Five most important books
-The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
-The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
-The Souls of Black Folk, WEB Du Bois
-The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
-Collected Poems, William Butler Yeats
A book to which you will always return: The House at Pooh Corner, AA Milne
A classic book that, upon revisiting, disappointed: The Four Quartets, TS Eliot
Written on the City, Albin and Kamler
What Bush Got Right
Compared with the flutters and flurries of the near-daily polls in the presidential race, one set of numbers has stayed fixed for months, even years. President George W. Bush now enters his 23rd consecutive month with an approval rating under 40 percent. (It currently stands at 32 percent.) No matter what he does, or what happens in the world, the public seems to have decided that Bush has been a failure. As a result, both candidates are promising a change from the Bush presidency. Barack Obama, of course, promises a wholly different approach to the world. But even Bush's fellow Republican, John McCain, has on several issues suggested that he would depart from the administration's policies. McCain was last seen with the president at a fund-raiser more than two months ago at which no reporters or photographers were allowed.
A broad shift in America's approach to the world is justified and overdue. Bush's basic conception of a "global War on Terror," to take but the most obvious example, has been poorly thought-through, badly implemented, and has produced many unintended costs that will linger for years if not decades. But blanket criticism of Bush misses an important reality. The administration that became the target of so much passion and anger—from Democrats, Republicans, independents, foreigners, Martians, everyone—is not quite the one in place today. The foreign policies that aroused the greatest anger and opposition were mostly pursued in Bush's first term: the invasion of Iraq, the rejection of treaties, diplomacy and multilateralism. In the past few years, many of these policies have been modified, abandoned or reversed. This has happened without acknowledgment—which is partly what drives critics crazy—and it's often been done surreptitiously. It doesn't reflect a change of heart so much as an admission of failure; the old way simply wasn't working. But for whatever reasons and through whichever path, the foreign policies in place now are more sensible, moderate and mainstream. In many cases the next president should follow rather than reverse them.
Consider as a symbol of this shift Bush's appointment of the World Bank's president. His first choice for the job was Paul Wolfowitz, an arch neoconservative with little background in economics. But by the time Wolfowitz was forced to resign and the post opened up again, Bush realized that he needed a less ideological choice, and he picked the highly qualified and respected Robert Zoellick. Where Dick Cheney was once the poster child for the administration, today policy is being run by Condoleezza Rice, Robert Gates, Stephen Hadley and Hank Paulson—all pragmatists. Change has not extended to all areas, and in many places it's been too little, too late. But that there has been a shift to the center in many crucial areas of foreign policy is simply undeniable.
The most obvious case is Iraq. For many people—a clear majority of those polled—the decision to go to war is now seen as a mistake. But wherever one stands on that issue, it is overwhelmingly clear that the administration made a series of massive blunders in Iraq in 2003 and 2004. It went in with too few troops, dismantled Iraq's Army, bureaucracy and state-owned factories, arrested tens of thousands of Iraqis, mistreated and tortured some of them, and used overwhelming military force against all perceived threats. The outcome? Chaos; an angry, dispossessed and armed Sunni community; a sullen and restless Shiite population; an insurgency; a jihadist terrorist movement, and spreading sectarian violence. In addition, foreign forces were destabilizing the country because both the invasion and the occupation were undertaken without first gaining support from neighboring Arab states or winning international legitimacy. The result was a perfect storm in international affairs, a failure that kept getting worse.
For years, even after it was apparent to almost everyone that the Iraq strategy was not working, the administration stuck to its guns. But by 2005, the failure was simply too large to ignore, so some efforts to repair the situation were made—mostly tactical and incremental moves, like searching for a better Shiite leader and trying to slow down the process of de-Baathification. Some U.S. officials in Iraq freelanced—for example, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad began the outreach to Sunni leaders and militants in 2006, even while his bosses in Washington were steadfastly condemning them as terrorists. American generals in Iraq were also learning from their own failures and advocating changes in tactics. (One of them was to support efforts by tribal sheiks in Anbar to take on their Qaeda rivals, which is why the Sunni Awakening actually preceded the surge.) By 2006, Bush told The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes that he was searching for new approaches. But it was only after the 2006 midterm-election debacle that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was fired and a new politico-military strategy was put in place with a commander who understood the need for sweeping change.
It took a long time, but the turnaround in our policy in Iraq has been significant. The United States has made broad overtures to the Sunni community, and now actively supports Sunni fighters it had once jailed. We've concentrated on stabilizing Shiite neighborhoods, helping to free them from dependence on militias. We have abandoned dreams of a pure, free market, instead trying to jump-start Iraq's state-owned enterprises in order to create jobs. And we've even been pursuing a more regional approach, trying to get neighboring countries to open embassies in Baghdad and commit to help stabilize Iraq. None of this has changed some of the basic gruesome realities of Iraq—a country from which 2.5 million people have fled (mostly the professional class), thugs and militias rule in too many places, dysfunction and corruption are utterly endemic, and religious theocrats still wield immense power. But given where things were in 2005, the administration has moved firmly in the right direction.
On Afghanistan, there is a more compelling case to be made that the administration mishandled the most important front in the War on Terror. The central critique that Barack Obama makes—that American attention, energy, troops and resources were wrongly diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq—is devastating and hard to dispute. But it's a criticism of Bush policy in 2003. The policy that the administration is currently pursuing is less vulnerable to easy attacks.
Like Obama, Defense Secretary Gates has talked about sending more troops to the region. But the problem is bigger than a lack of American soldiers. European countries haven't contributed enough troops to the effort, and have put absurd restrictions on the forces they do have in theater. Afghanistan itself is extremely complex. The country contains vast swaths of mountainous territory that have never been ruled effectively by the central government, where levels of illiteracy and unemployment are stunningly high, and where Pashtun nationalism has got mixed up with Islamic extremism. Many serious scholars and local politicians argue that more troops would not solve the problem—particularly since the Taliban's back bases are located across the border in Pakistan. And the administration has ramped up spending in the region considerably. Whereas in 2003 it spent $737 million on reconstruction and equipping the Afghan Army, by 2007 it was spending $10 billion.
On North Korea, the administration's reversal has been near total. Within months of entering the Oval Office, Bush publicly repudiated his secretary of State, Colin Powell, for even suggesting that the administration would continue Bill Clinton's efforts to negotiate with Kim Jong Il. But since July 2005, Bush has pursued a very similar approach, in fact an even more multilateral one than Clinton's—four additional parties are now at the table. Bringing in the Chinese has been crucial because they are the only ones who have any real leverage with Pyongyang. Bush began by describing North Korea as part of the Axis of Evil. Today he is considering taking the country off the terror list and has offered economic aid to its regime.
