Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ARMIES (92%); INVESTIGATIONS (90%); CONTRACTS & BIDS (89%); PUBLIC CONTRACTING (89%); DEFENSE CONTRACTING (78%); PURCHASING & PROCUREMENT (77%); CONTRACT AWARDS (76%); ARMED FORCES (73%); TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS (60%)
GEOGRAPHIC: MIAMI, FL, USA (91%) FLORIDA, USA (91%) UNITED STATES (94%); AFGHANISTAN (94%); IRAQ (93%)
LOAD-DATE: April 27, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Efraim E. Diveroli.
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

821 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
April 27, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

Odd Couple Of The Jungle
BYLINE: By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
SECTION: Section WK; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 800 words
IN THE AMAZON JUNGLE, Ecuador

Douglas McMeekin was a failed businessman in Kentucky, and Juan Kunchikuy was a hunter in a remote nook of the Amazon rain forest who killed monkeys, deer and wild pigs with a blowgun and poison darts.

Now this unlikely pair has joined forces in a remarkable campaign to save the rain forest, ''the lungs of the earth'' that suck up the carbon we spew out. Of all the struggles to fight climate change, this is one of the more quixotic -- and inspiring.

The Amazon rain forest that both men treasure is being hacked down, along with other tropical forests around the world. More than half of the world's tropical rain forest is already gone, and every second of every day, another football-field-size chunk is destroyed.

Mr. McMeekin, now 65, started out not as an environmentalist but as an entrepreneur running a hodgepodge of small businesses in Lexington, Ky., employing about 50 people. In the 1982 recession, he went bankrupt.

Pained and disillusioned, he decided to go far away -- to Ecuador, where he eventually found work in the Amazon as a liaison between international oil companies and indigenous tribes. He came to love the people, and his heart went out to them.

In school, Mr. McMeekin had suffered from undiagnosed dyslexia. ''I was just a 'dumb kid,' and carrying that burden is difficult,'' he recalled. The stigma left him empathizing with the Amazon natives, who were often scorned by outsiders as slow and backward because they were unschooled.

Mr. McMeekin began the Yachana Foundation in 1991 to promote education among natives of the Amazon, and in the course of his travels by canoe (there are few roads in the region), he met Mr. Kunchikuy, then a boy living in a cluster of huts a five-hour walk from any other village. Mr. Kunchikuy and his family were semi-nomadic, speaking an obscure tribal language (his real name is Tzerem, but an Ecuadorian official filling out his birth certificate turned that into ''Juan''). They survived largely by hunting with darts tipped with home-made curare poison.

Mr. Kunchikuy was one of 12 siblings, of whom five died in childhood. One of his grandfathers was speared to death in a war with a rival tribe; another grandfather adorned his house with the shrunken heads of enemies he had killed.

At the time, in 1995, Mr. McMeekin was building an eco-lodge in the jungle for American tourists, to finance his dreams of promoting education for local people. So he invited the boy to move to the lodge and work and study. At the age of 17, Mr. Kunchikuy left his pocket of the rain forest for the first time -- and encountered such wonders as shoes, electricity, running water, telephones and cars.

It was soon obvious that Mr. Kunchikuy had a first-rate mind, so Mr. McMeekin sponsored his education and a home-stay visit to Boston, where in the winter he encountered a puzzling white substance that was very cold. His tribal language, Shiwiar, has no word for snow, ice, freezing or even anything very cold. So after his return, it was tough to describe to his friends how his host family had taken him ice skating and snow-boarding.

Mr. Kunchikuy now speaks fluent English, on top of his other languages -- Shiwiar, Spanish, Quichua, Achuar and Shuar, not to mention his mastery at calling monkeys and birds in the jungle. He became a naturalist and guide at the Yachana Foundation's 18-room eco-lodge, which tourists reach by riding in a canoe for nearly three hours.

Now 30, Mr. Kunchikuy points wildlife out to American tourists and demonstrates that grubs can be tasty. He also displays his impressive collection of scars, from vampire bats, a piranha, a caiman, a stingray, and a shaman who operated on his chest to block another shaman's black magic. In his spare time, he demonstrates how to shoot a blowgun.

