaining on the test kitchen’s schedule. Responding quickly, Richmond managed to fill the rest of the evenings with a rotation of guest chefs — an emergency plan that received rave reviews from local foodies and media outlets. So when Richmond, a New Jersey native with a background in economic development, returned to the U.S. for work less than a year later, she said she wondered whether the same model could catch hold in the nation’s capital, where an up-and-coming restaurant scene was beginning to blossom. She tested it under the same name, renting out space downtown and bringing in some of the city’s premier chefs to carry out a nine-week pop-up restaurant experiment from February to May 2011. The District incarnation of the Number 68 Project was well-received, much like its predecessor in London. However, Richmond soon realized that renting out space to host the dinners was not feasible for the chefs. “The brick-and-mortar model was too big of an investment, and the chefs really didn’t want to keep stepping away from their kitchens for two- or three-week stretches,” she said. Richmond partnered with Nick and David Wiseman, the District natives behind Roadside Food Projects, who helped her reach out to additional restaurants in the city, build the membership site online and begin spreading the word about their new start-up, now christened The Coterie. They decided to operate on quarterly themes (for example, one recently highlighting chefs’ earliest memories of cooking) and to incorporate sophisticated, intellectual discussions of politics, literature and culture into each of their dinners and events. The group also began hosting a series of cocktail events and salon-style dinners, which Richmond said continue to be one of the main drivers of new memberships. That membership currently costs $42 a month, and each dinner at one of the five partnering venues costs a flat $135, of which The Coterie keeps $10 and passes the rest along to the restaurant. So far, The Coterie has been financed largely by the three


More military personnel might have been involved in misconduct before Obama’s trip

five of its personnel to their rooms at the hotel, pending the investigation. Military officials did not say how many more of its personnel might now be suspected of participating in the alleged misconduct. Prostitution, legal and regulated, is a booming business in the Caribbean tourist hub of Cartagena, a city of about 1 million inhabitants that is famous for its Spanish colonial heart and a modern stretch of Miami-style high-rises. As a byproduct of its lure of cruise ships and conventioneers, Cartagena draws prostitutes from both the city’s poor and upper-class echelons — as well as from different cities around the country. Before the summit, the government of President Juan Manuel Santos asked the city health department for an action plan outlining disease prevention efforts with prostitutes ahead of the gathering of 30 hemispheric leaders. Officials at Cartagena’s health department said that there are about 80 streetwalkers in the city’s colonial district, which features bountiful nightclubs, boutique hotels and elegant restaurants. Another 550 women, who will spend the night with a client for about $250, are estimated to be available at 15 nightclubs, officials said. The Pleyclub touts its services by distributing small, glossy advertisements featuring nearly naked women to taxi drivers who drive visitors around town. The ads, in Spanish, promise: “We’re the best good time in the city.” Inside the Pleyclub, there is a stage with two poles and a glass-enclosed shower in which women perform strip shows. Several hotel workers said some of the Secret Service agents spoke good Spanish. The Hotel Caribe, like most hotels in Cartagena, permits overnight visitors to join hotel guests. But there are rules: Young women brought for the night must come after 11 p.m.; cannot spend time in public areas, such as the lobby; must present identification to prove they are adults; and must leave by 6 a.m., two hotel employees said. The hotel also levies a $60 surcharge for each overnight visitor, said the employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the management. Hotel management declined to comment about the incident, saying that it must protect the privacy of its guests. Even though Secret Service officials have said Obama’s security was not compromised, lawmakers who oversee the agency have grown increasingly outraged as new allegations surface. “I find this to be so appalling,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the ranking


It’s time for Venus to transit

eight years apart (the last one took place on June 8, 2004; the next will come June 5/6 this year), but they roll around only once a century or so. In his new book, Nick Lomb, longtime curator of astronomy at Australia’s Sydney Observatory, gives the complete rundown on this astronomical event. With the invention of the telescope in the 1600s, the transit of Venus became a hot ticket for astrophiles, who often went to great lengths to check it out. How great? Well, Captain James Cook, for one, sailed across the globe to Tahiti to view it in 1769. And not just because it looked cool. By providing a third point of reference, the transit of Venus made it possible for astronomers to measure the distance from Earth to the sun, which unlocked a lot of other data, including the mass of the sun and the other planets. Lacking modern solar filters, observers had to watch the transit by positioning a telescope to project the sun’s image onto a piece of paper in a darkened room. There’s better equipment available these days. If you miss Venus’s appearance in June, you’ll have to wait a while — until 2117 — to catch the transit again. Space Travel Making the stars swirl Fragile Oasis Blog On NASA’s Fragile Oasis blog (find it at www.fragileoasis.org), astronauts from the United States and around the world have a forum to share their experiences — including descriptions of what it’s like to grow vegetables in zero gravity, meditations on space travel, and snapshots from out of this world. Recently, astronaut Don Pettit, a chemical engineer and all-around science expert aboard the international space station, posted about his pet project of taking arty photographs from low-Earth orbit. While the space station spins around the planet, it’s also revolving on its own axis, meaning that if you use a long exposure, you get pretty trippy results. In Pettit’s photos, the stars have swirling light trails, the atmosphere glows green and the electric lights given off by cities shimmer beneath the clouds. It took a little bit of ingenuity, though. To get the effect, Pettit needed a 15-minute exposure, which his digital camera couldn’t accommodate. “To achieve the longer exposures I do what many amateur astronomers do,” he writes. “I take multiple 30-second exposures, then ‘stack’ them using imaging software, thus producing the longer exposure.” — Aaron Leitko