On Iran, the third charter member of the Axis of Evil, the administration has performed a similar about-face. Forget the muttering of various proponents of military action, periodically leaked to newspapers. The efforts of the administration have been diplomatic and multilateral. Its point-person for most of the second term was Nicholas Burns, a veteran diplomat who is viewed with great suspicion by neoconservatives. Last month one of the State Department's senior most officials, William Burns (no relation), joined the Europeans at the table with Iranian negotiators, the first physical American involvement in these talks. One could argue—I would—that the administration's diplomacy is half-hearted and lacks ambition. An offer of direct engagement and negotiations would be a bolder step. But that's not a silver bullet. Such an offer could well prove fruitless. The principal obstacles to a negotiated settlement are Iranian intentions, suspicions and dysfunctions. The general thrust of Bush administration policies has now evolved into the correct one.
The same could be said for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Bush began his term in office vowing that he would not involve himself in Clinton-style efforts at peacemaking. His administration adopted a hands-off approach, allowing resentments to build and conditions to worsen. It gave free rein to irresponsible policies from all parties, encouraging, for example, a thoughtless and ill-planned Israeli attack on Lebanon that ended up weakening Israel, devastating Lebanon and empowering Hizbullah. This year Bush has plunged into the process, holding an international conference in Annapolis at which, for the first time, both Israel and the Palestinians accepted that the purpose of the exercise was to create a Palestinian state. Since that meeting, Rice has made a half dozen visits to the region. All this hasn't produced much yet, may be seven years too late, and perhaps is not the right approach (what is?). But few would argue that U.S. policy is currently on the wrong track.
The ones who would are revealing. Disgruntled conservative hard-liners have been dismayed by the administration's policy in many areas, particularly North Korea, Iran and Israel. John Bolton, formerly Bush's U.N. ambassador and a superhawk, publicly makes the case for betrayal. When Burns joined the talks with Iran, Bolton fumed sarcastically on television that the State Department was obviously "doing its best to ensure a smooth transition to the Obama administration." (Obama has long advocated American negotiations with Tehran.) He described Bush's handling of North Korea as a capitulation, comparing him to Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. John Bolton is absolutely right that Bush has changed course fundamentally in many of these areas. Of course, I would celebrate that fact rather than condemn it.
Other reversals have drawn less opposition. In its early years the Bush administration seemed intent on confirming the conservative stereotype of being utterly uninterested in assistance to poor countries, especially if the money was going to treat AIDS patients. In each of its first two years it spent less than $1 billion on global HIV projects. This year the United States will spend almost $6 billion, most of it in Africa. The president's signature program, PEPFAR, has been a bipartisan success story (although the requirement that some of the money be spent on abstinence programs dilutes the program's effectiveness). Bush's overall efforts on disease prevention and aid have won him praise from an unusual assortment of figures—Bono, Bob Geld of and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who wrote that "George Bush has done much more for Africa than Bill Clinton ever did."
Politically the picture in Africa is more mixed. Bush put time, a presidential envoy and considerable effort behind the negotiations to broker a peace between north and south in Sudan, and he's made some similar attempts in Darfur. (These haven't yielded much, though mostly for reasons that cannot be blamed on the administration.) More generally, however, the administration has been far too focused on the threat of terrorism, providing aid and military assistance to any and every regime—from Ethiopia to Equatorial Guinea—that claimed to be battling Al Qaeda. In a sad replay of the cold war, the United States has allied itself with unscrupulous dictators for no particular gain, only because they have learned to mouth the language of the global War on Terror.
An obsession with terrorism has also made the administration devote too little time and energy to the defining feature of the new world order —"the rise of the rest," by which I mean the growth in economic and political power of countries like China, India, Russia, Brazil and a series of regionally prominent nations like South Africa, Nigeria, Mexico and Kazakhstan. In some cases its policy positions are divided and incoherent, as in the case of Russia. But in several crucial instances, they've pursued extremely sensible strategies.
The most important one, without question, is China. The bilateral relationship between China and America will be the most significant one in the 21st century. Bush began his term poorly on the subject. During the campaign, when asked by Larry King for the single most important area where he would depart from Clinton foreign policy, he cited China. "The current president has called the relationship with China a strategic partnership," Bush said. "I believe our relationship needs to be redefined as one as competitor." The initial months of the administration suggested that Bush would adopt a confrontational approach to Beijing, just as many neoconservatives and Pentagon strategists hoped.
Then in April 2001, four months into Bush's presidency, a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft collided with a Chinese fighter plane about 70 miles from the Chinese island of Hainan, and was forced to make an emergency landing. The Chinese claimed that the American plane had entered and violated Chinese airspace; Washington argued that it was in international airspace. In order to recover the aircraft and crew, Washington had to negotiate with Beijing and—despite much conservative grumbling—Bush agreed to send the Chinese a "letter of two sorries," in which the United States offered some carefully worded expressions of regret about the incident and death of the Chinese pilot.
Since then the administration's China policy has moved toward recognizing the centrality of the relationship. If China can be brought into the existing world order—in some fashion and to some extent—that will greatly improve the prospects for future peace and stability. Bush, despite his grand rhetoric about spreading democracy around the world, has been practical in his relations with the Chinese regime. On the most important issue to Beijing—that of Taiwan—Bush not only sided with the Chinese but has done so in a more direct manner than any previous president. He made clear to the then Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian that were Taiwan to make any moves toward independence, the island would lose the support of the United States. More recently, unlike some heads of government in Europe, Bush chose to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, a move that will earn the United States much good will not just with the Chinese government but also with its people.
Of course, the administration recognizes that the rise of China upsets the strategic balance in Asia. That's led Washington to deepen the strategic relationship with Japan and to develop a new one with India. In the latter case, Bush deserves credit for having transformed the relationship. While Indo-U.S. ties were warm under Bill Clinton, they were always limited by the controversy over India's nuclear program. The Clintonites refused to legitimize India's nuclear program, but for Indians their nukes were absolutely vital. Bush broke the deadlock by accepting, in large measure, that India would have to be treated as an exception and be brought into the nuclear nonproliferation regime as a nuclear power, not a renegade. Now India and America are developing a strategic relationship at many levels of government, which will stand both countries in good stead no matter what the future balance of power in Asia looks like.
If the United States hasn't engaged with this emerging world actively enough, other countries have done even less. In an essay in Foreign Affairs, political scientist Daniel Drezner points out that the administration has sought to give China, India and Brazil more weight in international institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the G8 and other such bodies. Timothy Adams, the undersecretary of Treasury, told The New York Times in August 2006 that "by re-engineering the IMF and giving China a bigger voice, China will have a greater sense of responsibility for the institution's mission."
