The Truth About Sex Addiction

Melinkovich last year in West Hollywood, Calif. He has fought powerful urges for years.

A difference between an addict and a recovering addict is that one hides his behavior, while the other can't stop talking about it. Self-revelation is an important part of recovery, but it can lead to awkward moments when you meet a person who identifies as a sex addict.

For instance, within a half-hour of my first meeting Neil Melinkovich, a 59-year-old life coach, sometime writer and former model who has been in Sex Addicts Anonymous for more than 20 years, he told me about the time in 1987 that he made a quick detour from picking up his girlfriend at the Los Angeles airport so he could purchase a service from a prostitute. Afterward, he noticed what he thought was red lipstick on himself. It turned out to be blood from the woman's mouth. He washed in a gas-station bathroom, met his girlfriend at the airport and then, in the grip of his insatiability, had unprotected sex with her as soon as they got home — in the same bed he said he had used to entertain three other women in the days before.

Is this a man with colossally bad judgment or one with a blameless addictive disorder? In the past year, this question has presented itself with dependable regularity. Most famously, Tiger Woods received sex-addiction treatment last winter after he admitted to infidelities; at least a dozen women came forward to claim they'd had sex with him. The chronically undisciplined Charlie Sheen recently sought help in controlling a variety of runaway appetites, including a fondness for the company of porn actresses. Earlier this month, Republican Congressmen Christopher Lee resigned after he was caught e-mailing a shirtless photo of himself to entice a woman he met on Craigslist. And then there is Silvio Berlusconi, the uninhibited Prime Minister of Italy, where prosecutors want him to face trial for accusations that he paid an underage girl to have sex with him. Berlusconi has never hidden his partiality to beautiful women, but he has called the allegations — and reports of louche parties at his villa — politically motivated. All these cases differ in scope, but a central question remains: Why would these men risk everything to satisfy their urges?

When it comes to addiction, the line between morality and disease has always been blurry. But only in the past 25 years have we come to regard excesses in necessary cravings — hunger for food, lust for sex — as possible disease states. In 1983, when Melinkovich was continuously cheating on his then wife (an actress from Planet of the Apes), a Minnesota-based addiction-treatment organization called the Hazelden Foundation published a foundational book called Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction. The book, which is still in publication, helped create the field of sex-addiction treatment. Its author, Patrick Carnes, is now executive director of Gentle Path, the sex-addict program Woods is said to have entered last year in Hattiesburg, Miss.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is debating whether sex addiction should be added to its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The addition of what the APA is calling "hypersexual disorder" would legitimize sex addiction in a way that was unthinkable just a few years ago, when Bill Clinton's philandering was regarded as a moral failing or a joke — but not, in the main, as an illness.

APA recognition of sex addiction would create huge revenue streams in the mental-health business. Some wives who know their husbands are porn enthusiasts would force them into treatment. Some husbands who have serial affairs would start to think of themselves not as rakes but as patients.

This is already happening. In the year since Woods made sex addiction famous, rehab facilities accustomed to dealing with alcoholics and drug addicts have found themselves swamped with requests for sex-addiction treatment. The privately held company Elements Behavioral Health, which operates high-priced rehab centers around the U.S. — including a celebrity-friendly one on a breathtaking mountainside in Malibu, Calif. — recently acquired the Sexual Recovery Institute, a Los Angeles center for sex addicts. The institute's revenues grew 50% in 2010.

But the legitimacy now being granted to sex addiction requires a closer look. In the 20th century, we changed our thinking about alcoholism: what was once a moral weakness came to be understood as an illness resulting in large part from genetics. Sexual acting out seems different, though. Is excessive lust really just another biochemical accident?

When Lust Becomes a Compulsion

It was in the 1960s that the notion of sex addiction entered popular consciousness. Two men — Albert Ellis, one of the most esteemed psychologists of the late 20th century, and Edward Sagarin, a closeted gay sociologist who helped launch the gay-rights movement — wrote a book published in New York in 1964 as Nymphomania: A Study of the Oversexed Woman. The book was titillating and influential. It helped popularize the locution nymphomaniac as a slur against unreserved women, and it inspired a 1975 follow-up by a UCLA psychoanalyst, Dr. Robert Stoller, who introduced the clumsy companion term Don Juanism to describe unbridled male promiscuity.

Today the proposed APA definition of hypersexual disorder says you have an illness if you spend so much time pursuing intercourse or masturbation as to interfere with your job or other important activities. According to the working language of the diagnosis, "repetitively engaging" in sexual behaviors when you are anxious, depressed or stressed would be considered a major warning sign for the disorder.

But when it comes to sex, what could possibly be too much? The proposed definition of hypersexual disorder draws no distinction between masturbation and intercourse. Many studies, however, have shown that regular intercourse with a committed partner (up to once a day) is a sign of a good relationship. So at what point do partners in a healthy relationship become too focused on sex? And what constitutes too little sex?

In the late 1940s, the sex-research team led by biologist Alfred Kinsey said only 3% of college-age men reported a "total sexual outlet" of seven or more per week. Total sexual outlet was a euphemism for the number of orgasms. Although Kinsey's data set was famously flawed — he used a largely self-selected sample that included some prison inmates — seven orgasms a week (either alone or with someone) is still considered by many experts to be a threshold for possible disorder. In a November 2009 Archives of Sexual Behavior paper, Dr. Martin Kafka, a Harvard Medical School professor and a prominent member of the APA work group on sex disorders, defined "hypersexual desire" among men as having seven or more orgasms per week for at least six months after age 15. Never mind that by Kafka's definition, virtually every human male undergoes a period of sex addiction in his life. It's called high school.

Kafka has also reported that the average man says he has three orgasms per week — but because some men are inclined to overestimate and others to underestimate, we have little idea what the accurate average is. The data on women's sexual habits are even more meager.

Because the definition of sex addiction is unclear, it's impossible to know how many people have it, although professionals sometimes use Kinsey's data to estimate prevalence at 3% to 10% of the population. That range is too wide to be of much use, but we do know that the arrival of Internet porn in the 1990s led many into unhealthy behaviors and extreme desires that eventually spurred them to seek treatment.

Their misfortune created a challenge for psychologists, who had little idea how to help those who called themselves sex addicts. Over the past half-century, Hazelden, Alcoholics Anonymous and most other anti-substance-abuse organizations have defined recovery as 100% abstinence. But the desire to procreate is powerfully encoded in our DNA. Total abstinence isn't impossible, but it is usually unrealistic. As Melinkovich, the L.A. sex addict, told me, "When it comes to drinking, you can put the plug back in the jug. But you can't totally turn off sexual desire."

No one has figured out how to solve the conundrum of an addiction that must be mitigated but not eradicated. (A good analogy is to those who chronically binge on food and must be taught to eat moderately.) Doctors have one reliable way to stop people from having sex: give them antihormone drugs that result in what is known as "chemical castration." But because of side effects — for instance, the feminization of men who take them — the drugs are recommended only for recalcitrant sex offenders. Someone who rents too many adult films is surely different from a child molester.

So what can be done for those spending thousands on porn or seeing six prostitutes a week? According to Robert Weiss, who runs the Sexual Recovery Institute, the most seriously affected patients must enter a facility where they have no access to porn or sex workers. They start individual and group therapy that is, ideally, grounded in a cognitive-behavioral model designed to help them find rewarding activities other than sex — and consider the consequences of, say, looking at porn at work. But Weiss admits there is no simple way to teach sex addicts how to have healthy romantic relationships.

Sex Addicts Anonymous

Our limitations in understanding the nature of sex addiction haven't prevented practitioners from trying to profit from the surge in demand to cure it. The top inpatient programs — Carnes' Gentle Path in Mississippi; the resort-like Promises facility in Malibu, Calif. (where Britney Spears and Sheen are reported to have sought addiction help); the swank AToN (Aide to Navigation) facility in La Jolla, Calif., which on a given afternoon might serve grilled halibut by the pool — can run you $2,000 a day or more, with a minimum stay of a week. Fifteen years ago, none of these programs existed.