Pulitzer Prizes in journalism, arts and letters announced; two area winners

improve school safety. The Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott was a finalist in the criticism category. Kennicott also was a Pulitzer finalist in 2000 for editorials he wrote for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Among the seven arts and letters winners were author John Lewis Gaddis for his biography, “George F. Kennan: An American Life,” which has also won the American History Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. The general nonfiction winner was “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern,” by Stephen Greenblatt. The volume — about how the rediscovery, translation and copying of an ancient Roman philosophic epic poem by Lucretius helped fuel the Renaissance — has also won the National Book Award. The history winner was “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” by Manning Marable, who died shortly before the book’s publication. In his review for The Post, Wil Haygood wrote that Manning’s work “goes deeper and richer than a mere homage to Malcolm X. It is a work of art, a feast that combines genres skillfully: biography, true-crime, political commentary. It gives us Malcolm X in full gallop, a man who died for his belief in freedom, a man whom Marable calls the ‘fountainhead’ of the black power movement in America.” The Pulitzer winner for drama, “Water by the Spoonful,” is about a soldier making a tough transition back to civilian life in Philadelphia after serving in Iraq. It was written by Quiara Alegria Hudes, who was a finalist for the prize in 2007 for a similarly themed work, “Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue.” She also wrote the book for the musical “In the Heights,” a Pulitzer finalist in 2009. Two categories, editorial writing and fiction, did not award prizes. The winners this year included: ●Breaking news reporting: the Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News staff. ●Investigative reporting: Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eileen Sullivan and Chris Hawley of the Associated Press and Michael J. Berens and Ken Armstrong of the Seattle Times. ●Feature writing: Eli Sanders of the Stranger, a Seattle weekly. ●Commentary: Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune. ●Criticism: Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe. ●Breaking news photography: Massoud Hossaini of Agence France-Presse. ●Feature photography: Craig F. Walker of the Denver Post. Under the letters, drama and music categories, winners included: ●Poetry: “Life on Mars” by Tracy K. Smith. ●Music: “Silent Night: Opera in Two Acts” by Kevin Puts. Staff writer Michael Cavna contributed to this report.


Asking old human tissue to answer new scientific questions

have been held at various places in the Washington area since soon after the autopsies.) Most of the virus’s eight genes, however, were reconstructed from much larger pieces of lung recovered from a body buried in permafrost after flu swept through Brevig Mission, Alaska, killing 90 percent of the Inuit residents. The third source was from flu victims’ tissue blocks stored at Royal London Hospital. All of those cases came from the epidemic’s explosive “fall wave,” which began in October 1918. There had been scattered fatal cases of flu in Army camps as early as March that year. Was that the same virus? If it was, did it pick up some particularly dangerous mutations over the summer? Last year, Taubenberger and his team published an analysis of four rare 1918 “spring wave” flu cases, shedding light on what was — and wasn’t — happening in the months before the same virus killed 50 million people worldwide. The 1918 strain was directly descended from an avian — “bird flu” — virus. Like all flu viruses, it must attach to cells in the nose, throat and lungs before it causes illness. In three of the four spring cases, the gene responsible for that attaching mechanism was more “birdlike” than in the fall cases. By fall, the virus (in most cases) had a mutation that made it better adapted to attacking human beings. Was that what made the difference in the deadliness of the spring and fall waves? It appears not. The lung damage seen in the spring and fall specimens was nearly identical. There’s also much epidemiological evidence that the spring virus was easily transmitted from person to person, just like the fall one. So something, still undiscovered, was going on that made the fall wave different. Taubenberger and his research team still hope to find out what. Their new strategy is to look for strains from the early 1920s, because by then flu was no longer killing young adults at the rate it had a few years earlier. Something had changed. If it turns out there are new mutations in that “Son of Spanish Flu,” then the researchers might be able to deduce the reasons for the parent strain’s lethality. That’s not the only mystery. “One of the big questions about the 1918 virus is: Where did it come from?” Taubenberger said. “Having the full [gene] sequence of the virus still


hasn’t answered that question,” But older samples might. They could shed light on the mutations and gene reassortments — small steps and big leaps — that led to the pandemic strain. Over the past few years, research assistants at the Royal London Hospital have been going through items from the first decade of its pathology collection, which goes back to 1908. They are looking for cases of fatal wintertime pneumonia, illnesses that are most likely to be caused by flu. (However, none of the autopsy reports are labeled “influenza”; that virus wasn’t identified in people until 1933.) The Royal London team has found 20 candidate cases, and “a handful” have screened positive for flu, Taubenberger said. The work is exceptionally laborious because time has shattered the flu genes into tiny fragments. Just identifying which subtype — there are 16 — these old strains fall into, let alone reconstructing them, will require a lot more testing. Fishing for the gene fragments requires chopping up pieces of the preserved tissue, extracting its soluble contents with water and then winnowing trace amounts of viral RNA from the human and bacterial RNA that is 99 times more prevalent. The researchers are looking for more efficient ways to do this. “We could easily burn up all the material just trying to find out what subtype we have,” Taubenberger said. “I have been very reluctant to just dive in. We have waited 110 years, and we can wait a little longer.” John Oxford, a virologist at Royal London and Taubenberger’s collaborator, agrees. “Pathologists risked their lives to get those samples,” he says of the tissue from Spanish flu victims. “We need to be able to pass the baton on to another generation. We don’t want to just gobble it up.” The backstory of HIV AIDS was identified in the United States in 1981, and the virus that causes it was found in 1983, but nobody credible in the scientific world believes it just appeared overnight. Human immunodeficiency virus clearly descended from a monkey ancestor, simian immunodeficiency virus. At some point it leaped a “species barrier” and got into people. But the big genetic difference between HIV and SIV implies it must have been evolving for decades — which is to say, circulating in thousands of people — by the time the human disease was recognized. So what is the unknown backstory of HIV? This is an


Concert review: European Union Youth Orchestra at the Kennedy Center

Conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy led the European Union Youth Orchestra at the Kennedy Center on Sunday. (Keith Saunders/Harrison/Parrott Ltd.) We seem to be living in something of a golden age of youth orchestras. Ensembles of young musicians, such as the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra and the New World Symphony, have set standards high for orchestral players of any age, let alone those at the student level. And as they amply demonstrated at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall on Sunday, the European Union Youth Orchestra need fear no competition. Under Vladimir Ashkenazy’s baton, the EUYO musicians (ages 17 through 24) tore into Strauss’s Alpine Symphony for all they were worth. There have been subtler or more visionary Alpine Symphony performances in recent decades, but Ashkenazy’s extrovert approach juiced all the ecstatic and cataclysmic moments in this opulent score and treated the more lyrical material with a songful warmth. The musicians — so plentiful they stuffed every square inch of the Concert Hall stage — responded with burnished brass chording, thunderous accents from the percussion and a gorgeous sheen on their voluminous string section. The orchestra opened with a brashly idiomatic performance of Copland’s “An Outdoor Overture” and a reading of Bruch’s turbulent Violin Concerto No. 1, in which Pinchas Zukerman’s rich, febrile and grandly projected treatment of the solo line matched the Wagnerian thrust and weight the orchestra brought to the score. A “pops” arrangement of “America” from “West Side Story” closed the program on a witty note, followed by the musicians hugging and kissing each other in a giddy release of post-concert emotion. Ah, youth. Banno is a freelance writer.