The fiercest resistance to such reforms comes from Europe. If power in international organizations is going to be allocated on the basis of the current configuration of power, European nations, which are shrinking as a percentage of global GDP, will lose influence. If the U.N. Security Council were to be set up today, would 40 percent of the vetoes be given to European powers?
All this is not meant as a defense of George W. Bush. The administration made monumental errors in its first few years, ones that have cost the United States enormously. The shift in impressions about America's intentions across important sections of the globe, the sense in much of the Islamic world that America is anti-Muslim, the vast and counterproductive apparatus of homeland security—visa restrictions, arrests and interrogations—are lasting legacies of the Bush administration. Its dysfunction and incompetence have left a trail of misery in countries like Iraq and Lebanon, which have been destabilized for decades. The embrace of torture and other extralegal methods has violated America's noblest traditions and provided little in return.
And then there is the administration's record outside of foreign policy. Bush 43 has surely been the most fiscally irresponsible president in American history, taking surpluses that equaled 2.5 percent of GDP and turning them into deficits that are 3 percent. This is a $4 trillion hit on the country's balance sheet. On the central issue of energy policy—the greatest economic challenge and opportunity of our times—Bush has been utterly obstructionist, recycling the self-serving arguments of industry lobbyists. On the whole, Bush's record remains one of failure and missed opportunities.
So why offer this corrective? Because we cannot go back to 2001. The next president will inherit the world as it is in 2009. He will have to examine the Bush administration's policies as they stand in January 2009—not as they were in 2001 or 2002 or 2003—and decide how to accept, modify and alter them. There was a U.S. president who came into office convinced that everything his predecessor had done was feckless, stupid, ill-informed and venal. He rejected and tried to reverse everything that he could, almost as an article of faith. Before he had even examined the policies carefully, he knew that they had to be changed. The base of his party was delighted by his clarity and fighting spirit.
That president, of course, was George W. Bush. His decision to blindly repudiate anything associated with Bill Clinton is what got us into this mess in the first place. Let's hope that the next president, no matter how much he despises Bush, will take a careful look at his administration's policies, America's interests, and the world beyond and do the right thing for the country and its future.
Rise of The Sea TurtlesCharles Zhang is practically the personification of hip, 21st-century China. The flamboyant, MIT-educated entrepreneur founded and runs one of China's two biggest Internet portals, Sohu.com. Last week he welcomed an international swarm of revelers to an Olympic bash at Beijing's fashionable Lan Club (décor by Philippe Starck), where he announced his new gig during the Games: talk-show host. "I learned a lot from Letterman and Leno while living in the States," he said confidently.
Zhang is speaking to a different audience now. He says the anti-Western backlash that erupted in China this spring—after pro-Tibetan demonstrators disrupted the Olympic torch relay in London, Paris and San Francisco—was entirely justified. He himself called for a boycott of French goods and media after an unruly scrum broke out over the torch in Paris. "That was the first time Chinese people as a whole stood up to the world," he says. "It's good for Chinese people ... That incident proves that when Chinese are upset, they can find their voice."
Such sentiments are common on the mainland. But people like Zhang were supposed to be different: he's what Chinese call a hai gui—"sea turtle"—referring to someone who has lived overseas. (The phrase is a pun on haiwai guilai, meaning "returned from overseas.") Their numbers are growing by the tens of thousands every year, and as the sons and daughters of the elite, they have an outsize influence once they move back to China. In the West there's long been an assumption that this cohort would import Western values along with their iPods. They were envisioned as the bridge to a more open, liberal, Western-friendly China.
That daydream got a cold bath during the torch relay this spring, when furious Chinese students in the West showed they could be even more jingoistic than Chinese who had never left home—and good luck to anyone who dared buck the trend. One courageous Duke University freshman from the coastal city of Qingdao tried to intercede in a campus confrontation between a dozen or so pro-Tibetan demonstrators and a much larger group of pro-Beijing Chinese students. For her trouble, she was called a "race traitor" and a "whore"; feces were dumped on her parents' doorstep.
Measuring attitudes among sea turtles can be difficult, especially with all of Chinese society changing around them. Still, some empirical data are beginning to emerge. Prof. David Zweig, head of the Center on China's Transnational Relations at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, is directing a research project based on responses from thousands of returnees from campuses in Canada, Japan and Europe. The data show they're "no less jingoistic than those who have never gone abroad," Zweig says. "As in, 'My country, right or wrong'." What's more, he adds: "A significant proportion of them believe that using force to promote China's national interests is acceptable." Bottom line? "It means the post-1989 policy to imbue youth with nationalism through 'patriotic education' has succeeded," Zweig says.
China has a long tradition of chauvinism, and for some sea turtles, intimate acquaintance with Western attitudes has only intensified their feelings of defensiveness. Author and business consultant Jim MacGregor, who deals frequently with hai gui, says, "The richest people here are the most anti-Western." Even as they sip cappuccino at Starbucks or show off their new Buicks, the last thing most want is to make over their homeland in the West's image. They're after something far more ambitious: a China that lives up to their sense of national greatness. The pacesetters among hai gui don't aspire to be "modern," as Europeans and Americans often use the word—as a synonym for Western. Instead, prosperous young returnees tend to see themselves emphatically as modern Chinese.
Previous generations of sea turtles were patriotic in a different way. A century or more ago, Chinese students were sent abroad to learn science and technology from the West, and returned with a sense of mission. "They felt the most important thing was to help Chinese education; they wanted to teach," says dissident journalist Dai Qing, who has just finished writing a book about that era.
Now the business opportunities available on the mainland are at least as big a draw for returnees. But even someone like Dai, who served a term in prison for opposing the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, says she feels the tug of the motherland. She's just returned from her fourth stint overseas—a year at Australian National University studying "relations between dictatorships and individuals." When she first left the country in 1991 for a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, many acquaintances mistakenly assumed she'd never go home. "People say, 'Dai Qing's stupid—after 20 years of going overseas she doesn't even have a green card'," she says with a laugh.
Many sea turtles have their own theories about why Chinese overseas might show a hostile streak. For one thing, they run out of patience with Westerners' ignorance. "To be honest, when we go abroad we do find people asking strange questions, like whether China has modern buildings or cars," says Danny Huang, who lived in Canada and the United States for more than a decade before returning to run an educational charity in Shanghai. "Sometimes it's hard not to feel they have some bias." For others, anger against the West can ease the pangs of homesickness, suggests Shanghai University film teacher Shu Haolun. "They need a bond to their motherland," says Shu, who studied cinema and photography at Southern Illinois University before returning to China in 2003. "They're being anti-Western to feel attached to their own country."
