A Plan to Save New Zealand\'s Birds: Get Rid of Cats

HONG KONG â€" A prominent New Zealand economist has set off a firestorm by suggesting that cats should eventually be eliminated from his country, claiming they are posing a dire threat to native bird species.

Gareth Morgan, an economist and environmentalist, says that the cat is actually a “friendly neighborhood serial killer” when it comes to birds, and his Web site suggests that New Zealanders should gradually reduce the local feline population by having all cats neutered, and that when cats do die, their owners should not replace them.

This problem, he says in his anti-cat site “Cats to Go,” is that cats are gradually endangering New Zealand’s rich avian diversity, having helped kill off nine native species while endangering another 33.

New Zealanders, it turns out, have an affinity for what Mr. Morgan calls “that little ball of fluff” that he maintains “is actually a natural-born killer.” The New Zealand Pet Food Manufcturers Association, which of course has a stake in such statistics, reports that 48 percent of New Zealand’s households have cats, “making it the highest cat ownership rate in the world.”

The issue of the feline threat to birds has been documented before. A study on the deaths of baby gray catbirds in the Washington suburbs found that “80 percent of the birds were killed by predators, and cats were responsible for 47 percent of those deaths.” One issue is that with their domestication, cats have few natural predators.

Still, Mr. Morgan’s campaign calling for the eventual elimination of cats from New Zealand has drawn an angry response from cat lovers and some animal groups. “A cat-free anywhere is not a good area,” said Bob Kerridg! e, executive director of the Auckland Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, who added that we should “leave it to nature to take care of things.”

The Brewing Terror Threat in Thailand

BEIJING â€" Islamic terrorism never went away, though it seemed perhaps to have quieted down after the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011. But is it back now, stronger, as the crisis in Mali shows And is southern Thailand a next crisis zone

According to the Global Terrorism Index issued by the Institute for Economics and Peace, the countries suffering the most from the impact of terrorism include familiar places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia. But here’s a surprise, perhaps: Thailand ranked No. 8, even though many people associate it with holiday-making in the sun and not the carnage of war.

According to the index, issued last December by the institute, a nonprofit group that works for world peace, in 2011 Thailand had 173 terrorist incidents that resulted in 142 fatalities (Iraq topped the index with 1,228 incidents and 1,798 fatalities.)

In the exellent interactive graphic, Mali ranked 43d out of the 158 countries studied, something which will presumably change following the jihadist thrust there that has led to the military intervention of France and African nations, supported by the United States. As this Reuters article explains, “The aim of the intervention is to prevent northern Mali from becoming a launchpad for international attacks by al Qaeda and its local allies in North and West Africa.”

In Thailand, the decades-old Muslim insurgency is growing and changing in character - and foreigners, as well as Thais, should beware, reports Asia Sentinel, an online platform for Asian issues

The conflict is already very bloody. More than 5,000 people have been killed since 2001 and about 11,000 severely in! jured, according to statistics kept by Deep South Watch, a monitoring organization in southern Thailand. The Council on Foreign Relations Web said this makes Thailand “the deadliest war zone in East Asia.”

Last year, the insurgency in Thailand’s south began taking on “a worrying new direction,” the article in Asia Sentinel said.

“Buddhist monks and teachers have been regularly singled out as targets. More than 300 schools closed recently as teachers went on strike over the worsening security situation. In September 2012, militants threatened to kill anyone not respecting Friday as the Muslim Sabbath, which forced many businesses to close and many people to remain indoors for the day,” the article said. “Creeping Islamization is changing the nature of this previously low-level conflict.”

“Further complicating the nature of the rebellion are deep links to local criminal gans, especially those centered on drug and people trafficking. Conflict in the Deep South is an extremely profitable business,” it said.

As the article on the Council’s Web site reported, an attack on Sept. 21 killed six in Pattani province in Thailand’s south, just a few hundred kilometers from the tourist beaches of Phuket and Thailand’s west coast.