Free community meetings based on the Alcoholics Anonymous model are also thriving. Melinkovich has not only undergone professional treatment at Promises; he also presides over a regular Los Angeles meeting of Sex Addicts Anonymous (SAA), one of the four major sex-addict 12-step groups in the U.S. (The others are Sexaholics Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous and Sexual Compulsives Anonymous.) Together, these four groups host 5 million to 10 million Americans per year. According to the official who took my call at SAA's international headquarters in Houston — a man who requested that not even his first name be printed — the organization has grown approximately 10% per year for the past seven years. Founded by a group of men in Minnesota in the late 1970s, SAA now has roughly 1,200 meetings convening around the globe each week. Ninety percent of the meetings are in the U.S., but the SAA official told me there are regular meetings in Argentina, South Africa, the U.K. and other countries.

The SAA meeting that Melinkovich runs assembles in an L.A. church every weekday at noon. On the day I went, 38 people — only two of them women — gathered in a sun-flooded room on the ground floor. Like Alcoholics Anonymous and Cocaine Anonymous, the sex groups operate in a highly structured, almost liturgical fashion. People read aloud from manuals cum bibles — like AA's Big Book, Sexaholics Anonymous has its White Book — that are filled with harrowing personal stories and vague generalities. (From the White Book: "sexual sobriety includes progressive victory over lust.") About halfway through each meeting, a donation-collection plate is passed around, just like in church.

At the heart of every sex-addict meeting is the sharing portion, when addicts warring with longings spill stories. The need to share once hidden desires is so strong that those who run meetings designate a timer who asks attendees to stop talking after three or four minutes. One of the first speakers at Melinkovich's meeting — I'll call him Daniel — noted that when he started attending five or six years ago, only a half-dozen people regularly showed up. Now, Daniel said, approximately 40 go to each meeting, even on weekdays at noon.

Sex-addict meetings can be extraordinarily awkward. Some attendees barely look up from fingernails digging into cuticles. At one meeting I attended in New York City, I met a man in his late 40s who said he hunches over his laptop and masturbates with such intensity that he once gave himself a hernia for which he had to be hospitalized. Other sex addicts have lost spouses and jobs.

The Promises facility in Malibu searches the possessions of entering clients (no matter how famous) in order to confiscate any porn. Computer access is tightly restricted. And as though they are boys at a midcentury parochial school, clients are instructed to not masturbate.

Contrarian therapists argue that asking adults to refrain from basic urges like the desire to masturbate goes against evolutionary psychology. "Almost all U.S. treatment programs tell the client to abstain, without consideration of what the client is motivated to do," writes A. Thomas Horvath, a past director of the addiction bureau of the American Psychological Association and the author of Sex, Drugs, Gambling & Chocolate: A Workbook for Overcoming Addictions. (He is also the medical director of the AToN facility in La Jolla.) Instead, Horvath suggests that clients be given the choice of either abstinence or moderation. "You get the rewards; you pay the consequences; you decide," he writes.

Unfortunately, science does little to settle this debate, because the brain chemistry of sex addiction is not well understood. Your sexuality — your orientation, your level of desire, what you consider romantic satisfaction (orgasm, love, validation, all of the above) — is a complex amalgam that involves your brain's hormonal system, its frontal-lobe reward system and its limbic system, which controls mood. Genes regulate these neural pathways, meaning that sexuality is partly heritable, but the environment in which you develop sexually can affect how those genes are expressed.

Sex addicts like to compare their habit to substance addiction, but scientists are only beginning to show proof of this connection. In December, scientists at Binghamton University in New York released the results of a study of 181 young adults showing that differences in their DNA were linked to differences in their sexual behavior. Those with a certain variant of the DRD4 gene were more likely to report having had one-night stands and adulterous affairs. The DRD4 gene helps control how much dopamine is released when you have sex. For some, sex seems to provide more of a dopamine high. Also, we know that having sex releases endorphins, which are peptides that activate opiate receptors. Heroin and other drugs activate opiate receptors as well. But no study has proved that sex is tied to opiate receptors, and the DRD4 study hasn't been replicated.

What's more, we know that desire is more than testosterone and peptides. When evolution programmed our urge to mate, it used all kinds of tricks to make sure sexual desire would be durable: we want others not just hormonally but emotionally — so deeply that we speak of being "madly" in love. That's why the current models for treating sex addicts are so poor. As the prominent sex researcher Fred Berlin of Johns Hopkins University pointed out in a 2008 article in the journal Psychiatric Clinics of North America, "the notion that one can successfully choose to indefinitely resist an intense urge is often simply incorrect."

The Future of Treatment

After Melinkovich and I had spent a few hours together in Los Angeles, he started showing me some of the messages that were pinging his BlackBerry. At least three women had called him while we were eating dinner. One of them he kept calling "the 16-year-old" and then correcting himself to say "the 19-year-old." Once when his phone was ringing, Melinkovich turned the illuminated screen toward me. I saw that he had given the woman who was calling a special name — in honor of her favorite sexual position — which suggested that his treatment to date had not addressed a tendency to reduce women to sex objects.

"It's true," he told me later. "If you have this addiction, you objectify women. There's a lot of skin, a lot of beauty in this town." He said SAA has a three-second rule: you can check out an attractive person for a maximum of three seconds, "because after that, you start going into fantasy."

Melinkovich checked himself into Promises five years ago. After a relationship fell apart and he lost a $1,000-a-day job as a sober coach for a wealthy young man with addiction problems, Melinkovich's libido came roaring back. "It made me realize I was medicating depression with sexual activity," he told me. "Also, I realized I hadn't really been in love with that woman — I just had a complete sexual obsession with her."

Partly because of its proximity to Hollywood, where so many wealthy men and beautiful women can pursue their unhealthy sexual appetites ad libitum, Promises now has one of the most comprehensive and respected sex-addiction programs in the nation. But when Melinkovich arrived there, he found that he was the only one there for sex addiction and that the unit had little experience in treating sex addicts. That's not surprising; even today, most addict-treatment centers are still trying to develop standards of care for hypersexual conditions.

And they are still trying to address very basic questions. Should we regard out-of-control sexual behavior as an extreme version of normal sexuality, or is it an illness completely separate from it? That question lies at the heart of the sex-addiction field, but right now it's unanswerable. When I was with Melinkovich, I sometimes felt he was a normal guy who didn't quite know how to deal with the many women who find him attractive. Other times, like when he got a lascivious look in his eyes while reading a text from a woman young enough to be his granddaughter, he seemed like a guy with a debilitating illness. "I'm kind of a work in progress," he told me a few months after we first met. "I'm still trying to define a healthy sexuality that works for me." The other day, he said, his impulses were so powerfully triggered by the sight of the singer Rihanna at the Grammys that he had to change the channel to a golf program. He is also trying to use his experience with sex addiction to help others. He has plans to launch a sober-coaching site called getneiled.com and he wants to write a book.

It wasn't clear to me whether these ventures would work out or whether Melinkovich would relapse yet again. For now, he tries to cope with his urges through simple behavioral strategies. When he sees a pretty woman, he tries to look away and then tell himself, "God bless her and her beauty."

By: John Cloud (time magazine)

Freed Google executive helped spark Egypt revolt

CAIRO (AP) -- The young Google Inc. executive detained by Egyptian authorities for 12 days said Monday he was behind the Facebook page that helped spark what he called "the revolution of the youth of the Internet." A U.S.-based human rights group said nearly 300 people have died in two weeks of clashes.

Wael Ghonim, a marketing manager for the Internet company, wept throughout an emotional television interview just hours after he was freed. He described how he spent his entire time in detention blindfolded while his worried parents didn't know where he was. He insisted he had not been tortured and said his interrogators treated him with respect.

"This is the revolution of the youth of the Internet and now the revolution of all Egyptians," he said, adding that he was taken aback when the security forces holding him branded him a traitor.