Some of the nationalism exhibited by Chinese living abroad might also be sustained, rather than diluted, by the Internet. "As soon as they get online they can be totally immersed in a Chinese environment," says Zhao Chuan, a novelist who lived in Australia from 1987 to 2000 before coming home to write about Shanghai. "When we were studying abroad ... occasionally you went to Chinatown to read a Chinese paper. Now if you're in the U.K. you can easily not read English papers or watch English TV."
Others say the returnees' driving force isn't exactly nationalism. Instead, they argue, it reflects the extraordinary assertiveness of young urban Chinese. Decades of strict one-child family-planning policies have produced a generation of only-children—"little emperors," the Chinese call them. "Young Chinese feel they have the right to speak out about anything," says Victor Yuan, who studied for a year at Harvard's Kennedy School and now heads Horizon, a market survey consultancy. Some rebel against both Chinese and Western norms—like architect Ma Yansong, who apprenticed under Zaha Hadid in London and is famous for his designs mocking the regime's obsession with huge, imposing buildings. "This generation doesn't want to accept any ideological message, whether it's from the Communist Party or Voice of America," says Yuan.
The power of hai gui is visibly growing. Two of China's cabinet ministers earned their doctorates at universities outside the country, and approximately 100 officials at the level of vice governor or higher have studied overseas for at least a year, according to Zweig's figures. Patriotism notwithstanding, he says his research suggests that as Chinese spend more time outside the country, their thinking becomes more nuanced and internationalist: "They don't want to see China pushed around but are smart enough to know China makes mistakes." At the Lan Club last week, Zhang said it's time for China to prove it can do things right. "After suffering for hundreds of years and then for 30 years scrambling to get things right, now China's getting the respect of the world," he said. "Chinese are gaining more self-respect, too, so they should become more responsible." With luck, that means becoming more responsible to the world, not just to China.
Buildings That Can BreatheArchitect William McDonough draws his green-building techniques from the world around him. Before attending architecture school at Yale, he worked on a redevelopment project in Jordan and observed the clever way the Bedouins' tents utilized natural materials to protect them from the elements. His most ambitious project, a redevelopment of the Ford Motors complex in Dearborn, Mich., incorporates a "living roof" that features nearly 11 acres of vegetation to purify storm water and provide natural air conditioning. NEWSWEEK's Fareed Zakaria spoke to him about energy efficiency in architecture, the future of environmental design and the possibility of eliminating all industrial waste from the planet. Excerpts:
Zakaria: How important is it to increase the energy efficiency of our buildings?
McDonough: There's no question that energy efficiency in existing buildings and new buildings is one of the lowest-cost ways to save immense amounts of energy. Buildings account for about 40 percent of our energy consumption, and existing buildings will be the primary infrastructure for many years to come. So … it's a ripe place to be looking for energy savings. Cost-effective energy-reduction strategies could yield anywhere between 25 and 50 percent.
What are some of the key technologies that will do this?
A lot of this is common sense. For one thing, we want to stop heating, cooling and lighting ghosts [using] intelligent, wireless controls that can sense when people are present and when they're not. We're starting to see windows that have tremendous thermal properties. And then sealing up the houses, weather-stripping and insulation are very … effective.
You've created some revolutionary green buildings for companies such as Ford. Are these showcase pieces that only Fortune 500 companies can afford?
Our clients have commercial realities. If you look at the Ford plant, for example, that green roof saves Ford millions of dollars in storm-water management. It's an immensely practical exercise. The storm-water management [otherwise would have involved] $48 million of concrete pipes and chemical treatment plants. We did the whole thing for $13 million. And we created habitat. The killdeer [birds] started nesting there five days after the roof went down. And the same thing with our corporate campus for the Gap, where we did another green roof, which blocks all the noise from the airplanes flying overhead. These are practical solutions to real commercial problems.
In the United States, we have a preference for single-family houses, which are less efficient than urban centers. Is the future going to require greater population density?
I think we're going to see two things: one is that we're going to recognize that one size does not fit all and that this propensity we've had for everyone to be in a single-family house will probably shift. We'll have cities for younger people and elders who want more contact and convenience. There is a point in a family's life, when you're raising a couple of kids, [where] you might want to be in a place where they have grass to play on. But that doesn't mean that's the only offering we should be giving our citizens, and I think we will see greater celebration of density.
Tell me about your "Cradle to Cradle" concept. What does it mean??
Cradle to Cradle is a protocol I've developed with a German chemist, Michael Braungart. We characterize things as either being part of nature—biological nutrients—or being part of technology, which we call technical nutrients. We look at the world through these two lenses and we say, let the things that are designed to go back to soil, like textiles and clothing, be designed in order to be returned safely to soil, to restore it. But the cars and the computers … [should be] designed to go back into closed cycles for technology.
And the idea here is nothing gets wasted?
Exactly. The other questions we ask are: Is it powered by renewable energy? Does it have reverse logistics—do you have a way to get it back to soil or back to industry? Is the water clean? One of our first [Cradle to Cradle-certified] products was a textile for Steelcase corporation in Switzerland. The water coming out of the textile mill is as clean as the water going in, which is Swiss drinking water. Now when a textile mill has effluent that's clean enough to drink, you're entering the next industrial revolution. All of a sudden, there's nothing to fear from human production.
You say we need to move to renewable energy, and seem to focus on solar. Why?
Direct solar is distributed, it's generally available to most of the planet and it can be applied at the local level. I think about our highway system—phenomenal achievement, but also phenomenal opportunity, because we can [put up solar panels along] all the highways. We can solar-power the railroads. Amtrak can basically let out its airspace for solar collectors. It's already got infrastructure, it's already got power, it's already got distribution. It's an opportunity waiting to happen.
When Jimmy Carter was in the White House, he put solar panels on the roof of the White House. When Reagan came, he took them off. You'd put them back on?
I think that as an emblem and as a signal, it's probably a good thing to do. But I think that we ought to relax a little when we insist on modernizing historic buildings. I got a call from a college president who was saying they were going to renovate a building which he thought was very beautiful. It had high ceilings and tall windows, and they were going to put in aluminum fixed windows, drop the ceilings down to 10 feet from 15 to put in AC. It was going to cost $5 million to make the building energy-efficient. My response to him was: "Don't do it! You'll destroy the building! Go raise $1 million and put up a megawatt of wind power on a family farm in western Minnesota. Let that farmer … send his kids to college, and pay his mortgage, and you'll produce a megawatt of power, which is more than you'll need for your building."