“These types of brutal attacks have become routine in this province,” it said. “On a daily basis, groups of heavily armed men attack local officials, police, soldiers, teachers and any Muslim they believe is not adhering strictly enough to Islamic values. The insurgents explode homemade bombs, climb onto school buses and strafe children with gunfire. Those believed to sympathize with the national government are sometimes decapitated, their headless bodies left in public places, along with warnings to obey a strict form of Islam.”

Thailand’s deputy prime minister, Chalerm Yoobamrung, who is also the country’s “securi! ty boss,â! € as the Bangkok newspaper, The Nation, described him, has said that the institute’s high ranking on the list was actually a misunderstanding.

Chalerm’s response was pilloried early this month by the newspaper, which accused him of sweeping the problem under the carpet and hoping nobody would notice.

Just as the Islamist push in North Africa appears to have taken a new turn with the killing of local and foreign hostages in Algeria, some are worried the same will happen in Thailand, unless the problem is dealt with.

“Current travel warnings for Thailand continue to understate the risk,” said the Asia Sentinel.

“Remarkably, the Thai insurgency has never veered near the coastal enclaves that are packed both with wealthy tourists and westerners who own beach properties in Phuket and other areas.”

But, “There is precedent for caution,” the Sentinel sad. “In 2001, an Abu Sayyaf raid kidnapped about 20 people from Dos Palmas, an expensive resort north of Puerto Princesa City on the island of Palawan in the Philippines, which had been considered completely safe.” A Peruvian-American tourist was beheaded by the kidnappers and an American missionary was killed in a shootout between them and security forces.

Reverberations After the Bolshoi Attack

When a hooded assailant flung acid in the face of Sergei Filin, the director of the Bolshoi Ballet, late on Thursday night in Moscow, the attack almost instantly made headlines worldwide.

Although doctors have now said that Mr. Filin will not lose his sight in both eyes, the extent of the damage to his vision and face is not yet known. The viciousness of the intention â€" blindness, disfigurement, pain â€" behind the attack has left the ballet world (and journalists) groping for explanations. Some have been quick to link the incident to the byzantine politics and history of infighting that has long characterized the Bolshoi theater.

The Bolshoi’s general director, Anatoly Iksanov, immediately said that he believed the attack was linked to the theater, and Mr. Filin, in an interview with the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, published Tuesday, said “he believed he wa attacked because of his work at the ballet company,” wrote Ellen Barry, who has been covering the events from Moscow for The New York Times.

Reports in European and American news media have almost all mentioned the simmering hostility between the director and the flamboyant principal dancer, Nikolai Tsiskaridze, who has made no secret of his belief that he should head the company, nor of his criticism of Mr. Filin’s artistic policy. Mr. Tsiskaridze is said to inspire fanatical devotion in his fans, who sent a petition to President Vladimir V. Putin in November demanding that their hero replace Mr. Filin as head of the ballet company. But commentators have stopped short of suggesting that the dancer himself might have had something to do with the attack.

“As ruthless as the ballet world might be, it’s hard to imagine Tsiskaridze committing such a crime,” wrote Ariane Bavelier in Le Figaro.

That ruthlessness has been repeatedly alluded to, with, naturally, Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 film, “Black Swan,” and its lurid portrayal of the ballet world, repeatedly invoked. “An acid attack on the artistic director of the Bolshoi ballet has shone the spotlight on the fierce “Black Swan”-like competition for starring roles at the famed Russian dance company,” wrote Lynn Berry and Nataliya Vasileva on the Huffington Post Web site.

Hearing about the persecution that preceded the physical attack on Mr. Filin in previous months â€" his car tires were slashed, his phones, email and Facebook page hacked, and he received numerous threatenin phone calls â€" makes the fictional events of the film “Black Swan” and Natalie Portman’s psychotic ballerina seem rather less far-fetched.

Many have placed the attack on Mr. Filin in the context of a long history of internecine war at the Bolshoi, linked to the polarizing figure of Yuri Grigorivich, who headed the ballet company for three mostly Soviet-era decades, until his dismissal in 1995.

“Just turned 86, he retains almost godlike status for his supporters, who include many veteran Bolshoi coaches as well as some celebrated dance stars such as Tsiskaridze, who share a suspicion of modernizers,” wrote Ismene Brown on the Artsdesk web site.