''It has a range of up to 150 feet,'' he explained. ''It's better than a shotgun, because it's silent. You can shoot repeatedly if you miss the first time.'' (Keep an eye on nytimes.com in the coming days for a video of Mr. Kunchikuy using his blowgun to spear a papaya balanced on my head -- but don't tell my wife.)

Yet the traditions he grew up with are eroding, much like the rain forest. Loggers are chipping inexorably away at the Amazon, robbing the planet of biodiversity and of a great carbon sink that absorbs our greenhouse gas emissions. On top of that, the deforestation itself, including slash-and-burn clearing, accounts for 20 percent of global carbon emissions, the same amount as that produced by the United States or China. Several studies declare that the low-hanging fruit in the war against climate change is keeping these forests alive.

In my next column, on Thursday, I'll tell you how Mr. McMeekin and Mr. Kunchikuy are doing just that.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: RAIN FORESTS (92%); EDITORIALS & OPINIONS (90%); ENVIRONMENT & NATURAL RESOURCES (77%); FORESTS & WOODLANDS (77%); SMALL BUSINESS (73%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (73%); ENVIRONMENTALISM (68%); OIL & GAS INDUSTRY (67%)
GEOGRAPHIC: KENTUCKY, USA (93%) ECUADOR (94%); UNITED STATES (93%)
LOAD-DATE: April 27, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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The New York Times
April 27, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

Is Hollywood Warming to Its Favorite Villains?
BYLINE: By MICHAEL CIEPLY
SECTION: Section BU; Column 0; Money and Business/Financial Desk; SCENE STEALER; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 1173 words
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
WHEN ''Speed Racer,'' from Warner Brothers and the writer-directors Andy and Larry Wachowski, opens on May 9, it promises something old and something new.

The old part is a plot device as ancient as moving pictures: an evil businessman who stands in the way of all that is good and right.

The new part, based on various trailers and portions of the unfinished film, is, perhaps, a grudging acknowledgment of the wonders that big business has managed to create -- for all its wicked ways.

The big bad businessman has been a film archetype since before talkies. In 1917, the Triangle Distributing Corporation released a silent picture called ''Greed,'' in which a young couple, Adam and Eve, were led astray by a stock market schemer named Doc Denton. Mr. Denton wound up dead. Even at that early date, The Exhibitors Herald, a trade paper, called the plot line ''tried and true.''

Through the decades, diabolical business people have continued their ruthless reign. Some were memorable enough to make the American Film Institute's list of top movie villains of all time, including Mr. Potter from ''It's a Wonderful Life,'' Auric Goldfinger from ''Goldfinger'' and Gordon Gekko from ''Wall Street.''

In ''Speed Racer,'' the most obvious villains are Royalton Industries and its jowly, lip-curling chief executive Mr. Royalton, played by Roger Allam, who is best known for his role as a nattering media type in ''V for Vendetta.''

Make no mistake, Mr. Royalton is evil. ''If you walk away from this deal, no matter how well you drive, you won't even finish the race,'' he snarls at young Speed Racer (yes, that's his name), played by Emile Hirsch, in one of several trailers now posted on the Internet.

But even at a glance, it is hard to escape a sense that the filmmakers are as dazzled as young Speed by the kind of world that only a digital-age, globe-spanning corporation could build.

Look closely at the trailers, and you will find that the Wachowskis -- who invented Royalton in adapting their movie from a Japanese animated television series about a young racer -- dwell lovingly on the accouterments of a company in which the employees ride Segway-type personal transporters, the boss shows up in a purple Stealth-style jet, and sponsored drivers have whatever technology it takes to win.

Could movie allegiances be changing, ever so slightly?

Businesses and business people remain some of Hollywood's most reliable villains. But the next crop of corporate heavies appears to have something attractive in its villainy. Perhaps that means a long-overdue acceptance by movie makers that at least some of those who pump oil, sell stock, run airlines and build our increasingly fuel-efficient cars are not completely without value.

Joel Silver, who joined the Wachowskis in producing ''Speed Racer,'' declined through spokesmen to be interviewed, as did the brothers. But theirs may not be the only spring-summer film to flirt with a more complex view of business villainy.

In ''Iron Man'' -- directed by Jon Favreau, produced by Marvel Studios and set for release by Paramount Pictures on Friday -- Robert Downey Jr. plays a wealthy arms manufacturer, Tony Stark, who positively revels in the nickname ''Merchant of Death.'' Dangerously injured during a field test, he uses his technology to forge a new life as superhero, offering not just redemption, but also hope that a properly retooled businessman might save the world.