Rivalry? What Rivalry? Ask our most famous colleges about their feuds with celebrated adversaries and they brush them off as no longer relevant in an open-minded, caring age of national unity. "Sir, we do not consider ourselves rivals with our sister academies except on the fields of friendly strifes," says West Point spokesman Francis J. DeMaro Jr. Annapolis spokeswoman Deborah Goode has the same earnest message: "We support each other and our nation on the front lines of the global War on Terror."
And they're not the only ones. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Notre Dame and others also don't want to talk about stolen school mascots, insults spray-painted on campus statues or anything else that smacks of the old grudges. In academia these days, such seeming hatreds of any kind are considered unfashionable and maybe even illegal in a few instances. But intense competition between high-quality institutions—what most people would call rivalry—still has importance in the college-admissions process. These rivals (OK, pick a friendlier word: competitors? counterparts? bosom buddies?) are continually trying to differentiate themselves for applicants who wonder which of two or three very similar and high-performing schools might be best for them.
We've picked 11 pairs and one trio of colleges whose strengths are so great and resemblances so compelling that careful comparison is necessary to sort out which schools work best for which applicants. It's also a bit of a guilty pleasure just to marvel at how deeply embedded many of the rivalries are. Some of the rivals have been associated in the public mind for more than a century, like Michigan and Ohio State, and some are as recent as digital movie cameras and multiplexes, like the film schools at USC and NYU.
But in every case, no matter what the schools' press releases say, students, faculty and alumni feel as if they're in competition with one another. Like most successful American institutions, that turns out to be one of their strengths. Herewith, the top 12 rivalries at U.S. colleges:
Old Ivies: Harvard vs. Yale
Gila Reinstein, spokeswoman for Yale, says "the Yale-Harvard rivalry is not substantial enough to merit attention." But many of the 6,600 undergraduates at Harvard and the 5,300 (set to grow to 6,000 by 2013) at Yale would disagree. There is a reason that Montgomery Burns, the most loathsome character on the TV comedy "The Simpsons," displays his Yale pedigree: many of the writers are graduates of The Harvard Lampoon humor magazine. There is a reason that many Yale graduates note, not bragging or anything, that every U.S. president since 1988 has had a degree from their New Haven, Conn., alma mater, and express some concern for the country since the last Bulldog candidate with a chance, Hillary Rodham Clinton, J.D. '73, pulled out of the race.
Harvard is the oldest and Yale the third oldest college in the country. Most years they are among the most difficult to get into, with acceptance rates around 8 percent. They rank first (Harvard's $35 billion) and second (Yale's $23 billion) in the size of their endowments, and have both made strides to remove costs for low-income students so that their lovely brick buildings won't look so much like bastions of the upper-middle class. But they also have world-class professors and students who thrive by challenging each other. Their residential houses were designed and funded by the same man, Yale graduate Edward Harkness, who discovered Harvard was quicker to accept his gift. His design is still envied as a model for undergraduate life.
The argument over which school is better thoroughly bores outsiders, but applicants have no such inhibitions, particularly when they have to choose between the two. Yale sophomore Abby West was turned off by Harvardian boasts that "the competition is incredibly intense" when she visited Cambridge, so she selected what she considers the more friendly Yale dynamic. Malcom Glenn, president of The Harvard Crimson, says he preferred Harvard because it is close to a big city, Boston, but "on the surface the two schools couldn't be more alike." He knows people at both campuses, and "many would have gone to the other if not for the fact they weren't accepted."
Bay Area Giants: UC Berkeley vs. Stanford
German Physicist Werner Heisenberg, famous for his Uncertainty Principle, was indeed uncertain when asked once about the location of Stanford University, but he knew of its rivalry with another northern California school. "They steal each other's axes," he said. That competition has escalated far beyond the annual football game that decides who gets the Stanford Axe. The two universities have become intellectual centers of the Internet boom, doing their best to attract the best science, math and engineering talent, and in the process attracting great wealth. In 2007, Cal (as UC Berkeley is often called) signed a $500 million contract with BP, the largest grant in the school's history, to develop alternative energy sources. Stanford is deep into the same explorations, and is nestled right in the heart of Silicon Valley, where corporate giants like Google, founded by two Stanford students, prosper.
Students seem happy to be at either Bay Area school, and the taunts between them are, according to Julie Yen, Stanford '07, "little more than lighthearted joking." She chose the smaller Stanford over Berkeley because she liked its quieter, grassier campus, a better place for a contemplative art-history major than the more raucous and urban Berkeley streets (just over the Bay Bridge from San Francisco). But if she had gone to Cal, she adds, she says she would've found the instruction "of the same high caliber—they have a very good museum." She is aware of the good jobs available for graduates of either university, no matter what their degrees. She's just started as an investment-firm analyst in Menlo Park, just a few miles from Stanford.
American Warriors: Annapolis vs. West Point
Craig Meekins attended Chaminade High School in Mineola, N.Y., a Roman Catholic school that churns out applicants to two of the nation's oldest military academies. Meekins, who graduated from Annapolis in 2008, laughs at the notion that the two schools aren't fervent competitors. "It's an intense rivalry," he says. When he ran the 800 meters for the U.S. Naval Academy track team, "if the coach saw you talking to a West Point guy before the meet, it was bad news." But amid the teasing, he says, "there is still a strong sense of camaraderie, because we all know we're facing the same challenges." Both have a much longer list of required courses than civilian institutions do. Both require students to participate in team sports. Each has 4,300 students, about 23 percent minorities and 20 percent women. Students at both want to serve their country, and acquire academic and technical skills with no bills for tuition, room or board.
Many applicants apply to both, and make their final decisions based on atmospherics, family traditions and career inclinations, just as students applying to less-regimented campuses do. Daniel Mills, who graduated from a public high school in northern Virginia in 2008, says he liked the idea of a military education "because I thought I really needed structure." He visited Annapolis and thought of taking that route to becoming a Marine Corps officer, but decided that if he was drawn to ground combat, he might as well go Army. His father was a West Point graduate, the Academy's wrestling coach liked him and his overnight at the campus introduced him to cadets he found smart and thoughtful. Meekins, on the other hand, picked Annapolis because it was in a city and seemed to offer more career choices. He plans to become a Navy SEAL, and is happy that he can get such an unusual college education without "spending a ridiculous amount of money."
For Women Only: Smith vs. Wellesley
As two of the few colleges that still bar male undergraduates, Smith and Wellesley have similarities that are deeper than their differences. And not just because the two small schools are in Massachusetts. Smith celebrates its big group of undergraduates from low- income families; 23 percent receive Pell grants, the leading federal aid program for disadvantaged students. (Wellesley has 13 percent.) Sidnie Davis, class of '08, says her high-school counselor called it "Wellesley for working girls."