Grigorovich supporters criticize what they see as an overly Westernized approach on the part of subsequent directors. Several commentators have suggested that the departure of Alexei Ratmansky, who is widely seen as having revital! ized the ! company during his 2004-2008 tenure, was due at least in part to pressure from this group.

Although Mr. Ratmansky has always been tactful about his reasons for leaving the Bolshoi, his feelings were clear in a Facebook post after the attack: “Many of the illnesses of the Bolshoi are one snowball,” he wrote, “that disgusting claque which is friendly with artists, ticket speculators and scalpers, half-crazy fans who are ready to slit the throats of their idol’s competitors, cynical hackers, lies in the press and scandalous interviews of people working there.”

And the departure of Gennady Yanin, who resigned in 2011 after sexually explicit photographs resembling him were posted on the Internet, has also been described by Mr. Yanin’s supporters as the result of a crude smear campaign.

It as announced Tuesday that Galina Stepanenko, a former principal dancer and the first woman to hold a senior position at the Bolshoi, will run the company during Mr. Filin’s absence.

What is clear from the media coverage is that ballet has a political status in Russia that is very different from that in the west.

“Shocking as it might seem to western observers, politics in the Bolshoi and other Russian companies are often just as turbulent and murky as those in the outside world - and no less locked in a struggle between cold war-style conservatives and liberal modernisers than Russia itself,” Judith Mackrell wrote in The Guardian.

It’s not impossible to imagine that artistic directors in London or Paris or Berlin might be subject to threats or intimidation, as might be the case for any powerful head of a large organiza! tion. But! it’s harder to envisage a culture in which ballet is as powerful a symbol of political prestige and national brand as government itself.

“Ballet in Russia is more politics than art,” wrote the New York-based impresario Sergei Danilian, who represents a number of major Russian ballet dancers, in an email message.

“Would that ballet ignited such passion here,” wrote a New York resident on Twitter.

Well, not really, but you know what she means.

Reverberations After the Bolshoi Attack

When a hooded assailant flung acid in the face of Sergei Filin, the director of the Bolshoi Ballet, late on Thursday night in Moscow, the attack almost instantly made headlines worldwide.

Although doctors have now said that Mr. Filin will not lose his sight in both eyes, the extent of the damage to his vision and face is not yet known. The viciousness of the intention â€" blindness, disfigurement, pain â€" behind the attack has left the ballet world (and journalists) groping for explanations. Some have been quick to link the incident to the byzantine politics and history of infighting that has long characterized the Bolshoi theater.

The Bolshoi’s general director, Anatoly Iksanov, immediately said that he believed the attack was linked to the theater, and Mr. Filin, in an interview with the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, published Tuesday, said “he believed he wa attacked because of his work at the ballet company,” wrote Ellen Barry, who has been covering the events from Moscow for The New York Times.

Reports in European and American news media have almost all mentioned the simmering hostility between the director and the flamboyant principal dancer, Nikolai Tsiskaridze, who has made no secret of his belief that he should head the company, nor of his criticism of Mr. Filin’s artistic policy. Mr. Tsiskaridze is said to inspire fanatical devotion in his fans, who sent a petition to President Vladimir V. Putin in November demanding that their hero replace Mr. Filin as head of the ballet company. But commentators have stopped short of suggesting that the dancer himself might have had something to do with the attack.

“As ruthless as the ballet world might be, it’s hard to imagine Tsiskaridze committing such a crime,” wrote Ariane Bavelier in Le Figaro.

That ruthlessness has been repeatedly alluded to, with, naturally, Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 film, “Black Swan,” and its lurid portrayal of the ballet world, repeatedly invoked. “An acid attack on the artistic director of the Bolshoi ballet has shone the spotlight on the fierce “Black Swan”-like competition for starring roles at the famed Russian dance company,” wrote Lynn Berry and Nataliya Vasileva on the Huffington Post Web site.

Hearing about the persecution that preceded the physical attack on Mr. Filin in previous months â€" his car tires were slashed, his phones, email and Facebook page hacked, and he received numerous threatenin phone calls â€" makes the fictional events of the film “Black Swan” and Natalie Portman’s psychotic ballerina seem rather less far-fetched.