In ''Tropic Thunder,'' a comedy directed by Ben Stiller and set for release by the Paramount unit DreamWorks in August, the nasty movie mogul portrayed by Tom Cruise (in the film, he gets a Forbes magazine cover) is not quite as bad as the gang of heroin processors who pursue the luckless band of actor-heroes.

That could pass for progress in a storytelling medium that has been inclined to conflate business types and gangsters. (Witness the corporate counsel, played by Tilda Swinton, in ''Michael Clayton'': she has a couple of hit men on call for the really tough cases.)

''The Mafia is part of the entire corporate entity now,'' Stanley Kramer, the producer and director of films like ''Guess Who's Coming to Dinner,'' once explained. He was thus quoted by Ben Stein in a 1979 study of entertainment industry attitudes, ''The View From Sunset Boulevard: America as Brought to You by the People Who Make Television.''

In truth, movie plots operate according to a self-contained value system that has only an occasional relationship with the real. In movie-think, media figures, at least lately, tend to be much worse than they really are. (One hopes.) Think of Meryl Streep as the nightmare magazine editor in ''The Devil Wears Prada,'' or Katie Holmes as the skunky reporter in ''Thank You for Smoking.''

Dumb slackers, by contrast, are basically good. So it will be in the coming ''Pineapple Express,'' about a couple of dope smokers on a tear; ''Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay,'' also about a couple of dope smokers on a tear; and ''Step Brothers,'' about a couple of feckless middle-aged men who get stuck with each other when their parents marry.

But those who produce things or manage wealth have almost always been the worst.

''People have a general aversion to big companies,'' said the screenwriter Alfred Gough, who, with his writing partner Miles Millar, shares credits on such films as ''Spider-Man 2'' and ''Herbie Fully Loaded.''

As Mr. Gough sees it, the business villain in movies simply reflects a David-and-Goliath thing, pitting the individual against an evil organization. ''In the '70s, you had the government, before that, the Communists, and before that, I guess, the Nazis,'' said Mr. Gough, who as co-creator of the ''Smallville'' television series structured the pilot episode around the arrival in an idyllic town of the wicked LuthorCorp (which has its own Warner-maintained Web site).

Business heroes in the movies are rare, and often problematical. Howard Hughes, in ''The Aviator,'' wound up a recluse, and the eccentric car-builder Preston Tucker was done in, of course, by the business world in ''Tucker: The Man and His Dream.''

By Oscar season, Hollywood's essential horror at the business machine -- epitomized last year by Daniel Day-Lewis's Oscar-winning performance as the oil-maddened entrepreneur of ''There Will Be Blood'' -- will be once again at the fore. This time, for instance, Universal Pictures has an awards-season bet on ''Flash of Genius,'' a drama in which Greg Kinnear plays the engineer who invents the intermittent windshield wiper, only to be portrayed as being squashed by automotive giants.

But, for the moment, keep an eye on the wizardry invented by that reformed captain of industry in ''Iron Man,'' and those shots of a little boy ogling a glowing treasure box full of candy, courtesy of Royalton Industries, in ''Speed Racer.''

You could almost believe that people behind some of the spring-summer movies are ready to give business another look.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: FILM (90%); MOVIE INDUSTRY (89%); CELEBRITIES (78%); ANIMATION (71%); ANIMATED TELEVISION (50%); TELEVISION PROGRAMMING (50%); FILM DIRECTORS (90%)
ORGANIZATION: AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE (55%)
GEOGRAPHIC: LOS ANGELES, CA, USA (79%) CALIFORNIA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (79%)
LOAD-DATE: April 27, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Roger Allam portrays Mr. Royalton, a classic corporate bad guy, in the new movie ''Speed Racer.'' But the film's sleek, nifty gadgets almost make a case for the business megaliths that create them.(PHOTOGRAPH BY WARNER BROTHERS PICTURES)

In ''Iron Man,'' Robert Downey Jr. plays Tony Stark, a genius billionaire arms dealer, who after a severe injury decides to use his abilities for good.(PHOTOGRAPH BY ZADE ROSENTHAL/PARAMOUNT PICTURES)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

823 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
April 27, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

Let's Say You Want To Date a Hog Farmer
BYLINE: By J. COURTNEY SULLIVAN
SECTION: Section ST; Column 0; Style Desk; Pg. 9
LENGTH: 1163 words
STEPHANIE BETIT first read ''Atlas Shrugged,'' ''The Fountainhead'' and Ayn Rand's essay collection ''The Virtue of Selfishness'' in 2004. The books changed her life, she said, turning her from a devout Christian into an atheist and a follower of objectivism, Rand's philosophy of independence and rational self-interest.

''From then on, I was looking for a partner who shared my outlook on life,'' said Ms. Betit, a 28-year-old teacher working with autistic children in Walpole, N.H.

Finding him proved a challenge. Last fall, she met someone while volunteering for the Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul, but the affair was as ill-fated as the campaign itself.

By winter she had all but given up on love. Then a friend told her about TheAtlasSphere.com, an online dating site for Rand fans. Ms. Betit posted a profile, which caught the attention of James Hancock, 30, the chief executive of a business software company in Orillia, Ontario. He sent her an e-mail message, and within a few days they graduated to talking on the phone. Three months later, they were engaged.

Mr. Hancock had tried mainstream dating sites in the past, but ''no one even marginally piqued my interest,'' he said. ''Women who don't know or follow Rand tend to just accept what they've been told. I can't be with someone like that in the long-term.''

The couple is among a growing number of people who have found love on dating sites that pair members based on a specific shared interest or background -- sites like HorseandCountrySingles.com, Nerdsatheart.com, DateMyPet.com, STDmatch.net (for singles with sexually transmitted diseases), MatureSinglesOnly.com (for people over 50) and Veggielove.com.

''Singles are increasingly eager to narrow the audience and really target their needs,'' said Mark Brooks, a dating consultant who keeps his own blog, OnlinePersonalsWatch.com. ''It's the same reason why Procter & Gamble makes so many detergents. We are all drawn to things that cater to our very specific desires.''

According to Hitwise, an analysis company, there are now 1,378 United States dating sites -- up from 876 just three years ago. Mr. Brooks estimates that 44 percent of those sites in the United States are niche sites, up from 35 percent in 2006.

Those sites, some of which require a fee, make business sense. Because large companies like Match.com, eHarmony, Yahoo Personals and SinglesNet.com have the general market cornered, Mr. Brooks said, ''the only real entrepreneurial opportunities left in the online dating world lie in the niche market.''

In 2005, Jerry Miller, the owner of an agricultural advertising agency in Beachwood, Ohio, started a dating site for ''down-to-earth country types'' called FarmersOnly.com.

''A lot of farmers have dial-up modems, so that's something we took into account,'' Mr. Miller said. ''We wanted to make our site as user-friendly and quick as possible, because only a small percentage of our members have high-speed Internet access. I doubt that any other dating site ever had to think about that.''

He said FarmersOnly.com has attracted more than 90,000 members so far -- 50,000 in the last year alone. One month's membership costs $15.95; a three-month membership goes for $29.95; and one year is $59.95. Mr. Miller said he knew of more than 65 marriages of people who met on the site. Sarah Edwards, 26, grew up on an Ohio horse farm surrounded by cornfields. She met her husband, Grant Edwards, 27, on FarmersOnly.com, when she was living in Columbus and tired of dating city boys who didn't understand her. A former boyfriend had once suggested that they could live in the suburbs and keep horses in the garage.

''I dated lots of guys who liked that I was passionate about showing and raising horses, in theory,'' Ms. Edwards said. ''But once they realized how much work goes into that lifestyle, they'd be totally turned off. The endpoint of any relationship would always come when I'd think to myself, 'I don't see that guy cleaning out my stalls.' ''

When Ms. Edwards received an e-mail message from her future husband on FarmersOnly.com, she was wary. ''He didn't have a picture, which made me nervous,'' she said. ''There are some meaty farmers out there -- some big, corn-fed boys. That is not my thing.''

It turned out that he lived and worked on a large hog farm and didn't own a digital camera. Finally, he sent her a photograph from his cellphone.

''I was like, 'Oh, hey, he's actually cute,' '' Ms. Edwards recalled with a laugh.

The two now live on a hay farm, which they tend in addition to their day jobs, in Farmdale, Ohio. They grow 40 acres of hay -- 10 owned, 30 rented -- and raise horses, cows and chickens.

''When I lived in the city, everyone was always doing their own thing, and I got used to this idea of really having to take care of myself,'' Ms. Edwards said. ''But now, when I feel overwhelmed, Grant always offers to pitch in. He's like, 'It's not your problem. It's ours.' That's a farm person for you.''

Recently Ms. Edwards told a male friend to switch from Match.com.

''I said to him: 'You're wasting your time. You're not going to find girls on there who like hunting and fishing and four-wheeling,' '' she recalled.

Mr. Brooks said the most successful niche sites pair people by race, sexual orientation or religion. The 20 most popular dating sites this year as ranked by Hitwise include JDate (for Jewish singles), Christian Mingle and Christian Cafe, Manhunt (for gay men), Love From India, Black Christian People Meet, Amigos (for Latino singles), Asian People Meet, and Shaadi (for Indian singles).

''A few years ago, a company called Spark Networks was putting major funding into its general dating site, American Singles,'' Mr. Brooks said. ''But when executives saw that the Jewish market was huge and relatively untouched, they switched gears and ratcheted up JDate: It's now the most successful site in New York by far.''

Eric Umansky, 35, a Manhattan-based journalist, met Sara Pekow, his fiancee, on JDate, after unsuccessful efforts on eHarmony and Nerve.com, as well as out in the real world. He recalled one date with a woman he met on the subway. They weren't much alike, he said. She was a conservative who had attended a Catholic college and worked in pharmaceutical sales.

''We had a great time,'' he said. ''But when I mentioned that a lesbian couple I knew were pregnant, she said, 'Oh, it's great that they found each other, but I don't think it's their right to have kids.' That floored me.'' It drove home the point, he said, that he needed to find someone more like himself.

''I realized that I hadn't been honest with myself -- I wanted to marry a Jewish woman from a family like mine,'' Mr. Umansky said. ''We all like to think of ourselves as sophisticated and urbane, but when it comes down to it, when you're looking for a lifelong partner, you probably want some winnowing down. You probably want someone who's a lot like you.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ONLINE DATING SERVICES (89%); DATING SERVICES (89%); RELIGION (77%); POLITICAL CANDIDATES (74%); US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS (74%); BLOGS & MESSAGE BOARDS (73%); MARKET SEGMENTATION (72%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (72%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING AGENCIES (69%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING (69%); FARMERS & RANCHERS (66%); HOG & PIG FARMING (60%); CHRISTIANS & CHRISTIANITY (58%); AUTISM (55%); BUSINESS SOFTWARE (52%); SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASE (51%); COMPUTER SOFTWARE (52%)
COMPANY: PROCTER & GAMBLE CO (52%)
TICKER: PGP (PAR) (52%); PGM (LSE) (52%); PG (NYSE) (52%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS325620 TOILET PREPARATION MANUFACTURING (52%); NAICS325611 SOAP & OTHER DETERGENT MANUFACTURING (52%); NAICS322291 SANITARY PAPER PRODUCT MANUFACTURING (52%); SIC2844 PERFUMES, COSMETICS, & OTHER TOILET PREPARATIONS (52%); SIC2841 SOAPS & OTHER DETERGENTS, EXCEPT SPECIALTY CLEANERS (52%); SIC2676 SANITARY PAPER PRODUCTS (52%)
PERSON: RON PAUL (56%)
GEOGRAPHIC: OHIO, USA (92%); ONTARIO, CANADA (55%) UNITED STATES (92%); CANADA (55%)
LOAD-DATE: April 27, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: SELF-INTEREST: James Hancock and Stephanie Betit, fans of Ayn Rand. (PHOTOGRAPH BY LORI DUFF FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)

MAKING HAY: Grant and Sarah Edwards at their place in Farmdale, Ohio. They met on FarmersOnly.com. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID MAXWELL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

824 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
April 27, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

Home Brew for the Car, Not the Beer Cup
BYLINE: By MICHAEL FITZGERALD.

Michael Fitzgerald writes about business, technology and culture. E-mail: [e-mail]

SECTION: Section BU; Column 0; Money and Business/Financial Desk; PROTOTYPE; Pg. 5