But that's not really fair. Consider the Archer twins, Kendra and Shenquia, both class of '08, who grew up poor in a single-parent home and say they both found Wellesley, Kendra's choice, as welcoming and engaging as Smith, where Shenquia decided to go. Kendra says she was particularly taken with Wellesley's motto, "Not to be served but to serve," as a sign the place was no haven for the spoiled rich. "We are continually aware of the outstanding accomplishments of alumnae such as Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright," Kendra says.
The Smith campus in Northampton lures students with its big, comfortable and friendly wood-frame and brick houses for undergraduates. An even bigger draw is the off-campus scene, which consists of restaurants, bars and clubs throbbing with music, in a western area of the state occupied by several other colleges. Café-crawling Smith students say of their school, "The coffee is strong and so are its women." In 2007 Smith enhanced its reputation for science and engineering—30 percent of Smith students major in the sciences—with the construction of Ford Hall, a $73 million science teaching and research facility. Wellesley has its own engineering focus, which allows students to cross-register at nearby MIT and the Olin College of Engineering. Wellesley also has one of the country's most beautiful campuses and, according to some calculations, has produced more female corporate leaders than any other college. The two schools do compete, the Archer twins admit, but they call it "a sisterly acknowledgment of mutual greatness."
Social Activists: Guilford vs. Oberlin
Founded in 1833, Oberlin is the oldest coeducational college in the country. Guilford, founded in 1837, is the third oldest. Both were established by religious idealists who opposed slavery. Both were stops on the Underground Railroad. Both have about 2,800 students, although half of Guilford's are older, nontraditional undergraduates.
Guilford, lesser known for many years, has enjoyed a rising reputation through raves from high-school counselors and major play in Loren Pope's best-selling guide "Colleges That Change Lives." But Oberlin, in Ohio, is still the bigger name. At 38,000, it has double the number of alumni; at $735 million, it has 10 times the endowment. Ninety-one percent of Oberlin students are from out of state, a sign of its significant national reputation, compared with 63 percent at Guilford.
Still, a shared tradition of political activism has been noticed by applicants. Some have applied to both, knowing that Oberlin is harder to get into but happy to find any school bucking what, until the 2008 presidential election season, appeared to be a politically apathetic trend on U.S. campuses. Mary Ann Willis, a college counselor at Bayside Academy in Daphne, Ala., says despite their many differences, Oberlin and Guilford attract the same sensibility, "not just politically aware, but also politically engaged."
Kriddie Whitmore, Guilford '11, applied to both schools because, she says, "I like to be around people who are conscious of what is going on." Both colleges accepted her. She says she chose the central North Carolina school because it was warmer, less secluded and gave her a better financial-aid package. Whitmore is now majoring in environmental studies while she searches for just the right cause to take on.
Catholic Powers: Boston College vs. Notre Dame
Few college rivals are as similar to each other—or as competitive—as the Eagles of Boston College and the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame. Both are large schools with rich traditions, shared faith and splendid professors. In football, where there were once several Division I Roman Catholic schools, there are now just these two. In 17 football clashes, the South Bend school has a 9-to-8 edge. When they played each other for the 2008 NCAA national ice-hockey championship, Boston won 4-1, further intensifying the rivalry.
The schools are so well matched that a bit of gridiron magic can make a difference. Chris Hine, Notre Dame '09, applied to both BC and Notre Dame, and saw much to love. They both had outstanding academic reputations grounded in Catholic theology, which was important to him. They both had committed alumni and attractive campuses. But Hine went with the South Bend, Ind., school because of his memories of watching football with his grandfather, a huge fan of the Irish. "He passed away just weeks before I got my acceptance letter to Notre Dame, but I knew he'd be proud if I went to school there," says Hine, now editor in chief of the campus newspaper, The Observer.
One of every seven students accepted to BC also applies to Notre Dame. Their shared traditions can create tension when someone is thinking of trying the option that kinfolk have rejected. An article in the Boston College newspaper, the Chronicle, told the story of the Camacho family of Lenexa, Kans., with four children enrolled as undergraduates at BC at the same time. The third to enroll, Michael, insisted on also looking at Notre Dame. "That almost tore our family apart," says his older brother Paul, seemingly joking—but maybe not.
Consortium Jewels: Amherst vs. Pomona
The tree-filled campuses, 2,884 miles apart, sit at or near the top of nearly everyone's list of liberal-arts gems. They attract the smartest students, the best teaching professors and the envy of the vast majority of their applicants who didn't get in. But what puts them in a different category from other small schools are the unusual partnerships they have forged with their closest neighbors. Allied with Amherst in its woody section of western Massachusetts are Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, Smith and University of Massachusetts Amherst—the Five Colleges group. Tied firmly to Pomona, at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains east of Los Angeles, are the other Claremont Colleges: Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer and Scripps.
At each school, students may take courses at any of the other nearby four colleges. Students regularly eat at each other's dining halls and attend their social events. The Claremont Colleges are right next door to each other, while Smith and Mount Holyoke are a bike or shuttle-bus ride from the others in the Massachusetts cluster. The combination of small-college atmosphere and big-college choices has been a winning strategy for both schools.
The two biggest differences between them are that more people have heard of Amherst, and that Pomona has more sunshine. "There are moments when I really lose out on the ability to sound all obnoxious and snooty about my education," says David Lydon, who chose Pomona despite being accepted by Amherst, which was better known to his friends and family in Connecticut. Now studying law at Stanford, Lydon says the crucial moment was his overnight visit to Claremont: "It was late January, so the weather really beat the crap out of New England."
Stephanie Brown grew up in southern California and, though impressed by Pomona, decided Amherst was the place for her. She liked the changing of the seasons and the different cuisines and accents of the East. "It was like studying abroad without the passport issues," she says. Amherst was particularly active in reaching out to black students like her, she says, with a students-of-color weekend for visiting applicants. She graduated in 2007 and plans to return to California to pursue a career in mental-health care.
About 100 students in 2008 were admitted to both Amherst and Pomona, a competition likely to continue. Amherst changed all of its student loans to grants in July 2007 and Pomona did the same five months later. Each has small classes, with student-faculty ratios of about 8 to 1. Both are going after what Amherst spokeswoman Carolina Hanna calls "the same high-achieving, academically promising applicants regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds."
Science Magnets: Caltech vs. MIT
The pranks never end. MIT still celebrates the 2006 theft of Caltech's Fleming Cannon and its transport to what a press release from MIT itself called "sunny Cambridge, Mass.," where 21 MIT women in bathing suits, looking uncomfortable, and one bare-chested male posed with the catch. Caltech got its revenge in 2008, when participants in the annual MIT Mystery Hunt discovered the puzzle they were working on was a fraud, fooling them into calling a number that announced it was the Caltech admissions office, welcoming all MIT students who wished to transfer to its sunny campus. Who would've thought hardworking geeks and wonks at both had such time on their hands?
The two schools don't have to worry about their reputations. Little Caltech with 900 students and bigger MIT with about 4,000 are both known throughout the world as research meccas that may be producing scientists who someday will solve the energy crisis, explore space and kill off spam in our time. But such minds can't be as creative without some fun. So applicants like to check out the practical jokes—called "hacking" at MIT and "pranking" at Caltech—as inspiration for getting us all to Tomorrowland.
Tim Black, Caltech '11 and one of the perpetrators of the Mystery Hunt hack, was going to such puzzle-gatherings when he was still in high school in Madison, Wis. Some of them lasted two days and had hundreds of puzzles, many of which lacked instructions. He met some Caltech students, saw the campus and decided that was for him. His friend Paul Hlebowitsh, from Iowa City, picked MIT instead. He decided he liked to see the leaves change and concluded the Cambridge school had a bigger and stronger hacker bench. "I don't think Caltech will ever get to our level," he says. But the fake admissions-office phone number, he concedes, "was an amazing hack."
Big Hoosiers: Indiana vs. Purdue
"My grandmother will hate me for this," says Indiana University senior Ben Homrig, "but I have never really liked Purdue." It is not just Grandma, but most of his family are proud Purdue grads, a serious dilemma in what is probably the most deeply divided state in college loyalties. Indiana higher-education officials purposely designed their two major universities to be complementary, not competitive. Purdue focuses on engineering, agriculture and veterinary medicine. Indiana specializes in liberal arts, medicine and music. But that has only aggravated the desire to crush the rival. Homes throughout Indiana have flags that say HOUSE DIVIDED, meaning the family has both IU and Purdue people. "Marriage counselors' eyes light up when they drive past those signs," says IU spokesman Ryan Piurek.
The number of applicants to both schools is huge. About 8,000 students who sent IU their SAT scores in 2007 also sent their scores to Purdue (about a third of total applicants). Hoosiers take pride in the other school's heroes, such as Neil Armstrong, the Purdue grad who walked on the moon, or three-time national champion basketball coach Bob Knight, of IU. But that gets into the ticklish subject of sports, and sparks cries from Purdue fans that over the years the schools have played each other about even in basketball, a religion they all share. In football season, not so big a deal, the two play for the Old Oaken Bucket, a competition that began in 1925 with a scoreless tie and where Purdue leads in victories, 54 to 26.
Sam Killermann, Purdue '09, thinks his school has "more of a scholarly reputation." Homrig of Indiana plans a career in journalism and thinks the IU business connections are superb. Michelle Keesling, Purdue '08, says it is a matter of taste. Do you like Purdue's buildings close together in the urban setting of Lafayette or IU's wide green spaces in Bloomington? Casual Purdue or dressy Indiana? She says it's fun to argue. "When Indiana plays Purdue in a sport, you better believe I'm texting or calling my best friend at IU to let her know if Purdue is winning," Keesling says. "We didn't create that rivalry, but we sure as hell won't let it die."
Midwest Stars: Michigan vs. Ohio State
These two public behemoths do not shrink from the R word. Mabel G. Freeman, assistant vice president for undergraduate admissions and first-year experience at Ohio State, calls her university's relationship with the University of Michigan "the best rivalry in the entire country." U-M spokeswoman Deborah Meyers Greene responds: "Go Blue! Go Buckeyes!"
It starts early for incoming Ohio State freshmen: at orientation, anyone from the state of Michigan is asked to stand for a round of applause. For non-Midwesterners who want a big-school, big-sport environment, it's hard to make a choice between the two. Michigan is usually higher rated academically and more selective, but Ohio State has a strong graduation rate and the advantage, to many applicants, of being in the heart of Ohio's largest city, Columbus, with good shopping and dining and other recreational pursuits.
Partisans of the two schools' athletic glory have difficulty agreeing who has better football. Ohio State has been ranked No. 1 in recent years, but has not won the title in a while. Michigan, less of a contender, evokes the past, as well as other sports. "Michigan remains the winningest football program in the nation, and has more Big Ten titles in all sports than any other conference school," says Greene.
Like most colleges whose endowments soared in the 1990s, the schools have been using the money to put up more facilities. In 2009, Michigan will open a 53,000-square-foot expansion of its Museum of Art. Ohio State has opened a child-care and community center connected to a public school in its neighborhood. But they are also counting down to the next Big Game.
Historically Black: Howard vs. Morehouse and Spelman
Students interested in an education that focuses on African-American culture often give these three schools a close look. Coed Howard in Washington, D.C., has about 7,300 undergraduates. If they were one school, all-male Morehouse and its Atlanta next-door neighbor, all-female Spelman, each with about 3,000 students, would come close to Howard's size. For all three, their prominence in American higher education derives in part from their active and famous alumni. Nobel laureate Martin Luther King Jr. went to Morehouse; Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alice Walker, Spelman, and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, Howard. Many other intellectual, social and economic luminaries attended the schools, and those alums are quick to network with the latest crop of graduates.
The sense of competition is there, but undergraduates at all three schools say they're bound by a respect for the power of the social and political organizations that unite them. Howard sophomore Natasha Metts, walking quickly across the Yard to get to a Spanish class, mentions her work with the Alpha Phi Omega national service fraternity. Morehouse student-government president Chad Mance says his and his college's success "stands on pillars of community service and academic excellence." Former Spelman student-body president Adeola Adejobi, who is now at Cornell's law school, says she gained much from her school's insistence on developing her sense of the world through community service.
Travers Johnson, former managing editor of the Morehouse student paper The Maroon Tiger, credits that emphasis on real-world connections for his internship at the Clinton Foundation and his new job in New York with Random House. All three schools, he says, leave their students with "a consciousness about black issues and a sense of pride," something to share even while they argue over which college is best.
Cinematic Enclaves: NYU Tisch vs. USC Film School
These institutions, both part of larger universities, are formally known as the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. But people in the business usually just say they went to NYU or the SC film school. Both have lists of graduates that feed the fantasies of applicants yearning for shelves full of Oscars. USC claims George Lucas and Robert Zemeckis, among others. NYU includes Oliver Stone and Martin Scorsese.
Recent graduates say the differences between the schools are clear. USC is bigger and more commercial, a Hollywood blockbuster. NYU is smaller and grittier, an indie film. Jason Shuman, class of '96, loved the opportunity to work while he studied at USC. "If I had class three days a week, I spent the other two days interning at Warner Brothers," he says. He worked for big-time filmmakers and began to accumulate a string of his own producer credits, including "Darkness Falls" and "Daddy Day Camp." Jane Renaud graduated from NYU in 2005, and is where she wants to be, in New York producing news features on education for PBS, while directing a short film in her spare time. Shuman has friends from NYU. Renaud knows USC people. In the end, rivals get along just fine.