Many have placed the attack on Mr. Filin in the context of a long history of internecine war at the Bolshoi, linked to the polarizing figure of Yuri Grigorivich, who headed the ballet company for three mostly Soviet-era decades, until his dismissal in 1995.

“Just turned 86, he retains almost godlike status for his supporters, who include many veteran Bolshoi coaches as well as some celebrated dance stars such as Tsiskaridze, who share a suspicion of modernizers,” wrote Ismene Brown on the Artsdesk web site.

Grigorovich supporters criticize what they see as an overly Westernized approach on the part of subsequent directors. Several commentators have suggested that the departure of Alexei Ratmansky, who is widely seen as having revital! ized the ! company during his 2004-2008 tenure, was due at least in part to pressure from this group.

Although Mr. Ratmansky has always been tactful about his reasons for leaving the Bolshoi, his feelings were clear in a Facebook post after the attack: “Many of the illnesses of the Bolshoi are one snowball,” he wrote, “that disgusting claque which is friendly with artists, ticket speculators and scalpers, half-crazy fans who are ready to slit the throats of their idol’s competitors, cynical hackers, lies in the press and scandalous interviews of people working there.”

And the departure of Gennady Yanin, who resigned in 2011 after sexually explicit photographs resembling him were posted on the Internet, has also been described by Mr. Yanin’s supporters as the result of a crude smear campaign.

It as announced Tuesday that Galina Stepanenko, a former principal dancer and the first woman to hold a senior position at the Bolshoi, will run the company during Mr. Filin’s absence.

What is clear from the media coverage is that ballet has a political status in Russia that is very different from that in the west.

“Shocking as it might seem to western observers, politics in the Bolshoi and other Russian companies are often just as turbulent and murky as those in the outside world - and no less locked in a struggle between cold war-style conservatives and liberal modernisers than Russia itself,” Judith Mackrell wrote in The Guardian.

It’s not impossible to imagine that artistic directors in London or Paris or Berlin might be subject to threats or intimidation, as might be the case for any powerful head of a large organiza! tion. But! it’s harder to envisage a culture in which ballet is as powerful a symbol of political prestige and national brand as government itself.

“Ballet in Russia is more politics than art,” wrote the New York-based impresario Sergei Danilian, who represents a number of major Russian ballet dancers, in an email message.

“Would that ballet ignited such passion here,” wrote a New York resident on Twitter.

Well, not really, but you know what she means.

Two Views on Liberal Arts

This week, the IHT education section takes a look at the liberal arts, the largely North American education system that emphasizes a broad base of learning. It is slowly making inroads in Europe and Asia, where university courses have traditionally been more narrowly focused.

In Hong Kong, I met with Rebecca Chopp, the president of Swarthmore College, a top liberal arts colleges in the United States. Professor Chopp was on a whirlwind Asia tour that also included Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, Shanghai and Suzhou, China. Like most college presidents on the road, she was there to visit alumni, raise funds and recruit students. She was also in a position to explain the pluses of a liberal arts education in a region where it’s still a foreign concept. She said:

“Liberal arts is founded on a whole person, developing aperson athletically and academically. Liberal arts is going international. The 21st century is one of entrepreneurship and innovation. There will not be fixed careers. The liberal arts teaches you to think outside the box.”

Here’s a tidbit that didn’t make it into my article: The first semester for every student at Swarthmore is pass/fail. You cannot get an A (or a D, for that matter). Professor Chopp was frank about her own less-than-stellar academic beginnings, so maybe she is particularly forgiving of freshmen who are finding their way. She said that this system encouraged risk-taking â€" not something all academically driven students are wont to do. With a pass/fail system an aspiring doctor can try an art class, with no fear that it will bring down his or her grade-point average, or an artist can try a science class.

Speaking of doctors, Professor Chopp addr! essed a common (and inaccurate) worry about the liberal arts: that they lead to impractical degrees in obscure subjects that don’t lead to good careers. She points out that Swarthmore graduates who apply to medical school have a higher-than-average chance of getting in (81 percent).

A private liberal arts college in the U.K.