"Anyone with good intentions is the traitor because being evil is the norm," he said. "If I was a traitor, I would have stayed in my villa in the Emirates and made good money and said like others, 'Let this country go to hell.' But we are not traitors," added Ghonim, an Egyptian who oversees Google's marketing in the Middle East and Africa from Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates.

The protesters have already brought the most sweeping changes since President Hosni Mubarak took power 30 years ago, but they are keeping up the pressure in hopes of achieving their ultimate goal of ousting Mubarak.

Ghonim has become a hero of the demonstrators since he went missing on Jan. 27, two days after the protests began. He confirmed reports by protesters that he was the administrator of the Facebook page "We are all Khaled Said" that was one of the main tools for organizing the demonstration that started the movement on Jan. 25.

Khaled Said was a 28-year-old businessman who died in June at the hands of undercover police, setting off months of protests against the hated police. The police have also been blamed for enflaming violence by trying to suppress these anti-government demonstrations by force.

Ghonim's whereabouts were not known until Sunday, when a prominent Egyptian businessman confirmed he was under arrest and would soon be released.

Time and again during the two weeks of demonstrations, protesters have pointed proudly to the fact that they have no single leader, as if to say that it is everyone's uprising. Still, there seems at times to be a longing among the crowds at Cairo's Tahrir Square, the main demonstration site, for someone to rally around.

The unmasking of Ghonim as the previously unknown administrator of the Facebook page that started the protests could give the crowds someone to look to for inspiration to press on.

Whether Ghonim forcefully takes up that mantle remains to be seen, but he said repeatedly in Monday night's interview that he did not feel he was a hero.

"I didn't want anyone to know that I am the administrator," he said. "There are no heroes; we are all heroes on the street. And no one is on their horse and fighting with the sword."

The show commemorated some of those killed in the protests and showed their pictures during the interview, sending Ghonim into sobs just before he got up and walked out of the studio.

"I want to tell every mother and father: I am sorry. I swear it is not our fault. It is the fault of everyone who held on tight to authority and didn't want to let go," he said before cutting short the interview.

Ghonim looked exhausted and said he had been unable to sleep for 48 hours, but not because he was being mistreated.

He said he was snatched off the streets two days after the protests first erupted on Jan. 25. After he left a friend's house, four men surrounded him, pushed him to the ground and took him blindfolded to state security. He said he spent much of the following days blindfolded, with no news of the events on the street, being questioned.

In contrast, he said, in his release he was treated with respect. Just before he was freed, he said, he was brought before Interior Minister Mahmoud Wagdy - installed only days earlier in a government reshuffle - in his office. The minister "talked to me like an adult, not like someone of strength talking to someone weak" and then the new head of the National Democratic Party escorted him home.

"This is because of what the youth did in the street," he said in the interview on private station Dream 2 TV.

He said his interrogators were convinced that foreigners were backing the movement, but Ghonim asserted it was just young Egyptians "who love this country." He also sought to debunk the government's accusations that the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, Mubarak's most bitter rival, was involved in planning the protests.

He referred to his arrest as a "kidnapping" and a "crime" but also sounded conciliatory, saying "this is not a time for settling accounts or cutting up the pie; this is Egypt's time."

He did forcefully place blame for the country's ills on Mubarak's National Democratic Party and said the good among them should abandon it and start something new to earn the people's respect.

"I don't want to see the logo of the NDP anywhere in the country," he said. "This party is what destroyed this country. The cadre in this party are filthy."

U.S.-based Human Rights Watch told The Associated Press on Monday that two weeks of clashes have claimed at least 297 lives, by far the highest and most detailed toll released so far. It was based on visits to seven hospitals in three cities and the group said it was likely to rise.

While there was no exact breakdown of how many of the dead were police or protesters, "clearly, a significant number of these deaths are a result of the use of excessive and unlawful use of force by the police," said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch.

Egypt's Health Ministry has not given a comprehensive death toll, though a ministry official said he is trying to compile one.

Protesters have clashed with police who fired live rounds, tear gas and rubber bullets. They also fought pitched street battles for two days with gangs of pro-Mubarak supporters who attacked their main demonstration site in Cairo's central Tahrir Square.

The violence has spread to other parts of Egypt and the toll includes at least 65 deaths outside the capital, Cairo.

Heba Morayef, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, said that she and other researchers visited five hospitals in Cairo, a field hospital in Tahrir Square and one hospital each in the cities of Alexandria and Suez.

The count is based on interviews with hospital doctors, visits to emergency rooms and morgue inspections, she said.

Morayef said a majority of victims were killed by live fire but that some of the deaths were caused by tear gas canisters and rubber bullets fired at close range.

"We personally witnessed riot police firing tear gas canisters and rubber bullets at the heads of protesters at close range, and that is a potentially lethal use of such riot-control agents," said Bouckaert.

In most cases, doctors declined to release names of the dead, Morayef said.

The group counted 232 deaths in Cairo, including 217 who were killed through Jan. 30 and an additional 15 who were killed in clashes between government supporters and opponents in Tahrir Square last Wednesday and Thursday.

In addition, 52 dead were reported in Alexandria and 13 in Suez, Morayef said.

By: Associated Press

Babies Who Start Solids Too Early More Likely To Be Obese

Ideally, babies are exclusively breast-fed for the first six months of their lives. Then, solid food — really, a misnomer since “solids” consist initially of soupy rice or barley cereal — is introduced. But a quarter of U.S. infants are introduced to solid foods before they hit four months.

Why parents disregard the recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the World Health Organization to hold off on solids until six months and what that means for these babies down the road is the subject of two new studies in the AAP journal Pediatrics.

One study, published Monday by researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard University, shows that introducing solids before a baby's 4-month birthday is linked to a sixfold increase in that baby becoming obese by the time he's 3. This was true for infants whose mothers never breast-fed them or weaned them before four months.

Researchers tracked 847 children — two-thirds of whom were breast-fed — and found that 75 kids, or 9%, were obese by the time they turned 3. While formula-fed babies were six times as likely to be obese at age 3 if they began eating solid foods before four months, the point at which solid food was introduced mattered little for breast-fed babies. When they began eating solids was not associated with an increased risk of obesity.

What could account for the difference? Formula-fed infants may eat more once solids are introduced whereas breast-fed babies are thought to do a better job of self-regulating their caloric intake. “The first few months after birth may be a critical window for the development of obesity,” write the authors.

The other study, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), looked at low-income, black mothers — a group that tends to start solids earlier — and found that first-time mothers were likely to feed their babies solids because they thought their “fussiness” meant they needed additional supplementation.

Most of the babies studied — 77% — were fed solids at 3 months; just 6% were exclusively breastfed. Moms who characterized their infants as fussy were twice as likely to feed them solid food and juice at four months. The babies getting solids ahead of schedule were digesting 100 calories a day more than those who weren't. “It's very significant for a baby because the typical infant takes in 500 to 700 calories,” says Heather Wasser, a nutrition doctoral student at UNC and the study's lead author.

The potential ramifications of starting solid food early is something public health researchers fret over, especially since the rate of overweight babies and toddlers in the U.S. has leaped 60% since 1980. Research has shown that the longer a mother breast-feeds, the lower the risk of obesity later in childhood and even, according to some studies, into adulthood. But for some reason, black mothers stop breast-feeding sooner than others do. At three months post-partum, just 19% of black moms are exclusively breast-feeding, in comparison to 35% of white moms and 37% of Hispanic moms.

Previous national data has showed that black babies have the greatest risk of becoming overweight. And since heavy babies tend to grow into heavy adults, researchers were interested in what factors might be contributing to their weight gain.

“Some of these moms believe that fussiness indicates they're not getting enough from breast milk,” says Wasser. “We should be teaching moms there are things they can do to soothe fussy infants other than feeding solids.”