Reuters: Neil Heywood killed in cover-up plot

that ended Chinese politician Bo Xilai’s hopes of emerging as a top central leader and threw off balance the Communist Party’s looming leadership succession. Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, asked Heywood late last year to move a large sum of money abroad, and she became outraged when he demanded a larger cut of the money than she had expected, the sources said. She accused him of being greedy and made a plan to kill him after he said he could expose her dealings, one of the sources said, summarizing the police case. Both sources have spoken to investigators in Chongqing, the southwestern Chinese city where Heywood was killed and where Bo had cast himself as a crime-fighting Communist Party leader. Gu is in police custody on suspicion of committing or arranging Heywood’s murder, though no details of the motive or the crime itself have been publicly released, other than a general comment from Chinese state media that he was killed after a financial dispute. The sources have close ties to Chinese police and said they were given details of the investigation. They said that Heywood, 41 — who had been a close friend of Gu and was helping her with her overseas financial dealings — was killed after he threatened to expose what she was doing. The sources said police suspect Heywood was poisoned by a drink. They did not know precisely where he died in Chongqing. But they and other sources with access to official information say they believe Heywood was killed at a secluded hilltop retreat, the Nanshan Lijing Holiday Hotel, which is also known as the Lucky Holiday Hotel. The sources said Gu and Heywood, who had lived in China since the early 1990s, shared a long and close relationship, but were not romantically involved. It was not possible to get official confirmation of the case that police are building against Gu. The Chinese government did not respond to faxed questions. Some of Bo’s leftist supporters have said the case could be a campaign to discredit him. Bo and Gu, who is in custody and facing a possible death sentence for murder, could not be reached for comment. — Reuters More world news coverage: - Taliban hits Afghan cities in coordinated attack - Fight to save Russian forest wins young woman the Goldman prize - Moroccan marriage law causes uproar - Read more headlines from around the world


Green Carts put fresh produce where the people are

Vendor Maria Ayora sells produce from a cart in Brooklyn as part of New York’s Green Cart program. The carts serve low-income areas with high rates of obesity. (Melanie Burford/For The Washington Post) NEW YORK — On the busy commercial strip along Knickerbocker Avenue in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood are all the shops one might expect to find in a poor area branded a “food desert”: two 99-cent stores, a check-cashing center and plenty of pizza and fried chicken joints. But thanks to Alfonso Victor and Elena Ferreira, there’s also an oasis of fresh fruits and vegetables. Just about every weekday for the past three years, even in the depths of winter, the couple has set up a produce cart here, piled high with pineapples, tangerines, lettuce, tomatoes and specialty items for the area’s Latino community, such as plantains, yucca, hot peppers and cilantro. Victor, from Mexico, and Ferreira, from the Dominican Republic, are two of more than 500 vendors who participate in New York’s Green Cart program, which puts fruit and vegetable carts on the streets in low-income areas with high rates of obesity and diet-related diseases. Though green carts are only one of several city strategies designed to encourage consumption of more-healthful food, there is early evidence it is working: In New York’s high-poverty neighborhoods, the percentage of adults who said they ate no fruits or vegetables during the previous day is slowly dropping, from 19 percent in 2004 to 15 percent in 2010. Alarming statistics — more than 70 million Americans are now considered obese — and first lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign have focused national attention on efforts to make healthful food more accessible and affordable. New York’s Green Cart program is fast becoming a model for other American cities. Philadelphia launched its Healthy Carts program in 2011. Similar programs are being introduced in the District; Chicago; Los Angeles; Madison, Wis.; and California’s Santa Clara County. “Green carts are a quick and nimble approach that can get fresh food out there relatively quickly,” says Rick Luftglass, executive director of the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, which has provided $2 million to support green carts in New York. “And because they are mobile, you can follow the need. If sales aren’t good on one block, you can move a few blocks away. It allows the market to build around the customers.” Fruit-and-vegetable carts might seem like an


their benefits.” Other cities are adapting New York’s model to fit their needs. Philadelphia, something of a pioneer of food-access programs, started its Healthy Carts as a pilot in 2011, with seven vendors. In an effort to capture foot traffic that New Yorkers take for granted, the carts were stationed near parks, playgrounds and other neighborhood destinations. But administrators noted that during the first year, the program’s most successful cart was one located inside the busy atrium at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in North Philadelphia. Hundreds of families pass through the lobby every day, and the indoor location allowed the vendor to stay open through the winter. “The time cost to gain access to healthy foods is as important as the financial cost,” says Giridhar Mallya, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health’s director of policy and planning who is overseeing the Healthy Carts program. “So we’re looking at ways to serve people in places they are already coming or going. We think working with hospitals might be a way to scale the program and serve many folks of limited incomes.” The District is still fine-tuning plans for its pilot program, which it hopes to launch in June. What is sure is that the five to seven carts will roll out on to the streets in Wards 5, 7 and 8, areas with the highest levels of obesity in the city and limited access to fresh food. (Ward 8, for example, was without any grocery store for nine years until, in 2007, Giant Food opened on Alabama Avenue SE.) As in New York, the aim is to make fresh food more accessible and to create jobs, says Michele Tingling-Clemmons, bureau chief for nutrition and physical fitness programs at the Department of Health. But while new immigrants have applied for most of the green-cart licenses in New York, officials hope that in Washington the program will attract “nontraditional workers,” such as unemployed youth and seniors. “Here in D.C., we have a different population we want to help,” she says. City officials say they are optimistic that by adapting New York’s model they can make fresh produce more accessible to consumers and more profitable for vendors. In the District, for example, city officials are hoping to offer food-handling licenses to vendors so they can sell fruit cups as well as whole fruits and chopped vegetables that can be bagged and sold as