In London, D.D. Guttenplan visited the leafy campus of Regent’s College, which is something of an anomaly in Britain. Once it gets government approval, probably next month, Regent’s will be only the second private university in the country (after the University of Buckingham).

Regent’s is also different because it is structured something like a U.S. liberal arts college - with a looser curriculum, small-group teaching, points for speaking up in class and a very international student body. (Only 15 percent come from Britain.)

Lawrence Phillips, who heads Regent’s American College (one of its specialist schools), said in a interview:

“I came here out of specific concerns about the narrowness of British universities, producing business graduates who can’t write and historians who can’t count.”

Mr. Guttenplan also spoke to foreign students like Lisa Marie Nyvoll, who said, “In Norway, you only study a single subject, and I wanted something more flexible.” You can read the full article here.

The liberal arts model is shaped like an inverted pyramid â€" broad on top, and then tapering down to a point. The traditional European or Asian model is shaped like a telescope â€" narrow and focused all the way through.

By the middle of high school, most European or Asian students have chosen their field of study and are taking courses and exams that will get them into their desired course. Meanwhile, there are 19-year-olds in America still debating whether th! ey want t! o major in chemistry and minor in music. Many students and parents I meet in Europe and Asia are surprised to hear that some American students don’t declare their majors until the end of their second year - about half-way through their four-year degrees.

Do private U.S.-style colleges have a place in Britain, which has its own proud academic culture Which system better prepares students for the real world One that gives students three years of intense study in one field Or one that takes four years to produce literate scientists and numerate writers

France and Germany\'s Not-So-Golden Anniversary

LONDON â€" The marriage between France and Germany appears to be going through a bad patch. But divorce, it seems, is out of the question.

As leaders of the two states gathered in Berlin on Tuesday to mark 50 years of a friendship treaty that has powered wider European integration, commentators reached for connubial metaphors to describe the present state of the relationship.

“A golden wedding with no romance,” was how the French broadcaster RF1 described the anniversary of the Elysée Treaty concluded on January 22, 1963 between Charles de Gaulle, the French president, and Germany’s Chancellor Konrad Adenaur.

Fifty years on, “the neighboring country is seen more as a partner than as a friend,” according to Pascal Thibaut, its Berlin correspondent.Differences over how to tackle an economic crisis in the euro zone have sharpened since the election last year of François Hollande, France’s Socialist president.

And, just ahead of the celebrations, Germany’s limited support for French intervention in Mali has underlined the lack of a common defense and foreign policy vision between the two partners.

Françoise Fressoz of Le Monde said there was no escaping the fact that there had been a power shift in the relationship that made the French uneasy. “Gnawed by deficits and unemployment, they tend to think of Germany as a hegemonic and egotistical power.”

Europe has undergone seismic changes since the new post-war relationship between the former hereditary enemies was sealed by the friendship treaty.

The Cold War ended, the two halves of Germany were reunited, and the euro was established with their joint backing as an instrument and symbol of closer European integration.

Whatever the political ups and downs of the Franco-German relationship, polls indicate that the people of the two countries have long ago set aside the enmity that once characterized their relationship.

That said, it seems that many clichés persist. A recent Ifop survey found that most Germans first think of Paris, the Eiffel Tower, wine and croissants when they think of France. For the French, it is Angela Merkel, beer, Berlin and cars.

“The anniversary would be a bittersweet moment” for the two partners, according to Joachim Bitterlich, a former adviser to Germany’s Chancellor Helmut Kohl. “Sure, there have been ups and downs,” he wrote in the Financial Times, “but the achievements of the past half-century are real and worth celebrating.”

That could not mask the fact that the relationship appeared to be in deep crisis and that the rifts had never been so wide, Mr. Bitterlich wrote.

Germany’s Der Spiegel agreed: “The anniversary comes at a time when the two countries are drifting apart economically, the relationship is being tested politically as a result of the euro crisis, and assurances of friendship seem hollow at times.”

In an interview with the magazine, Joshka Fischer, a former German foreign minister, acknowledged a note of arrogance in German demands that France should do more to institute economic reforms.