That's where Barbara Davis Goldman, a developmental psychologist at UNC and one of the study's co-authors, comes in. First of all, she says, try to figure out what's bugging the baby. That, of course, is not always easy to do, especially with a non-verbal, squalling infant. “Lots of times the reasons are murky,” says Davis Goldman. “Sometimes babies just have bad times or days like the rest of us.”

But parents can try a host of soothing techniques, aside from feeding: swaddling, shushing, singing, dancing with the baby, rocking the baby, patting the baby's back or bottom, walking the baby in one's arms face up or in a “football carry” or up over the shoulder (chest to chest, with the baby's head nestled in your neck) or in a baby carrier, going for a ride in a stroller or car, giving the baby a toy...the possibilities are just endless.

Of course, it's not hard to figure out why moms may fall back on feeding as a soothing strategy; after all, many adults self-soothe by eating. There's even a term for it: “comfort food.” But if we're going to stanch the tide of childhood obesity, moms would be better off offering comfort alone and saving the solids for down the line.

By: Bonnie Rochman (times magazine)

Distinct Mix Holds On in a Corner of China

Thomas Lee for the International Herald Tribune

A Chinese New Year fair at the Campo do Coronel Mesquita in Macao. In the background is the domed Grand Lisboa casino.

MACAO — Long before words like “multiculturalism” and “fusion cuisine” entered the modern lexicon, Aida de Jesus and her forebears were mashing up food, language and DNA from far-flung corners of the globe.

A 95-year-old chef whose ancestry is drawn from Goa, Malacca and other former outposts of the Portuguese empire, Senhora de Jesus, as she prefers to be called, grew up celebrating Christmas and Chinese New Year with meals that relied on Portuguese sausage, bok choy and galinha cafreal, a chicken dish with an African pedigree. She spoke Portuguese at school, Cantonese on the street and a lively creole known as Patuá with “the girls.”

“We Macanese are always mixing it up,” Senhora de Jesus said with a giggle, speaking in English, as she sat in the restaurant her family has run for decades. “We are very adaptable.”

But these days the Macanese — as this former Portuguese colony’s mixed-race residents are called — are swimming against a demographic tide that threatens to subsume their rich cultural cocktail. Always outnumbered by the Chinese migrants and Portuguese traders who crammed into this densely settled speck in the Pearl River Delta, the Macanese who stayed after Beijing took back the territory in 1999 are decidedly in the minority. Fewer than 10,000 Macanese reside here; by contrast, Macao’s population of 500,000 is about 95 percent Chinese and rising.

“There are probably more Macanese living in California and Canada than Macao,” said Miguel de Senna Fernandes, a lawyer and playwright whose father, something of a local cultural institution, chronicled the lives of ordinary Macanese in a series of novels. “Now that we are part of China, we are facing a very absorbing, overpowering force.”

Not that Mr. Fernandes is giving up. In addition to organizing social events through his group, the Macaenses Association, he has also emerged as the Don Quixote of Patuá, which is listed by Unesco as an endangered language. He helped publish a dictionary of Patuá expressions, and for the past 18 years he has staged an annual play that revives what local people call “doci papiaçam,” or sweet speech, a stew of archaic Portuguese, Malay and Singhalese spiced with English, Dutch and Japanese, and more recently, a large helping of Cantonese.

Mr. Fernandes, 50, traces his fascination with Patuá to his grandmother, who would slip into it when gossiping with friends during “chá gordo,” or fat tea, a typically Macanese interpretation of English high tea whose overabundance of Malaysian noodles, codfish fritters and custard tarts explains the fat.

“Drawn by their laughter, I would hide in the corner and later ask my grandmother about expressions I’d never heard before,” he said. More often than not they were unsuitable for an 8-year-old’s ears but his grandmother would oblige with sanitized translations, followed by an admonishment to stick to studying proper Portuguese.

“The old-timers considered Patuá broken or bad Portuguese,” he said, “but since then I’ve been hooked.”

The language is among the last of the creoles that once flourished in the constellation of ports that made up Portugal’s Asian and African holdings. Unlike British colonizers who maintained some distance from their subjects in Hong Kong, just an hour’s ferry trip from Macao, the Portuguese frequently married local women who then converted to Catholicism.

Alan Baxter, a linguist at the University of Macao and an expert on Portuguese-based creoles, said the roots of Patuá extend back to the 16th century, when Portuguese traders and their camp followers did business with Africans, Indians and Malays, then sailed onward to other colonies in the empire.

“Imagine if you went somewhere new and were deprived of knowledge of a local language and merely picked up the useful bits you heard to get yourself fed,” he said, explaining its evolution.

The Cantonese contributions to Patuá came much later, starting in the late 19th century, after the walls dividing Macao’s Portuguese and Chinese quarters were torn down and the two groups began to mingle.

These days Macanese give their laundry to a “mainato” — from the southern Indian language Malayalam — and they address their beloveds as “amo chai,” a mix of the Portuguese “amor” and the Cantonese expression for “little one.” Verbs are unconjugated, nouns are repeated to suggest the plural and words are sometimes assembled in a way that mimics the structure of classic Chinese idioms.

Early on this language served the mixed-blood Macanese well, fostering their role as a bridge between Macao’s Portuguese rulers and its predominantly Chinese inhabitants. More recently, after they began sending their children to Portuguese schools, the Macanese became indispensable as managers and bureaucrats. By the time China took over administration of the enclave after more than 400 years of Portuguese rule, the Macanese dominated the territory’s civil service.

Although most visitors these days are quickly sucked into Macao’s casinos — among them The Venetian, one of the world’s largest — those who wander the city’s narrow cobblestone streets are struck by the effortless coexistence of Orient and Occident. Incense-suffused Buddhist temples, pastel Baroque churches, Portuguese bakeries and dried shark fin dispensaries are crammed together without complaint.

That same intermingling plays out in the lives of the Macanese, many of whom are devoted Catholics but give their children small red envelopes of cash on the Lunar New Year. Come Mid-Autumn Festival, another Chinese holiday, they take to the streets with rabbit-shaped lanterns.

“Many of us have been educated in Europe, but no Macanese would dare move to a new house without consulting a feng shui expert,” said Carlos Marreiros, an architect who designed the Macao pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. “I’m a Christian but I also believe God is a big ocean and all the rivers of religion are running to meet him.”

In the years leading up to the transfer to China, thousands of apprehensive Macanese left, with many settling in Portugal. But over the past decade, as Beijing stayed true to its promise to give Macao 50 years of relative autonomy, the emigration has slowed and a small but steady number have returned.

One irresistible draw has been breakneck economic growth, mostly spurred by gambling and construction, which last year helped drive 20 percent growth in the economy. Fueled by players from the mainland, Macao’s gambling revenue is now quadruple that of the Las Vegas Strip.

The impact on local people has been mixed. A law that bars nonresidents from working as croupiers and dealers has helped deliver well-paid jobs but it has unexpectedly drained schools of teachers. The lure has also been irresistible to young people, a growing number of whom are dropping out of high school or skipping college to head straight to the casino floor.

All that prosperity has brought other downsides as well: frenzied real estate speculation is pricing local people out of the housing market. The sleepy Macao that many once held dear is increasingly subsumed by the horn-honking and manic rhythms commonly associated with Hong Kong.

“Everything is happening very fast: construction is fast, business is fast and everyone is more stressed,” said José Sales Marques, 55, the enclave’s last Portuguese mayor, who now works to promote better ties between Macao and Europe. “Prosperity is wonderful, but at the end of the day all that money can’t buy you a culture and an identity.”

Filomeno Jorge is determined to keep alive one strand of that identity. Every Wednesday he rustles up the seven other members of his band, Tuna Macaense, to run through a startlingly diverse repertory that includes Portuguese fados, Cantonese ballads and Filipino pop songs. The mainstays, however, are vintage Patuá, some dating from 1935, when the band was first established by José dos Santos Ferreira, a poet and lyricist widely credited with bringing cultural legitimacy to the Macanese dialect.