Quirky brewing pays off for Growlers of Gaithersburg

can’t do that in here,’ “ Kimbrough recalls. “And I said, ‘Who the hell are you?’ And he said, ‘I’m the fire marshal.’ ” Much of Kimbrough’s mad science now takes place on the brewpub’s outdoor deck. There are also occasional excursions onto the pavement out back to make German-style steinbiers — “stone beers” — which Kimbrough heats to a boil using red-hot hunks of granite. “We’re like 5-year-olds out there, screaming and jumping up and down,” he says. The pilot beer program has generated a similar sort of excitement among the brewpub’s customers, creating so much buzz, according to Kimbrough, that last month Growlers served nearly 50 percent more beer than usual. “It’s obviously helped the business tremendously,” says co-owner Jon Silverman. Within the next year, Silverman and his partner, Chuck Blessing, intend to convert a private dining room into additional brewing space. Why do patrons love beers like Turkish Delight (scented with rose water and preserved lemons) and Rye of the Tiger (brewed with 100 percent rye)? The creative ingredients and silly names help, Kimbrough says, but even more important is the sense of constant experimentation. He also credits his previous career. Before arriving at Growlers, Kimbrough studied bread-baking and pastry at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., and spent a decade in professional kitchens. “Having an understanding of how ingredients work in food gives you a really good understanding of how they’ll work in beer,” he says. Kimbrough’s beers, particularly those that rely heavily on spices, fruits or other added ingredients, are surprisingly balanced and fresh-tasting, even as his home-brew-style brewing methods make quality control more difficult than usual. He decided not to serve some of his white bean ale, for example: The beans added a pleasant acidity, but one keg was too sour. As the beers themselves attest, such issues are rare. A Belgian-style saison brewed with peppercorns and lemon is aromatic and refreshing, without the overwhelming bite that can mar peppercorn beers. A creation inspired by Grand Marnier, brewed with orange marmalade and orange blossom honey, has a candylike aroma, full flavor and an appropriate boozy warmth. “I don’t want to be necessarily remembered as eccentric,” Kimbrough says. “I want to be remembered as making good beer.” But ideally, he adds, “I’m remembered as eccentric and making good beer.” food@washpost.com Fromson, a freelance writer, lives in Washington. Follow him on Twitter: @dfroms.


Book World: Tracy K. Smith’s 2012 Pulitzer-winning poems are worth a read

Readers of Tracy K. Smith’s third book of poetry, Life on Mars (Graywolf, $15), which won the Pulitzer Prize this week, had better be prepared to face some stark metaphysical questions. Is our universe “a house party,” as the title of one poem suggests, or a “primal scream,” as another would have it? “Is God being or pure force? The wind / Or what commands it?” Or might there be more than one God? “Maybe there is a pair of them, and they sit / Watching the cream disperse into their coffee // Like the A-bomb. This equals that, one says, / Arranging a swarm of coordinates // On a giant grid. They exchange smiles. / It’s so simple, they’ll be done by lunchtime.” Cosmically speaking, of course, we will all be “done by lunchtime.” An awareness of death permeates “Life on Mars.” Two of the longer poems, “The Speed of Belief” and “My God, It’s Full of Stars,” are moving elegies for Smith’s father, an engineer who worked on the Hubble telescope. The latter is particularly strong, making use of images from science and science fiction to articulate human desire and grief, as the speaker allows herself to imagine the universe . . . sealed tight, so nothing escapes. Not even time, Which should curl in on itself and loop around like smoke. So that I might be sitting now beside my father As he raises a lit match to the bowl of his pipe For the first time in the winter of 1959. Ron Padgett’s How Long (Coffee House, $16), one of two finalists for this year’s poetry Pulitzer, is also concerned with nostalgia and loss, but tonally it inhabits a different galaxy. Indeed, Padgett’s poems are so playful, self-mocking and eager to please that it would be easy to overlook their craft, not to mention the depth and sincerity of the emotions they convey. What animates “How Long” is the tension between the buoyancy of its language and the gravity of its subject, death, to which the poems obsessively return. The loss of friends and the aging poet’s own impending demise pervade the book, from the question half-concealed in the book’s title to the oddly moving meditation of the penultimate poem, “The Great Wall of China”: “Am I great yet? no I am smaller and smaller / and happier to be so, soon I will be only


Chinese official is questioned in Neil Heywood slaying case

her preferred mountain retreats in Nan’an. The Chinese government stripped Bo of all his party posts last month and put him under investigation for “severe violation of party discipline,” ending his push for a seat in the nine-member group that will rule China when the current leadership retires early next year. Bo’s rule mixed a Maoist revival with populist policies and abuse of police powers. The government also said Gu was suspected of involvement in the killing. By revealing unprecedented details of alleged abuse of power and corruption involving a member of China’s political leadership, the drama has unleashed the Communist Party’s most serious crisis since at least the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989. Bo has said his wife had given up her work as a successful lawyer and become a devoted housewife to accommodate his political career. Although Gu did not appear publicly during Bo’s tenure as Chongqing party chief, government officials and people familiar with the couple say she continued to wield considerable influence behind the scenes. Two officials said Heywood was allegedly poisoned on Gu’s orders because he was threatening to publicize details of illegal financial dealings. “Heywood and Gu were accomplices in economic crimes committed abroad,” said one official in the Chongqing municipal government, using Communist Party language to describe the transfer of illicit funds out of the country. “He had material on her,” said the official. A Chongqing party official said Heywood had collected documents showing some of Gu’s financial transactions and told her so when he was called to Chongqing in November last year. The hotel in which Heywood stayed is respectable, if slightly shabby. On Monday night, the floor in the dimly lighted lobby was strewed with cigarette butts. In the rooms, the brown faux-wood flooring and the yellowing wallpaper were coming off at the edges. The nightclub, an aged hall that distinguishes itself from the breakfast room mainly by the purple curtains, was closed. The hotel has moved on. Five dozen men and women in their late 70s celebrated their 60-year high school class reunion there Tuesday, bringing to life the deserted compound, which sits on a hilltop next to a half-empty new apartment complex built in the Mediterranean style and a closed amusement park. Receptionists said they knew nothing about a killing there. Two other hotel employees said several staff had been transferred away late last year. But Bo’s fall is being