“My advice is to practice modesty and, most of all, to simply step away from this entire arroga! nt discus! sion,” he told Der Spiegel.

However, Mr. Fischer believed “the relationship between France and Germany is currently being portrayed in public as much more tense than it actually is.”

In the words of the narrator in an anniversary documentary by the channel France 5: “They’re no longer a couple, but divorce is impossible.”

Oscar Anticipation in the Subtitle Category

PARISâ€"With the multiple nominations for “Lincoln,” “Django Unchained” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” Europeans may see this year’s Academy Award field as something of a celebration of American history, in the age of Obama.

Still, “Amour,” Michael Haneke’s Austrian film shot in France and in French, made it into the best picture category, confirmation that the Academy thinks subtitled films can hold their own against American blockbusters. “Amour,” about life, death, age and love, is nominated in five categories (best picture, best foreign film, best actress, director and screenplay).

As Vanessa Thorpe wrote recently in The Guardian, “Academy voters appear to be hinting at a new openness to other cultures and the growing acceptability of subtitled entertainment.”

She theorized that a larger cultural shift is happening:

The new appetite for foreign fare might have started with the mass popularity of translated Scandinavian thrillers, from Stieg Larsson to Jo Nesbo, or it may have been the accidental result of cash-strapped public television schedulers searching for new quality drama with a reasonable price tag.

France took great national pride in last year’s best picture winner, “The Artist,” but, as Elaine Sciolino wrote at the time, it was shot in Los Angeles with an American crew, the rights were bought by an American, and it is all about Hollywood.

The fierce competition this year, and p! erhaps its grim subject matter, makes “Amour” something of a long shot as best picture. Among the best foreign-language film nominees, however, it stands as the overwhelming favorite to take the prize at the awards ceremony on Feb. 24.

The film has already swept all the European awards, including the 2012 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or; it was given the Golden Globe last week for best foreign language film, and more than 20 other awards and nominations. Oscar observers tend to agree it should leave with a golden statue, if not for best picture then surely for best foreign film.

But award ceremonies sometimes welcome surprises, and the foreign film category this year has some other strong contenders. The selection was made from a recrd-breaking 71 submissions in the category this year.

With two Scandinavian films in the running, three of the five nominees are from Europe. Denmark’s entry, “A Royal Affair,” a sumptuous romantic drama set in the 18th century, lost to “Amour” at the Golden Globes but took two awards at the Berlin International Film Festival: for best script and best actor for Mads Mikkelsen, whom you might recognize as the villain from “Casino Royale.”

“Kon-Tiki,” a box-office hit from Norway, got a double Golden Globe-Oscar nomination. It tells the story of Thor Heyerdahl’s 1947 trip across the Pacific on a small raft with five other men. Larry Rohter, who has been following the foreign film race closely for The New York Times, writes on the Carpetbagger b! log that ! the Weinstein brothers are reportedly planning to release it in English this year.

Last year’s contenders included Iranian and Israeli films, this year the remaining two nominees are from the Americas.

The Chilean director Pablo Larrain was third-time lucky with “No,” his third film about the Pinochet years. Starring Gael Garcia Bernal, the film is about the 1988 referendum that ended the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. This is Mr. Larrain’s second attempt at the award after being shortlisted in 2008 for his film “Tony Manero,” With “No,” which opens in February in the United States, Mr. Larrain won the top prize in the Directors’ Fortnight section at Cannes.

In a recen Q&A with Larry Rohter, the 36-year-old director talked about the difficulty that film committees face in choosing their entries for the Oscars. “What happens when the committee in each country meets to decide, sometimes they make the mistake that they think the movie that should be submitted is the one that they like more themselves,” he said.

Canada got a nod with “War Witch,” a film shot primarily in Congo about an adolescent girl-soldier trapped in civil war. The film, in French and the African language Lingala, wowed the critics and was awarded a top prize at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. The nomination was yet another win for the government-supported National Film Board of Canada, which has garnered Oscar nominations for three years in a row.

Neither “No” nor “War Witch” made it into the Golden Globes selection.