At one time, Tuna Macaense had three dozen members and the band was known for making unannounced visits at weddings and birthday parties. “They would travel on foot through the streets because Macao so small,” said Mr. Jorge, a security manager at the MGM Macau who joined the band 25 years ago. “We can’t do that now because there is too much traffic.”

Although Tuna Macaense is blessed with frequent gigs, Mr. Jorge, 54, is increasingly preoccupied with finding new blood for the band, a quest that has so far been unsuccessful.

“All of us in the band are over 50,” he said. “After we die, our music will die, and I can’t let that happen.”

By: Andrew Jacobs (ny times)

Tibetan Lama Faces Scrutiny in India

Tsering Topgyal/Associated Press Exiled Tibetans in India carried portraits of Ogyen Trinley Dorje, a lama who is under investigation by the country’s police.

DHARAMSALA, India — His daring escape from Tibet seemed out of a movie. Then only 14, Ogyen Trinley Dorje was one of Tibetan Buddhism’s most revered incarnate lamas, and his journey through the icy passes of the Himalayas was viewed as a major embarrassment for China. The youth arrived in India in early 2000 to a euphoric greeting from Tibetan exiles.

India, though, was less certain about what to do with him. Intelligence agencies, suspicious of his loyalties and skeptical of his miraculous escape, interrogated him and tightly restricted his travel. He remains mostly confined to the mountainside monastery of a Tibetan sect different from his own. And that spurred an idea: He wanted his own monastery. Eventually, his aides struck a deal to buy land.

Now, the 17th Karmapa, as he is known, has seen his quest for a monastery unexpectedly set off a national furor, fanned by Indian media that have tapped into growing public anxiety about Chinese intentions on their disputed border.

The Indian police are investigating the Karmapa after discovering about $1 million in foreign currency at his residence, including more than $166,000 in Chinese currency. Flimsily sourced media accounts have questioned whether he is a Chinese spy plotting a monastic empire along the border.

“Monk or Chinese Plant?” asked an editorial in The Tribune, a national English-language newspaper.

Many Tibetans scoff at the spying allegations. But the episode starkly exposes the precarious position of the Dalai Lama and the exiled movement of Tibetan Buddhism he has led since he fled China in 1959. The Tibetan cause depends heavily on Indian good will, particularly as China has intensified efforts to discredit and infiltrate their exile organization.

Tensions are rising between India and China over a variety of issues, including Tibet. Sophisticated hackers, traced to China, have penetrated computer systems in Dharamsala and at Indian government ministries. China has long blamed Tibetan exiles in India for fueling instability across the border in Tibet. But now India, too, seems more wary of Tibetan activities; the Indian police are investigating new Tibetan monasteries near the border for possible ties to China, a police official said.

Meanwhile, Chinese leaders are betting that the Tibetan movement will fracture after the eventual death of the Dalai Lama, who is 74; they have even declared their intent to name his successor.

Indian suspicions about the Karmapa are a particular problem. He has a global following and, at 25 years old, he is viewed as a potential future leader of the movement — a possibility deeply compromised if Indian authorities consider him a foreign agent.

“What Tibetans must address is the idea that Tibetans could be considered a security threat to India and not an asset,” said Tsering Shakya, a leading Tibet specialist. “But the idea that a boy at the age of 14 was selected as a covert agent by a foreign government to destabilize India — and the assumption the boy will assume leadership of the Tibetan movement and eventually work against India — is worthy of a cheap spy novel.”

For the past week, Tibetans have rallied behind the Karmapa, with thousands of monks holding candlelight vigils at his residence. Tibet’s political leaders, including the Dalai Lama, have called on the Karmapa’s aides to correct any financial irregularities but have dismissed any suspicions about the Karmapa’s being a Chinese agent.

“Baseless, all baseless,” said Samdhong Rinpoche, the prime minister of the Tibetan government in exile. “Not a fraction of anything that has a base of truth.”

Many Indian intelligence agents have distrusted the Karmapa from the start. He was a unique case, since both the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government had endorsed him. He would explain his escape as an act of principle; he was being pressured to denounce the Dalai Lama, and Chinese officials also were forbidding him to study with high lamas outside China. Many investigators were unconvinced, wondering how such an important figure could slip so easily over the border.

On Wednesday, when the procession of monks arrived to offer support, the Karmapa described the current controversy as a “misunderstanding” and expressed confidence in the fairness of Indian authorities.

“We all have taken refuge and settled here,” he said. “India, in contrast to Communist China, is a democratic country that is based on the rule of law. Therefore, I trust that things will improve and the truth will become clear in time.”

Within Tibetan Buddhism, the Karmapa ranks third after the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama, with each man believed to be reincarnated through the centuries. After the death of the previous Karmapa, a bitter feud broke out between the high lamas charged with identifying his successor: at least two other people now claim to be the Karmapa, though a majority of Tibetans, including the Dalai Lama, recognize Ogyen Trinley Dorje.

But this dispute has complicated efforts by the Karmapa to claim the monastery built by his predecessor in the Indian border region of Sikkim. Indian officials have blocked him from taking ownership until claims from rival Tibetan factions are resolved — which is why, given the uncertainty over the duration of the legal fight, the Karmapa sought land for a new monastery, his aides say.

The land deal led to the current controversy. On Jan. 26, India’s Republic Day, police officers apprehended two men at a highway checkpoint after discovering about $219,000 in Indian rupees inside their car — money they said had come from the Karmapa. The next day, the police raided the Gyuto Monastery and found boxes of cash from more than 20 countries, including China; officers arrested the financial officer overseeing the Karmapa’s charitable trust and continue to investigate the Karmapa himself.

“He ran from China,” said P. L. Thakur, the police inspector general in Dharamsala. “Tibet is under China. Why and how has this currency come here? For what purpose? Why was it being kept there?”

Naresh Mathur, one of the Karmapa’s lawyers, said the money was from the devotees who for the past decade had come from around the world for the Karmapa’s blessing. By custom, they leave an offering, usually envelopes of cash; the Chinese renminbi, he said, are from Tibetans or other Chinese who have made a pilgrimage to Dharamsala.

Mr. Mathur said the Karmapa’s aides were unable to deposit the money because they were awaiting a decision on their application — made several years ago — for government approval to accept foreign currency. In the interim, they say, the money is stored where the officers found it — in boxes kept in a dorm room shared by monks.

Mr. Mathur also denied any suggestion that the land deal was secretive or illegal, and he said that it was the seller who demanded cash.

On Friday, the Karmapa offered blessings to devotees who lined up to meet him in his fourth-floor reception room. Among them was a group of Chinese followers from the manufacturing hub of Shenzhen. Aides say that bookkeeping mistakes may have been made in recording the donations, but that the intent is to handle the money the right way.

“We will be making changes,” said Deki Chungyalpa, a spokeswoman for the Karmapa. “Like hiring a professional accountant who is not a monk.”

For many Tibetans, the broader concern is about the future of the Tibetan movement itself. Tenzin Tsundue is a Tibetan activist who once unfurled a “Free Tibet” banner at an appearance by President Hu Jintao of China. He says India has always been a steadfast friend of Tibetans, providing a home for as many as 120,000 Tibetan refugees, yet now he worries its support may be wavering.

“This country that we are so grateful to is alleging the Karmapa is a spy for China,” he said. “And we can’t understand that at all.”

By: Jim Ladley (nytimes magazine)

Indonesia Demands Probe Over Muslim Attack

A police officer inspects the damage at the house of a member of Ahmadiyah sect after it was attacked by Muslim mob in Pandeglang, Indonesia, Monday, February 7, 2011

(JAKARTA, Indonesia) — Indonesia's president ordered an investigation into an attack on members of a minority Muslim sect after a gruesome video emerged of a mob beating several victims to death with machetes, sticks and rocks.

About 1,500 people stormed a house in Banten province over the weekend to stop 20 Ahmadiyah followers from worshipping. They killed three men and badly wounded six others, while destroying the house and setting fire to several cars and motorbikes.