Foreign Service officers feel dogged by airline

Foreign Service officers are barking mad at United Airlines. Seems the airline’s new policies are costing a paw and a leg for them to move their pets from country to country. The carrier’s new rules have upped the charge for pet transfers, and though it gives a nice waiver to members of the military who have to make such moves, it doesn’t offer the same deal to the diplomats. That means that pets — newly classified as cargo instead of excess baggage — can cost several thousand dollars to transport, instead of a few hundred. And since cargo is treated differently than baggage, the pets must undergo more complicated inspections and connections — and some have even died en route, Foreign Service officers say. Because United is so ubiquitous — and because many officers must travel on a U.S. airline — it’s often the only option. But at least the four-legged companions have friends in high places. U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke — a former commerce secretary — weighed in with a letter to United’s CEO. “As a pet lover myself, I am deeply concerned about this policy change,” Locke wrote. “The sharply increased costs will likely place transporting the family pet beyond the reach of some of our diplomats.” So basically, he’s advocating a no-pup-left-behind policy. And some 3,000 Foreign Service officers wrote, too. The issue, we hear, is reaching top desks on the seventh floor at the State Department. Pet puns aside, the Foreign Service Association says it’s a serious issue that affects the morale of the diplomatic corps across the globe. Still find even the lower rates too pricey for schlepping Fido? Ask a fiscal conservative like former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, and he’d tell you to strap the pup’s crate to the top of the minivan. That would work at least from Ottawa to Buenos Aires. Just don’t say ‘clown’ Seems everyone’s gotten so uptight about federal workers and conferences these days — thanks for nothing, General Services Administration! Managers at other agencies might be casting a beadier eye than ever on their employees’ requests to travel. How helpful, then, that the sponsors of one upcoming government conference have provided an excellent rationale that would-be attendees can use to justify their presence at what sounds like a lovely three-day affair on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. In an invitation e-mail, the organizers of the Equal


Several nations trying to penetrate U.S. cyber-networks, says ex-FBI official

former officials are speaking out about the need for action to contain a threat that Mueller recently said is likely to eclipse terrorism as the top menace to the country. Last week, Rear Adm. Samuel Cox, director of intelligence at U.S. Cyber Command, said that “a global cyber arms race” is underway. James E. Cartwright Jr., who retired in August as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a separate event that even a limited cyberattack on the nation’s power grid or financial system could spark tremendous public fear. “If you can take out one area of electric power or one bank, the question that puts in people’s minds about the security of others is what you’re really worried about,” Cartwright said last week at a conference hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Despite such concerns, experts have said the government is legally constrained in its ability to help companies protect their networks, in part because of privacy issues surrounding the sharing of information between the government and the private sector. Congress is set to take up proposals aimed at fostering information-sharing as well as security standards for some companies to better protect commercial networks. In the meantime, the costs of cyber-espionage are proving to be enormous. Scott Borg, chief economist at the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a research group, has assessed the annual loss of intellectual property and investment opportunities across all industries at $6 billion to $20 billion. Henry, a former executive assistant director of the FBI’s cyber-crime branch, said the bureau knew of one company that lost $1 billion — 10 years’ worth of research and development — in a weekend after being hacked. One thinly capitalized firm that processed credit card payments was forced to close two years ago when it was breached. The FBI has become more aggressive in collecting and correlating intelligence, and over the past couple of years it has notified dozens of defense contractors, government agencies and companies that they were being targeted for intrusion, according to Henry. Still, he said: “There needs to be much greater sharing of intelligence across all the sectors.” “You can only be punched in the face so many times before you fall to your knees,” he added. “There needs to be more offense and less defense.” As head of services at CrowdStrike, Henry, who spent 24 years at the FBI,


Pentagon condemns photos of U.S. troops posing with dead Afghan insurgents

in 2010 and has since redeployed to Afghanistan. It was not clear how many of the soldiers posing in the photographs are still with the unit, which the Times identified as the 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Unit leadership concerns U.S. commanders said they are investigating whether poor unit leadership by noncommissioned officers could have played a role in the recent cases of misconduct, amid concerns that troops have become desensitized or worn out after multiple deployments. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a former Army paratrooper who is on the Armed Services Committee, said one possible factor is a lack of direct supervision. Under the military’s counterinsurgency strategy, many small units are dispersed across rural parts of Afghanistan, often without their platoon leaders or company commanders. “They aren’t always there, so they physically can’t exercise the leadership,” he said in an interview Wednesday. Reed said the instances of misconduct are obscuring the military’s good deeds and effort to win the support of the Afghan people. “This is one of the difficulties of this kind of operation, with counterinsurgency,” he said. “It is as much a political battle as a tactical one.” Andrew M. Exum, a former Army captain who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said he doubted that the photos would cause a big stir among Afghans. “Speaking bluntly, most Afghans are probably not going to be terribly offended by the body of a suicide bomber being treated in less-than-respectful ways,” said Exum, who is an analyst at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. Public reaction to the Marine urination video was relatively muted, he noted. U.S. commanders pledged to disclose the results of their investigations of the Marine video, the Koran burning and the Kandahar massacre. So far, however, they have kept a tight lid on the probes and released few details. In the United States, support for the war in Afghanistan is at an all-time low. A Washington Post-ABC News poll last week showed that only 30 percent of respondents say the war has been worth fighting. Staff writer Greg Jaffe in Brussels and correspondent Kevin Sieff in Kabul contributed to this report. More national security coverage: - Other nations trying to penetrate U.S. cyber-networks, ex-FBI official says - Panetta says he regrets cost to taxpayers for his weekend trips - U.N. Security Council condemns N. Korea rocket launch - Read more national security news