The nomination wil! l probabl! y help “No” when it begins its release in Europe and the United States next month, as being in the Oscar race often gives movies a “nomination bump” in box-office figures, though Edmund Helmer wrote in an analysis recently for Reuters that a Golden Globe may be a better win financially.

One film that didn’t need to wait for its Golden Globe nomination to rock the box-office was “The Intouchables,” perhaps the most surprising absentee of the Oscars’ foreign film selection. The French movie, about the friendship between a rich Parisian quadriplegic and his caretaker, has become the highest-grossing film evr made in a language other than English, with a worldwide box-office take of roughly $410 million, about three times that of “The Artist.” Take that, Oscar.

Are you more likely to see a movie if it has won awards Does the prospect of subtitles keep you from seeing a movie And are there films you’ve seen that you think should have been nominated in the foreign film category that weren’t

Fill out your own ballot in The New York Times Oscar poll.

Favorite Grammar Gaffes

On the rare occasions when I’m stuck for an After Deadline topic, there are a few perennials I can always rely on, with examples easy to find. Dangling modifiers are never in short supply. Subject-verb agreement, basic as it is, remains a daily challenge.

And, of course, we have the who/whom problem.

For nonprofessional writers, the most common relative-pronoun lapse seems to be the use of “who,” the subject or nominative form, in places where standard usage requires the objective form “whom.” But Times writers suffer more often from the opposite problem â€" a tendency to hypercorrection, which leads us to use “whom” when plain old “who” is called for.

The latest examples:

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The same was true for Sammy Sosa, whom The New York Times reported tested positive for steroid use in 2003.

This is the most common hypercorrection error. The pronoun should be “who” because it’s the subject of the verb “tested.” But wemistakenly treat it as though it’s the direct object of “reported.”

---

In her study, when men and women considered offers of casual sex from famous people, or offers from close friends whom they were told were good in bed, the gender differences in acceptance of casual-sex proposals evaporated nearly to zero. …
Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist and popular author, also backs the Darwinians, whom he says still have the weight of evidence on their side.

Two more instances, in the same piece. Don’t be led astray by the parenthetical attributions “they were told” and “he says.” In both cases, the relative pronoun is functioning as the subject of its clause, so we need “who.” Mentally remove the attribution phrase and it becomes clear: “who … were good” and “who … still have.”

---

Then you offer a point to whomever can put the least amount of veg! etables on their fork.

Another common cause of the hypercorrective “whom” (or, here, “whomever”): confusion over prepositional phrases. Don’t assume that a relative pronoun after a preposition must be the objective form. The case of the relative pronoun is determined by its role within the relative clause. Here, the pronoun is the subject of the verb “can”; the object of the preposition is the entire relative clause. So make it “to whoever can put …” (Also, “least amount” is awkward and ambiguous. Make it “smallest amount,” “tiniest bit” or something else.)

 
In a Word

This week’s grab bag of grammar, style and other missteps, compiled with help from colleagues and readers.

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But for hundreds of others, who have mounted repeated protests, the new mining operation is nothing more than a symbol of Greece’s willingness these days to accept any development, no matter the environmental cost. Only 10 years ago, they like topoint out, Greece’s highest court ruled that the amount of environmental damage that mining would do here was not worth the economic gain.

The logic is backward here. We meant that the gain is not worth the cost (in damage) â€" not that the cost is not worth the gain. Rephrase.

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Both Anthony and Garnett each were hit with technicals for pushing and jawing with one another. On several previous possessions, Anthony and Garnett had banged in the low post and barked at one another when the whistle was blown.

We don’t need both “both” and “each.” (Also, use “each other” rather than “one another” for two people.)

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That why-can’t-we-get-along outlook, coming from scholars who had already run the tenure gauntlet, drew a mixed response from the audience.

The Times’s stylebook favors “gantlet” for this sense.

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Her brother said the two had recently celebr! ated the ! New Year in Rotterdam and that Ms. Cansiz had betrayed no concerns about her safety.

Make it parallel: “Her brother said that the two … and that Ms. Cansiz …” The stylebook says this:

Often a sentence with two parallel clauses requires the expression and that in the second part; in such a case, keep that in the first part also, for balance: The mayor said that she might run again and that if she did, her brother would be her campaign manager.