Indonesia is a secular country of 237 million people with more Muslims than any other in the world.

Despite a long history of religious tolerance, a hard-line fringe has grown louder in recent years and the government — which relies on the support of Islamic parties in Parliament — has been accused of caving in to it.

Rights group said Tuesday a 2008 decree that bans religious activities of Ahmadiyah, thought to have 200,000 followers in the archepeligic nation, should be immediately revoked. They say it only encourages violence.

The latest attacks on Ahmadiyah — which drew rare condemnation from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono — were captured on video and have circulated widely on national television and the Internet.

The most disturbing clip, posted on YouTube, showed assailants repeatedly pounding two victims — who had been stripped naked and appeared to be dead — with heavy sticks.

A policeman came to the scene but his screams of "stop" were almost inaudible among dozens who shouted "Allahu Akbar" or God is Great.

The Ahmadiyah are considered deviant by many Muslims and are banned in many Islamic countries because they believe that Muhammad was not the final prophet.

"I have ordered a comprehensive investigation to find out the real cause of the incident so that those guilty, or violating the law, can be penalized," Yudhoyono told a news conference.

He also called on security forces as well as local governments to be proactive in taking action against the instigators of such violence.

"Don't wait until the conflicts and clashes have already happened," Yudhoyono said.

Many attacks on religious minorities in recent years have been carried out by members of the hardline Islamic Defenders Front, known also for smashing bars and attacking transvestites and anyone one else considered "blasphemous" with bamboo clubs and stones.

The group pressured local authorities late last year to shutter a Christian church located in a densely populated Muslim area, and assailants stabbed a Christian worshipper and beat a minister on the head with a wooden plank as they headed to prayers.

Thirteen members of the Islamic Defenders Front have gone on trial in the case, and state prosecutors on Monday sought a six-month prison term for Murhali Barda, a local group leader, for instigating the Sept. 13 attack.

The Setara Institute for Peace and Democracy, a human rights group, says attacks on religious freedom by hard-liners are steadily increasing.

It says in 2010 there were 64 incidents, ranging from physical abuse to preventing groups from performing prayers and burning houses of worship, up from 18 in 2009 and 17 in 2008.

By: Associated Press (time magazine)

Why Fear of Islamists Paralyzes the U.S. on Egypt

Egyptian antigovernment protesters attack riot police at the port city of Suez, Jan. 27, 2011

Mohamed Abd El-Ghany / Reuters

The language coming out of the Obama Administration as Egypt braces for another political showdown in the streets on Friday has verged on the bizarre. President Hosni Mubarak is hailed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her spokesman, P.J. Crowley, as an "anchor of stability" providing vital assistance to U.S. regional goals, yet the protests demanding his ouster are soothingly described as "an opportunity" for the regime to demonstrate that it is able to respond to the demands of its citizenry by means other than guns, batons and prison cells.

"Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people," Secretary Clinton said earlier this week, adding that the government "has an important opportunity at this moment in time to implement political, economic and social reforms." She urged the regime to refrain from blocking peaceful protest or shutting off communications networks — pleas that appear to have been ignored going into Friday as the government shut down Internet and SMS communication and arrested activists ahead of the demonstrations planned for after Friday prayers.

Mubarak may be listening more closely than Clinton is to what the protesters are saying: first and foremost among their "legitimate needs," by their own definition, is for Mubarak to step aside — a cause they have no place to press other than in the streets, since the regime has repeatedly rigged elections to keep Mubarak in power. He may be Washington's most important friend among Arab leaders, but those who will brave the wrath of his security forces in Egypt's streets on Friday believe he is a tyrant whose time is up.

Clinton's urging of Mubarak to make reforms and refrain from the temptation to simply crack down reflects lessons learned by the U.S. from the fall of other friendly autocrats, from the Shah of Iran in 1979 to Tunisia's Zine el Abidine Ben Ali earlier this month. Those governments failed to recognize the depth of popular anger and make sufficient political and economic concessions to defuse it. The Obama Administration is simply urging Mubarak to do what is necessary to preserve his regime — while recognizing that the order to fire on unarmed fellow citizens can provoke a crisis in the security forces that can bring down the regime.

Reform is not necessarily the same as democracy, however, and after 30 years under the same President, those who are taking to the streets want regime change rather than the kindlier, gentler Mubarak the U.S. would appear to prefer. The Obama Administration's dilemma over how to respond to Egypt's democracy movement became a little more acute on Thursday when the country's largest opposition party, the banned Muslim Brotherhood, declared its intention to openly participate in Friday's protests. Years of operating in conditions of twilight legality have given the Brotherhood an unrivaled organizational network — its members expect to be arrested and roughed up by the regime — and it is widely viewed as by far the most popular party in the opposition. That's a problem for the U.S., given its singular allergy to Islamist parties in the Arab world, particularly those that challenge its longtime allies.

Democracy movements are attractive to Washington when they target a regime such as Iran's, but in allied autocracies, they're a problem. There's no way for Egypt to be democratic and exclude the Islamists from political participation. The same is true for most other parts of the Arab world — a lesson the U.S. ought to have learned in Iraq, where Islamists have dominated all the democratically elected governments that followed Saddam Hussein's ouster. But when the Islamists of Hamas won the last Palestinian elections in 2006, held under pressure from Washington, the Bush Administration literally did a 180-degree turn on the question of Palestinian democracy. Meanwhile, much of the commentary on Ben Ali's ouster in Tunisia has hailed the apparent absence of Islamists from the protest movement, but that may be premature. After the repression they suffered under the dictatorship, Tunisia's Islamists have yet to emerge, as does the character of a new regime. Islamists may not dominate or even seek to, but don't bet against them becoming an integral part of Tunisian democracy.

There are many different models of Islamist politics competing with U.S. allies and with each other for support in the Middle East, ranging from the violent extremism of al-Qaeda to the modernizing, business-friendly democrats of Turkey's ruling AK Party. But they tend to share a hostility toward U.S. intervention in the region, and toward Israel.

Explaining why the U.S. continues to support Mubarak, the State Department's Crowley on Thursday told al-Jazeera that "Egypt is an anchor of stability in the Middle East ... It's made its own peace with Israel and is pursuing normal relations with Israel. We think that's important; we think that's a model that the region should adopt."

The problem for Washington is that Arab electorates are unlikely to agree. The democratically elected Iraqi government, for example, despite its dependence on U.S. support, has stated its refusal to normalize relations with Israel. A democratic Egypt, whether led by the Muslim Brotherhood or any other opposition party, is unlikely to go to war with Israel given the vast imbalance in military capability, but they're even less likely to accept normal ties given the present condition of the Palestinians. And the most secular liberal activists in Egypt reject with contempt the argument that regional stability can come at the expense of their right to choose their government.

Turkey, once its electorate was given a voice in matters of state, denied the U.S. the right to use its territory to invade Iraq. It has become more assertive in challenging both Israel and the U.S. strategy on Iran. Arab electorates are unlikely to give Washington the sort of support against Iran it gets from the region's pro-U.S. autocrats.

The problem the Administration now confronts is that backing autocrats who support U.S. regional policy is no longer simply uncomfortable given the values Washington professes to uphold: it's increasingly untenable as the forces of demographics, economics and technology gnaw at the bonds imposed by those autocrats. The Egyptians, young and old, that risk life and limb by taking to the streets on Friday may not have the patience for the pace and nature of change envisaged by Secretary Clinton.

By: Tony Karon (time magazine)

6 expenses you should never put on a credit card

There are some things experts say you should never put on a credit card if you can't pay the bill right away -- either because they're frivolous, or they can land you deep in debt or, in some cases, because there's a better alternative.

If you have plenty of money in your bank account, it can make sense to put just about any big purchase on your credit card because of the rewards , convenience and consumer protections that come with plastic. When you're broke, though, it's one thing to use your card for an emergency. It's quite another, however, to splurge on a mommy makeover, an island vacation or a diamond engagement ring .