The problem with health food

belief system, I should have been lunching instead. What was the turnoff? The way they put vegan mayonnaise in everything, even sandwiches with eggs or meat? Was it the mud-colored vegetable medleys? Or the quesadillas without any cheese? An irresistible smell of things bobbing madly in hot fat had guided my hand to the left turn signal, not an aroma of denial and guilt. Health food these days tends to define itself by prohibitions, including those that should apply only to people with genuine food sensitivities. Gluten, lactose and salt are treated like poisons. Fat is the road to hell, and red meat is the road to the grave, even if it’s from a happy, local, organic, grass-fed, free-range, hormone- and antibiotic-free animal, a distinction that eludes the fervently herbivorous. Asian food is prominent on health menus because anything Western in the world of alternative lifestyles is disdained. But the hands that stir those woks rarely have the deft touch with vegetables and sauces that real Asian cooks display. So who does healthful food right? Nora Pouillon, for one, whose Restaurant Nora in Dupont Circle was the first in the United States to receive organic certification. Flavor chez Nora is never sacrificed on a political altar and owes much to the freshness and high quality of the produce. Among my other favorites, Chase’s Daily, an acclaimed lunch spot in Belfast, Maine, sets another positive example. I ate there three times before I realized the menu was vegetarian. Why? Maybe because there were no rectangles of tofu or seitan (a modern product made from wheat gluten) offered as meat impersonators. In the hands of a skilled Korean chef, tofu is like a bowl of clouds rather than the texture of a flip-flop. Helen Nearing was a vegetarian, too, something that I am not. But I appreciate the fact that her recipes were written by her garden. The vegetables in her dishes crossed the threshold of her kitchen moments before her drop-in visitors did and were given places of honor at the table. Damrosch is a freelance writer and the author of “The Garden Primer.” Tip of the week Seeds, seedlings and young transplants of annuals and vegetables must not dry out. In the absence of rain, soak their beds at least three times a week. A light mulch of straw, compost or leafmold will help retain soil moisture. — Adrian Higgins


D.C. news briefs

has increased by 2.1 percent Preliminary data from a multispectral imagery study indicate that the District tree canopy has grown by 2.1 percent over the past five years and covers 37.2 percent of the city. The study, funded by the U.S. Forest Service for the D.C. Urban Forestry Administration, shows that all wards have gained tree canopy except Ward 3, which has lost 3.7 percent of its cover. The report provides a baseline for the District’s goal of 40 percent urban tree canopy by 2035. For information, go to www.ddot.dc.gov/trees. City will add two streetcars to H Street/Benning Road line The District Department of Transportation has contracted for two new streetcars and completed preliminary tests on three others for its planned H Street/Benning Road streetcar line. The streetcar line is projected to start running in 2013. The two new cars will be built by Oregon Iron Works. They will join three others, built in 2007 by Czech company INEKON and stored at the Metro rail yard in Greenbelt since 2009. INEKON technicians recently completed phase one inspections for electrical and mechanical issues and water leaks on those vehicles. Phase two will involve correcting any defects and testing the traction power system. For information, go to www.dcstreetcar.com or www.facebook.com/dcstreetcar. Georgetown House Tour will benefit St. John’s Church St. John’s Episcopal Church, 3240 O St. NW, will conduct its annual Georgetown House Tour from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. April 28. The tour showcases eight to 12 houses that have been renovated while retaining their historic character. A parish tea will be served in Blake Hall at St. John’s from 2 to 5 p.m. Tickets are $45 ($40 before Friday), with proceeds going to St. John’s Ministries. Online ticket sales end next Thursday; tickets must be picked up at St. John’s on April 28. Tickets can be purchased at St. John’s until 5 p.m. April 27 and 28. For information, go to www.georgetownhousetour.com or call 202-338-1796. Habitat for Humanity seeks used car for grant program Habitat for Humanity International, a nonprofit housing group, is seeking used cars for its Cars for Homes matching grant program. Money from the sales of donated vehicles by Habitat affiliates in the District and Arlington, Fairfax, Montgomery, Loudoun and Prince William counties goes toward building houses locally for low-income families. Donations are tax deductible. To donate, call 877-277-4344 or go to www.carsforhomes.org. — Compiled by Terence McArdle


Can Yoshihiko Noda set Japan back on course?

about how long a lifeline to throw. Administration officials appreciate that Noda has moved the U.S.-Japan alliance back to the center of Japanese strategy after his predecessors flirted with “balancing” between China and the United States. Noda said Thursday that his “unshakable conviction” that the alliance is “the foundation of Japanese security” was only fortified by U.S. help during the March 2011 disaster. But U.S. officials are impatient with Japan’s leadership merry-go-round and its perceived inability to deliver on promises. They want Japan to pick up a big share of the cost of moving Marines from Okinawa to Guam and elsewhere in Asia and Australia (beyond the lengthening range of Chinese missiles, though that won’t be said aloud). Some officials, and members of Congress too, share unhappy memories of Japan’s blocking maneuvers in trade talks and want stiff terms for its entry into the regional negotiation. Even after a successful summit, Noda might not last. His disapproval rating, following the pattern of his predecessors, has soared from 19 percent to 59 percent since September. He’s paying the price for a general loss of confidence in Japanese institutions exacerbated by the government’s Katrina-like response to last year’s disaster. And much like the way Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) set Obama’s defeat as his top priority, a number of Japanese leaders, including rivals in his party, are more committed to bringing Noda down than to getting something done. So a certain U.S. reserve is understandable. Fortunately, many U.S. officials also understand that Noda’s failure is not to be wished for, and not only because he genuinely believes in the alliance. Noda in some ways represents a return to traditional Japanese leadership style: relentlessly uncharismatic, little-known personally even to Japanese, a consensus builder who moves more slowly than some backers would like to gather support for his proposals. When I asked about his hobbies, he mentioned judo. “I notice President Obama has been singing,” he said. “I can’t match that.” But after two relatively flamboyant but utterly clueless premiers, Noda’s solidity is welcome. Very untraditionally, he is not a product of Japan’s elite. He is the plain-spoken son of an enlisted soldier, with financial assets smaller than those of any previous postwar leader and atypically direct in explaining what he intends to do and why it needs to be done. If Noda could put it on a more sustainable path, Japan could better help


Noda says Japan running out of time to increase taxes, restart reactors

social security system, he said. Noda acknowledged that such proposals are “not so popular among the people.” Nor are they uniformly supported by the ruling Democratic Party of Japan. The approval rating for Noda’s cabinet fell this month below 30 percent, a level from which Japan’s five previous, short-lived prime ministers never rebounded. Noda said it remains an open question whether politicians here can “stand firm for the national interest.” “In that respect,” he said, “I’m confronting a difficult situation.” Noda will arrive in Washington with little evidence of progress. Although Japan has spent almost two years debating participation in a regional free-trade pact that involves the United States, Tokyo hasn’t made a final decision. The Trans-Pacific Partnership would open new markets for Japan’s exporters, but it would also endanger the country’s domestic agriculture industry, long protected by high tariffs. Noda had hoped to be able to tell President Obama during their meeting that Japan would join the pact, but he acknowledged just days ago that he couldn’t, according to the Kyodo news agency. Negotiations also remain at a standstill on the relocation of an inner-city Marine air station in Okinawa, with leaders in Tokyo unable to soften local opposition to a proposed new site on a less populated part of the island. Analysts in Tokyo say that Noda will fight for the free-trade and base issues only if he resolves his stated top priority — raising the consumption tax. Noda, a former finance minister who took office seven months ago, has vowed to stake his political life on the tax increase, which would be used to fund mounting social security costs. When Noda’s cabinet submitted the tax bill last month, however, several members resigned in protest. The opposition, meanwhile, senses a political opportunity to force Noda from office over the issue and then begin the debate anew. “We must do what we have to do now, otherwise social security is unsustainable,” Noda said. “We cannot let that happen. Currently, we are covering the cost by issuing deficit-covering bonds, passing the burden to the future generation,” whose debts will be all the higher. Noda also laid out the case for restarting Japan’s nuclear reactors, despite majority opposition to atomic energy in the wake of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant last year. Currently, Japan is operating just one of its 54 reactors; most of the rest came offline for


Baltimore’s storied Berger cookies come to Washington

were a litmus test of sorts, a way of gauging if she, a lifelong resident of the D.C. area, had enough “Bawlmer” in her. She failed miserably on that front, merely scanning the ingredients before handing them back to me (though she helped make up for it with her prowess at darts). The hostess picked up one of the Berger cookies herself. “Now that’s a bit, umm, daunting,” she said, cautiously turning it over in her fingers. I had flashbacks of this dinner party when I discovered Berger cookies in a Giant Food store near my new home this past winter. Immediately, I wanted to buy every pack and take them home, where they would always, always be duly appreciated. Soon after, I discovered that Bergers have been penetrating the D.C. market, mostly through Giant stores, over the past year or so. Beginning this summer, they’ll start cropping up at Safeways. (Bergers have appeared on shelves in some small area shops and delis for a few years.) Why the recent southward migration? “Because there’s a lot of money down there,” says Berger owner Charles DeBaufre Jr. “And it’s close enough that these gas prices won’t kill me.” While I don’t begrudge DeBaufre the chance to make a buck, I do worry if Washington can ever fully appreciate the Berger cookie. After all, this is the same city that earned top honors as healthiest in the country, three years running, in the annual American Fitness Index. And it’s the same city that the legendary French bakery Paul (the same Paul that bakes some of its rustic breads for seven hours) fingered to open its flagship American bakery. Is this cosmopolitan region really ready to embrace a cookie that admittedly looks as if its fudge creme topping was slapped on by 5-year-olds hopped up on Mountain Dew? Perhaps what Washingtonians need to appreciate this iconic confection is proper entree, a primer of sorts. *** Lesson One: Don’t fear the fudge Many people pass off the Berger cookie as kissing cousin to the New York deli classic Black and White. Both desserts aredome-shaped, cakey cookies with icing covering their inverted, flattened bottoms. But any familial relations between these two treats begin and end with the unfrosted cookie, which, in both cases has the mouth feel and texture of a vanilla wafer crossed with sponge cake. For one thing, the cookie in the Black


It’s time to toss the all-volunteer military

Since the end of the military draft in 1973, every person joining the U.S. armed forces has done so because he or she asked to be there. Over the past decade, this all-volunteer force has been put to the test and has succeeded, fighting two sustained foreign wars with troops standing up to multiple combat deployments and extreme stress. This is precisely the reason it is time to get rid of the all-volunteer force. It has been too successful. Our relatively small and highly adept military has made it all too easy for our nation to go to war — and to ignore the consequences. The drawbacks of the all-volunteer force are not military, but political and ethical. One percent of the nation has carried almost all the burden of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, while the rest of us essentially went shopping. When the wars turned sour, we could turn our backs. A nation that disregards the consequences of its gravest decisions is operating in morally hazardous territory. We invaded Iraq recklessly. If we had a draft, a retired general said to me recently, we probably would not have invaded at all. If there had been a draft in 2001, I think we still would have gone to war in Afghanistan, which was the right thing to do. But I don’t think we would have stayed there much past the middle of 2002 or handled the war so negligently for years after that. We had a draft in the 1960s, of course, and it did not stop President Lyndon Johnson from getting into a ground war in Vietnam. But the draft sure did encourage people to pay attention to the war and decide whether they were willing to support it. Resuming conscription is the best way to reconnect the people with the armed services. Yes, reestablishing a draft, with all its Vietnam-era connotations, would cause problems for the military, but those could never be as painful and expensive as fighting an unnecessary war in Iraq for almost nine years. A draft would be good for our nation and ultimately for our military. Thomas E. Ricks Next: Premium gas Read more from Outlook, including our 2011 spring cleaning. Friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.