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But aides to both acknowledge the dynamic on Capitol Hill could change and that Mr. McCain â€" and others â€" will give Mr. Hagel a rough time.

Same problem. Make it “acknowledge that the dynamic … and that Mr. McCain …”

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At 22, Ms. Ora, the prized protégé of Jay-Z, has been rapidly winning over designers with her carefree style: a blend of hip-hop, designer bling and ’90s Gwen Stefani.

See the stylebook; a woman is a prtégée.

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Between them, Senator John Kerry and Chuck Hagel have five Purple Hearts for wounds suffered in Vietnam, shared a harrowing combat experience in the Mekong Delta and responded in different ways to the conflict that tore their generation apart.

The placement of “Between them” suggests that it applies to the whole sentence, which is not what we meant. Rearrange.

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And he sets off chemical reactions in not only Madge but also her smart kid sister, Millie (the megaphone-voiced Madeleine Martin) and Rosemary, the Owens’s boarder, who pretends to be happily independent but really just wants a man to call her own (specifically, her sometime boyfriend, Howard Bevans, played by a nicely understated Reed Birney).

The plural of Owens is Owenses, and the plural possessive is Owenses’.

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It used to be that parents didn’t want their children to get swollen heads (when’s the last time you ! heard tha! t expression) or, for more superstitious reasons, feared that praise would bring on the wrath of the gods, or at least bad luck.

The idiom is “swelled head.”

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Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, used the term a couple weeks ago.

Make it “a couple of weeks.”

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He signed off with a lightning-bolt symbol associated with the SS, Adolf Hitler’s bodyguard force.

As the stylebook says, we should ordinarily omit his first name.

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“It’s probably better not to” engage in such transactions, said John S. Griswold, executive director of the Commonfund Institute, the research arm of a money manager that caters to educational endowments in Wilton, Conn.

How many educational endowments are there in Wilton, Conn. Be careful about the placement of prepositional phrases.

IHT Quick Read: Jan. 22

NEWS Barack Hussein Obama ceremonially opened his second term on Monday with an assertive Inaugural Address that offered a robust articulation of modern liberalism in America, arguing that “preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.” Peter Baker reports from Washington. The President made addressing climate change the most prominent policy vow of his second Inaugural Address, setting in motion what Democrats say will be a deliberately paced but aggressive campaign built around the use of his executive powers to sidestep Congressional opposition. Richard W. Stevenson and John M. Broder report.

As the death toll from the crisis in the Sahara rose sharply to 37, Algeria’s prime minister sai that the hostage takers intended to kill all their captives and that the army saved many by attacking. Adam Nossiter reports from Algiers and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

Malian and French troops appeared to recapture two important central Malian towns on Monday, pushing back an advance by Islamist militants who have overrun the country’s northern half. Lydia Polgreen reports from Segou, Mali, and Peter Tinti reports from Diabaly.

A report from the International Labor Organization predicted jobless levels to rise to 202 million worldwide this year, and said that government budget-balancing was hurting employment. David Jolly reports from Paris.

Europe’s political leaders have taken important steps to improve spending discipline among euro members, but have yet to address some serious flaws in the structure of the euro zone. Liz Alderman reports from Paris and Jack Ewing from Frankfurt.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s main rivals eked out a one-seat majority that will usher the opposition Social Democrats into power in the state of Lower Saxony. Melissa Eddy and Nicholas Kulish report from Berlin.

ARTS The Neues Museum in Berlin is celebrating a bust of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti that “fell” into its hands 100 years ago. Melissa Eddy reports.

FASHION Raf Simons snt out a Dior summer couture collection rooted in reality â€" note the model’s wash-’n'-go hair â€" but full of flowers and the beauty of nature. Suzy Menkes writes from Paris.

SPORTS Sloane Stephens’s reward for reaching her first Grand Slam quarterfinal will be a match against a friend and fellow American, Serena Williams. Christopher Clarey reports from Melbourne.

Golfers will be able to express their opinions during Tuesday’s PGA Tour players’ meeting on the proposed ban of the anchored putting stroke. Karen Crouse reports from San Diego.