Here are six credit card purchases experts say cash-strapped consumers should avoid at all costs.

1. A big tax bill. A tax bill from the IRS could make a nervous taxpayer reach for a credit card. But don't do it. "Federal income tax is right at the top of the list of things not to pay with a credit card," says David Jones, president of the Association of Independent Consumer Credit Counseling Agencies . "When people get in this type of situation, it's usually a fairly large tax bill, and it can be difficult to pay off those credit cards." In addition, you'll pay a processing fee that could be 2 percent or more of the total amount you pay by credit card.

The alternative: The IRS will set up a payment plan at a much lower interest rate than a credit card offers, experts say. "It's amazing, but the IRS actually charges less interest than anybody else. It's very low now, less than 5 percent," Jones says.

2. A gambling spree. Entrepreneur Rod Ebrahimi, who is developing an online financial application called ReadyforZero to help consumers pay down debt, says he has a friend who recently gambled away more than $3,000 taken from a credit card cash advance . "If you're sitting at a table in Vegas, they make it really easy to pull cash with your plastic. They'll process it for you, bring you some nice chips and you can keep on gambling," Ebrahimi says. "And a lot of people don't understand APRs for cash advances are much higher -- upward of 30 percent."

The alternative: If you have a gambling problem, seek counseling or other help, recommends Jones, who recently helped a client who had racked up $113,000 in credit card debt playing online poker . If gambling is more of a hobby, Ebrahimi recommends steering clear of casinos when you're short on cash -- or playing poker online without betting money.

3. College tuition. Experts say it's not smart to finance college tuition on credit cards. "College tuition can be a very significant expense," Jones says, noting that charging tuition on credit cards might make sense only if you know you'll be able to pay it off in full within three months.

The alternative: Experts recommend putting all options on the table. That includes grants, scholarships, low-interest student loans, a part-time job, attending community college for a few years or attending a less-expensive university. "It's a good idea to meet with a credit counselor to get some help understanding all of your options," Jones says. "Student loans can be a very good option, but you need to make a plan to repay them. Some people get into a huge amount of debt with student loans."

4. Plastic surgery. Reality shows such as "Extreme Makeover" make it seem routine to get nips, tucks and D-cups, but pulling out plastic to pay for it is a bad idea, experts say. "Most of it is vanity stuff, and charging that is crazy," Jones says. Carrie Coghill, a personal finance author and director of consumer education for FreeScore.com, says she increasingly sees consumers being swayed by medical spa sales pitches to charge seemingly less expensive procedures such as Botox injections and laser treatments. "It might cost $1,500 each time, but those things can really add up -- people get grabbed in, and it never ends," Coghill says. She cautions consumers to read the fine print on offers for medical credit cards, such as CareCredit, that offer a zero percent introductory rate. "The day you make a payment late, they typically will go back and charge you interest from day one," Coghill says.

The alternative: As with any luxury purchase, consumers should either save up for it -- or skip it, experts say.

5. A lavish wedding. One consumer who turned to Ebrahimi for help got into trouble by charging up $50,000 in credit card debt -- much of it on a big wedding followed by a honeymoon in Barcelona. "I think a lot of times people get caught up in the event and spend more than anticipated. It's very common to blow your budget," says Clarky Davis, a financial counselor who runs TheDebtDiva.com. Statistics show finances can cause tension between couples , so starting off married life by running up debt is a bad idea, Davis says. "When you come home from the honeymoon and have to face a monster credit card bill, it can cause a lot of stress," Davis says. "You can't focus on where you are right now because you're still paying off the past."

The alternative: Most experts recommend scaling back and focusing on meaningful, rather than material, aspects of the wedding. "The people you love could care less if there's an open bar or you're wearing a $5,000 dress," Davis says. "Stay within your means."

6. A trip for two. It's a bad idea to finance a vacation with plastic, experts say, and that goes double for paying someone else's tab, too. Monica Lichi, a nonprofit manager in Ohio, spent years paying off a Hawaiian cruise she took with an ex. "Neither of us had the money, so I said, 'Oh, I'll just put it on my credit card,'" Lichi recalls. After living it up on the trip -- they island-hopped, went ziplining and sipped fruity cocktails -- Lichi returned home to a huge bill. "The inconvenient part comes when you break up and they don't pay you back," says Lichi, who is using the online service DebtGoal.com to pay down her five-figure credit card debt.

The alternative: Well in advance, start making a monthly payment into a bank account -- the reverse of what you'd do if you paid with a card, Coghill recommends. "It feels so much better to pay in cash and not come back from vacation with a credit card hangover," she says. If you're going with a friend, an online service such as WePay.com can allow you to pool money in advance and pay expenses with a shared debit card rather than your credit card.

So, how do you stay sane with your credit cards? Experts recommend taking your time and avoiding impulsiveness, especially when money is tight. "If you're thinking about putting a vacation on a credit card, or even a pair of shoes, you should walk away, think about it and come back later," Coghill says. "If you're charging anything over $1,000, you really should be asking yourself, 'What am I doing?'"

See related: How to finance an engagement ring , Stuck with a tax bill? Here are your payment options , 4 key questions to ask when considering a cash advance , Saved by plastic: 5 true credit card tales , Tales from the credit crypt: Counselors' crazy debt stories

By: allie Johnson (yahoo.com)

Does going to college make you smarter—or poorer?

With top-tier colleges charging as much as $50,000 per year, the idea that students may spend their first two years learning next-to-nothing is enough to make parents pause. How can you make that investment worthwhile? And does going to college really make you smarter?

It depends on what you study—and whether you study enough.

A "Room for Debate" discussion at the New York Times earlier this week tackled the issue, with several academics weighing in on whether college is worthwhile, and whether schools are dumbing down their curricula to appeal to more people. In their new book, "Academically Adrift," sociologists Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia found that 32 percent of the students they followed did not take "any courses with more than 40 pages of reading per week" in a typical semester, and half of the students didn't take any course in which they had to write more than 20 pages for the class." Using these criteria, they determined that 45 percent of college students make little academic progress during the first two years of a four-year degree.

Their research raises a few red flags. On the one hand: Is it any surprise that a public school system forced to "teach to the test" churns out students who are averse (or flat-out unable) to thinking analytically, learn on their own, or write a research paper? On the other: Does the number of pages read + the number of pages written = an accurate assessment of academic progress? A literature or history major, for instance, would have far more reading to do than a math major, but the math workload isn't lighter lifting just because it involves reading fewer pages per week.

And yet, the case for students learning less is a compelling one: A March 2010 report by two University of California researchers found that the amount of time students spend studying has dropped drastically over the past 40 years, from 40 hours a week in 1961 to 27 hours a week in 2003. One possible reason? Colleges are spending less of their budgets on instruction and more of it on recreation and student services, according to a July 2010 report by the Delta Cost Project. Most colleges are businesses after all, and the pressure to attract new students (and more money) is intense.

So, if colleges are focusing on building spa-like rec centers and luxury dorms instead of improving their academics, is a college education even worth the money anymore? Many academics and experts still think it is.

"Yes, college is worth the money—if you choose 
your classes wisely, take advantage of campus activities that teach you
 hands-on, transferable skills, and attend a school that gives you the
 strength and courage to focus on what you enjoy doing," says Steven Roy Goodman, an educational consultant and admissions strategist at Topcolleges.com.

"Going to college brings other important benefits, such as more developed analytical, numerical and communication skills, that will help you perform in the workplace and progress up the career ladder," agrees Danny Byrne, an undergraduate specialist and content manager for TopUniversities.com "College will introduce you to intelligent people from a huge range of backgrounds, and as your career progresses the value of this network of contacts may prove to be immeasurable."

Those types of things are difficult to assess in a survey or on a test, though. Which may be why so many educators and students take issue with the idea that college freshmen and sophomores are slacking off instead of studying.