Fussy Kid, Flustered Mom
Kylee Smith, 5, of Richmond, Va., loves cheese—grilled cheese sandwiches, mac and cheese, cheese quesadillas. It’s what she doesn’t like that has her mom worried. Kylee won’t eat meat, other than chicken nuggets. Her vegetable consumption is limited to tomato sauce—but only on pizza, not spaghetti. Most nights, her mother has to prepare a special dish just for her. “If we’re eating something she doesn’t like, she won’t even sit next to us,” says her mother, Jean-Marie. If this sounds familiar, take heart. Children can be notoriously picky eaters—and today’s snack-food culture makes it even harder to channel their tastes in healthy directions. But research is shedding new light on how food preferences are formed—and what we can do to promote healthy eating. The good news: your choices aren’t limited to sneaking puréed vegetables into foods or battling it out over broccoli. One of the most surprising findings is that it’s never too early to start—not even during pregnancy. Flavorful compounds from a mother’s diet cross the placenta into amniotic fluid, which babies in the third trimester swallow at the rate of a quart a day. “Babies develop preferences for these foods long before they actually eat them,” says Julie Mennella, a biopsychologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. Similarly, during lactation, flavors pass from the mother’s bloodstream into breast milk. Mennella has done studies showing that babies whose moms drank carrot juice or ate fruits while breast-feeding liked carrot and peach baby foods better than formula-fed infants did. But picky eating is not always about the taste of food. Often it’s about texture, such as pulp in orange juice, nuts in brownies or gristle on meat. This doesn’t have to be a huge problem—it’s easy enough to cut off gristle. In fact, some of what passes for finicky eating is just normal development. Humans, being omnivores, are biologically programmed to be wary of new foods until they know they’re safe to eat. This “food neophobia” peaks between 2 and 5, when a newly mobile child would otherwise be at greatest risk of ingesting, say, colorful but toxic berries. The degree of caution varies greatly among children—and a recent study shows it is largely genetic. But everyone has it to some extent—even adults. Not surprisingly, it applies mainly to bitter foods (think vegetables), since bitterness often indicates poison. The quickest remedy may be that of Missy Chase Lapine, author of “The Sneaky Chef,” who conceals puréed vegetables in a wide range of foods. “If you can get eight vegetables, all hidden, and wheat germ and whole grains in a tasty meatball, why would you ever not do it?” she asks. Most experts approve of the tactic, saying it can boost the nutritional content of meals and take the pressure off mealtimes. But they also say it shouldn’t be the only approach: parents should also serve whole veggies so kids will acquire a taste for them. “If you want your child to like spinach, that won’t happen by sneaking it into brownies,” says Tina Tan, a pediatric-feeding specialist at New York University Langone Medical Center’s Rusk Institute. So what’s a parent to do? • Be persistent. Psychologist Leann Birch at Pennsylvania State University has shown that children often need to try a new food 10 to 15 times before they will accept it. Most moms give up after three to five times. • Don’t force kids to eat. When introducing a new food, give a very small amount. Let the child spit it out if she wants. “Children have to get accustomed to the taste and texture of a food before they feel comfortable swallowing it,” says family therapist Ellyn Satter, author of “Child of Mine: Feeding With Love and Good Sense.” • Take kids’ tastes into account. Children generally have a higher preference than adults for sweet and salty tastes. But you can work with that and still have healthy meals. Dietitian Elizabeth Ward, author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Feeding Your Baby and Toddler,” suggests putting grated cheese on veggies. The salt in the cheese counteracts some of the bitterness. Serve carrots, which are sweet, for snacks. Purée cauliflower; it looks like mashed potatoes. • Don’t fix separate meals. It’s hard to resist when kids are refusing to eat. But it only reinforces their biases. Instead, each meal should contain some foods the kids like and some the adults like. Serving meals family style lets the child choose and gives her a sense of control. Eventually, most kids will start eating many of the same foods as the parents. • Don’t bribe kids. Promising ice cream as a reward for eating broccoli only fuels the suspicion that there’s something wrong with the broccoli. “It serves a short-term goal, but in the long run, it makes kids like broccoli less and ice cream more,” says Birch. • Find a role model. If your child has a friend who’s a good eater, invite her to dinner. In one study, Birch sat children who hated peas with kids who were eating the veggie happily. After a week of this routine, the pea haters started eating peas, too. • Involve kids in cooking. It will help get them used to the smell, feel and texture of foods. And having a stake in the meal will make them somewhat more likely to eat it. • Relax. If meals become a power struggle, you’re likely to lose. “Along with potty training and sleeping, eating behavior is one thing kids can control,” says Tan. “And it definitely gets a reaction out of Mom and Dad.” Just remember: as long as the kids are getting some kind of fruit, vegetable and protein, they’re probably doing fine. Time to Hang Up the Keys: Worries about your elderly parents' driving? Watch for warning signs Starting the conversation: If a parent refuses to stop driving Repairpal.com: be in the know on your next trip to the mechanic. Comprehensive explanations of what typical repairs should cost based on your car make, model, year, and zip code.
-take notice if your parents are reluctant to drive at night, seem tense or exhausted after driving, or complain about getting lost
-discreetly check the car for any dents or nicks and ask whether your parents have received traffic tickets or warnings
-take opportunities to ride in the car while your parents drive. Look for indications of discomfort: Do they crane forward or look tense? Do they tailgate or drift between lanes? Do they react slowly? Do they have trouble finding their way?
-don't sound alarmed. If you begin with a dramatic outburst, you're likely to trigger resistance. Work toward the topic slowly and gently
-turn the conversation toward the downside of driving, including the cost of maintaining a car. Let your parent realize for himself that he risks a serious accident.
-discuss interim measures such as driving only in daylight or on familiar routes; or explore other transportation options like the bus
-suggest a senior driving refresher course offered by the AARP or a driving school
-suggest a joint bisit with a trusted doctor, who can discuss whether any treatable medical conditions are interfering with driving or if assistive devices can help
-as a last resort, look into the possibility of anonymously issuing a safety complaint through the local DMV, which will ask your parent to submit to a medical evaluation
-don't let your parents get cut off. Most elderly drivers dread giving up the car keys out of fear of isolation. Offer to drive them to activities and include them in your own life when you can. If you don't live nearby, you might encourage them to move closer to loved ones or to areas where it's easier to get around without a car. They may be losing a vehicle, but they'll gain new helping hands.