Essay: We’ve seen photos before like ones of U.S. soldiers with Afghan corpses

in literature and history of the vengeful acts of warriors. Lee tells the story of Continental Army soldiers who were taken to a battleground in Wyoming, Pa., and shown the remains of soldiers who had been scalped and mutilated. They avenged this act a couple of weeks later in Newtown, N.Y., by skinning the legs of two dead Native Americans and turning them into boots. In World War II, the collection and curation of body parts, especially from the Pacific, were common, and human remains were often shipped home through the mail. Skulls and teeth were particular favorites. Germans made souvenirs from the remains of dead prisoners in concentration camps. The misuse of a body to commemorate what one has accomplished on the battlefield or to intimidate your enemy is deeply embedded in the human psyche, Lee says. Victorious warriors were celebrated for displaying the spoils of war, including scalps and skulls and heads on a pike. “It gets interesting when you have cultural mores that go against this,” Lee says. “Society agrees that it is unacceptable, and so you start getting rules about how you should treat the enemy.” But even the rules — even the widespread agreement that “This is not who we are,” as Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said on Wednesday — can only stop so much from happening. The impulse of soldiers to photograph their dead enemies is driven by a number of factors, says Nancy Sherman, author of “The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of Our Soldiers” and a professor of philosophy at Georgetown specializing in the ethics of war. “There’s relief that they’re alive and not dead. There’s also top-dog exuberance and pent-up revenge,” she says. Another factor, especially in places such as Afghanistan, is when these incidents take place among units that are operating in remote locations, she says. “There often isn’t adequate leadership,” Sherman says. “They need people reminding them and telling them that this isn’t how good soldiers respond. A lot of this goes to command culture, and the absence of it is what is apparent.” Lee agrees that these incidents come about at “moments in which normal sense of controls have slipped. But [in today’s military] it needs to be emphasized that this is a real minority.” So it is right that we are outraged. Horrified. Shaken. But there’s no reason we should still be surprised.


Los Angeles Times reporter backs publication of photos of troops with dead Afghan insurgents

their publication. Others supported and cheered the soldiers’ behavior. Once again, the media’s role in portraying the brutality of war was in question. For his part, Zucchino, a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent, says his newspaper made the right call after weeks of internal deliberation and pre-publication consultations with Pentagon officials. “It’s our responsibility to report fully on the mission in Afghanistan, and it was important to publish these photos to tell the full story of the war,” he said in an interview Thursday. “We’ve reported aggressively, including [articles] about the sacrifice and heroism of the troops. This is one more aspect.” Zucchino, 60, says he believes that his source’s motivation was exactly as he described in his original e-mail — that the soldiers’ actions violated the U.S. military’s general code of conduct. The source, whom Zucchino has promised not to identify, was a member of the 82nd Airborne, the division in which the soldiers in the photos served. Despite the soldier’s distaste for what the photos showed, “he also understood the state of mind of these guys,” Zucchino said. “Their buddies had been killed by [improvised explosive devices] and maimed. It’s something they live with every day.” At the same time, his source understood that the specific nature of the Afghanistan war might lead to these kinds of photos. “I’ve been embedded with Marines, and they complain all the time about how the enemy won’t engage in a direct fight,” Zucchino said. “So when [soldiers] come across their enemy or body parts, you can see the temptation to celebrate a little bit. They’re amped up, and they’re frustrated.” The release of the photos, which were shot in 2010, was another in a series of recent episodes that created massively negative reaction toward the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. In January, a video surfaced of Marines urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters; in February, Afghans violently protested the burning of copies of the Koran on a U.S. base. Last month, a U.S. soldier was accused of killing 17 Afghan civilians in a shooting spree. Some American military sources have suggested that these events may have sparked apparent reprisals by Afghan troops against their foreign allies. Even so, Zucchino dismisses the Pentagon’s objections that running the photos might put Americans in Afghanistan at greater risk. “From my experience, the insurgents don’t need any extra motivation to attack us,” he said. “It’s


‘Pink slime’ outrage goes viral in stunning display of social media’s power

I was about to unleash,” Siegel wrote on her blog. People, it seems, who for years gobbled down “lean finely textured beef” sat upright when they saw “pink slime.” The moniker went viral. The “yuck” factor repulsed consumers. Supermarket chains – including Safeway, Kroger and Food Lion – abandoned the product. Wendy’s took out newspaper ads assuring customers that it never has used the stuff. Even the plodding government bureaucracy leaped into action, granting schools the choice to stop using it in lunches next year. Systems big and small, including public schools in Montgomery and Fairfax counties, opted out. The episode damaged the fortunes of Beef Products Inc., the producer in South Dakota, forcing it to suspend operations in three of its four plants, though it pledged to keep paying its workers for now. A meat processor in Pennsylvania, AFA Foods, filed for bankruptcy protection this month, citing reduced demand for lean beef as a factor. Meanwhile, ground beef sales in March hit a 10-year low for the month, just as the grilling season was about to take off. The dramatic fallout signals yet again the power of social media to change the way political actors and businesses respond to public pressure, leaving them all vulnerable — for better or worse — to reputational slights. Some consumer groups watched the events unfold with a mix of admiration, jealousy and perhaps remorse. “It’s substantively not the most critical health issue, yet it was framed in such a way that the public outcry actually changed food policy in a matter of weeks,” said Sarah Klein, a lawyer at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “If we could figure out the formula and apply it to serious public health issues, that would be amazing.” The yuck factor The phrase — pink slime — was born in a 2002 e-mail. Gerald Zirnstein, a USDA microbiologist at the time, came up with it in an exchange with his colleagues. Seven years later, the e-mail emerged in a New York Times article that questioned the product’s safety. Then nothing much, until last April. That’s when celebrity chef Jamie Oliver thrust pink slime back into the spotlight on his nationally televised show, “Food Revolution.” Before a live audience, Oliver took a chunk of beef trimming and demonstrated his take on how the product is made: He spun the trimming in a washing machine, doused it