"Even if a student enters college with no career goals, college is the best place to discover those goals," points out Robert Neuman, former Associate Dean for Academic Development in the College of Arts and Sciences at Milwaukee's Marquette University and the author of "Are You Really Ready for College: A College Dean’s 12 Secrets for Success." "The more education anyone has, the more advantages he or she will have in the job market."

Some point out that the skills you gain matter more than the degree you earn.

"For me, college is about a life experience," says Jim Joseph, president of independent marketing firm Lippe Taylor. "Is it vital to getting ahead? Not sure anymore. With entrepreneurialism at an new high, you just need a good idea and some determination to make a name for yourself. Or if you have a specific skill set, there are many ways to build and exploit that."

University of Florida graduate Candy Keane now runs a business ( Three Muses, a clothing store) that has nothing to do with her degree (in magazine journalism). But still, "I could not have done all that I have without what I learned from college," she says. "I learned graphic design, layout, photography, Photoshop, PR, writing, web design—all the things that I was able to use and build on to start my business myself."

So what courses should a college-bound kid take in order to make the most of his or her (or your) time and money? The experts and students we talked to suggested that all students take these types of classes, regardless of their majors or grad-school plans:

• Public speaking or acting
• Sales
• Marketing
• Public relations
• Entrepreneurship
• Computer programming, especially HTML
• Introduction to psychology
• Introduction to economics
• Communication/Writing
• Internships that offer hands-on experience in a field

"Yes, college is certainly worth the money!" says David Reynaldo, co-founder of College Zoom. "Had I not gone to college, I never would have found the network, inspiration, or know how to make my dream come true."

By: Lylah l. alphonse (yahoo.com)

Egyptian Youths Drive the Revolt Against Mubarak

Protesters in Cairo on Wednesday defied a ban on public gatherings, risking clashes with riot police officers.

For decades, Egypt’s authoritarian president, Hosni Mubarak, played a clever game with his political opponents.

He tolerated a tiny and toothless opposition of liberal intellectuals whose vain electoral campaigns created the facade of a democratic process. And he demonized the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood as a group of violent extremists who posed a threat that he used to justify his police state.

But this enduring and, many here say, all too comfortable relationship was upended this week by the emergence of an unpredictable third force, the leaderless tens of thousands of young Egyptians who turned out to demand an end to Mr. Mubarak’s 30-year rule.

Now the older opponents are rushing to catch up.

“It was the young people who took the initiative and set the date and decided to go,” Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Wednesday with some surprise during a telephone interview from his office in Vienna, shortly before rushing home to Cairo to join the revolt.

Dr. ElBaradei, a Nobel prize winner, has been the public face of an effort to reinvigorate and unite Egypt’s fractious and ineffective opposition since he plunged into his home country’s politics nearly a year ago, and he said the youth movement had accomplished that on its own. “Young people are impatient,” he said. “Frankly, I didn’t think the people were ready.”

But their readiness — tens of thousands have braved tear gas, rubber bullets and security police officers notorious for torture — has threatened to upstage or displace the traditional opposition groups.

Many of the tiny, legally recognized political parties — more than 20 in total, with scarcely a parlor full of grass-roots supporters among them — are leaping to embrace the new movement for change but lack credibility with the young people in the street.

Even the Muslim Brotherhood may have grown too protective of its own institutions and position to capitalize on the new youth movement, say some analysts and former members. The Brotherhood remains the organization in Egypt with the largest base of support outside the government, but it can no longer claim to be the only entity that can turn masses of people out into the streets.

“The Brotherhood is no longer the most effective player in the political arena,” said Emad Shahin, an Egyptian scholar now at the University of Notre Dame. “If you look at the Tunisian uprising, it’s a youth uprising. It is the youth that knows how to use the media, Internet, Facebook, so there are other players now.”

Dr. ElBaradei, for his part, has struggled for nearly a year to unite the opposition under his umbrella group, the National Association for Change. But some have mocked him as a globe-trotting dilettante who spends much of his time abroad instead of on the barricades.

He has said in interviews that he never presented himself as a political savior, and that Egyptians would have to make their own revolution. Now, he said, the youth movement “will give them the self-confidence they needed, to know that the change will happen through you and not through one person — you are the driving force.”

And Dr. ElBaradei argued that by upsetting the old relationship between Mr. Mubarak and the Brotherhood, the youth movement posed a new challenge to United States policy makers as well.

“For years,” he said, “the West has bought Mr. Mubarak’s demonization of the Muslim Brotherhood lock, stock and barrel, the idea that the only alternative here are these demons called the Muslim Brotherhood who are the equivalent of Al Qaeda.”

He added: “I am pretty sure that any freely and fairly elected government in Egypt will be a moderate one, but America is really pushing Egypt and pushing the whole Arab world into radicalization with this inept policy of supporting repression.”

The roots of the uprising that filled Egypt’s streets this week arguably stretch back to before the Tunisian revolt, which many protesters cited as the catalyst. Almost three years ago, on April 6, 2008, the Egyptian government crushed a strike by a group of textile workers in the industrial city of Mahalla, and in response a group of young activists who connected through Facebook and other social networking Web sites formed the April 6th Youth Movement in solidarity with the strikers.

Their early efforts to call a general strike were a bust. But over time their leaderless online network and others that sprang up around it — like the networks that helped propel the Tunisian revolution — were uniquely difficult for the Egyptian security police to pinpoint or wipe out. It was an online rallying cry for a show of opposition to tyranny, corruption and torture that brought so many to the streets on Tuesday and Wednesday, unexpectedly vaulting the online youth movement to the forefront as the most effective independent political force in Egypt.

“It would be criminal for any political party to claim credit for the mini-Intifada we had yesterday,” said Hossam el-Hamalawy, a blogger and activist.

Mr. Mubarak’s government, though, is so far sticking to a familiar script. Against all evidence, his interior minister immediately laid blame for Wednesday’s unrest at the foot of the government’s age-old foe, the Muslim Brotherhood.

This time, though, the Brotherhood disclaimed responsibility, saying it was only one part of Dr. ElBaradei’s umbrella group. “People took part in the protests in a spontaneous way, and there is no way to tell who belonged to what,” said Gamal Nassar, a media adviser for the Brotherhood, noting the near-total absence of any group’s signs or slogans, including the Brotherhood’s.

“Everyone is suffering from social problems, unemployment, inflation, corruption and oppression,” he said. “So what everyone is calling for is real change.”

The Brotherhood operates a large network of schools and charities that make up for the many failings of government social services. Some analysts charge that the institutional inertia may make the Brotherhood slow to rock the Egyptian ship of state.

“The Brotherhood has been very silent,” said Amr Hamzawy, research director at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. “It is not a movement that can benefit from what has been happening and get people out in the street.”

Nor, Dr. ElBaradei argued, does the Muslim Brotherhood merit the fear its name evokes in the West. Its membership embraces large numbers of professors, lawyers and other professionals as well as followers who benefit from its charities. It has not committed or condoned acts of violence since the uprising against the British-backed Egyptian monarchy six decades ago, and it has endorsed his call for a pluralistic civil democracy.

“They are a religiously conservative group, no question about it, but they also represent about 20 percent of the Egyptian people,” he said. “And how can you exclude 20 percent of the Egyptian people?”

Dr. ElBaradei, with his international prestige, is a difficult critic for Mr. Mubarak’s government to jail, harass or besmirch, as it has many of his predecessors. And Dr. ElBaradei eases concerns about Islamists by putting a secular, liberal and familiar face on the opposition.

But he has been increasingly outspoken in his criticism of the West. He was stunned, he said, by the reaction of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Egyptian protests. In a statement after Tuesday’s clashes, she urged restraint but described the Egyptian government as “stable” and “looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.”

“ ‘Stability’ is a very pernicious word,” he said. “Stability at the expense of 30 years of martial law, rigged elections?” He added, “If they come later and say, as they did in Tunis, ‘We respect the will of the Tunisian people,’ it will be a little late in the day.”

Mona El-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo.