Edouard Duval-Carrie was born in Haiti, but when he was a child, his family fled Papa Doc Duvalier’s regime. He studied in Montreal and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris before moving to Miami. From this long perspective he explores the theme of “Migrations” in his new paintings, sculptures and installations.In Miami, migration is a major item on the evening news. Thousands of Cubans have arrived since the Mariel mass exodus, many in small, makeshift rafts. Rickety boats loaded with desperate Haitians continue to be intercepted; the bodies of those who drown have washed up on our beaches. Jose Bedia, one of the best known of Miami’s Cuban emigre artists, obsessively fashions schematic compositions using Afro-Cuban-Indian symbols to evoke his own transit from the Caribbean to the urban mainland. Duval-Carrie’s version of the theme projects not a personal narrative but his reflection, spiced with humor and political bite, on a long tradition of sacred images. He cheerfully appropriates the traditional folk style of Haitian painters and the island’s pantheon of Voudou gods and goddesses (”loas” in Creole), and he uses both style and symbol to comment on political and cultural realities. At the Miami Art Museum, Duval-Carrie created an installation that filled the New Work Gallery. It included a wall inspired by the architectural format of a Renaissance altarpiece, inset with sculpted figures in niches and round, square and rectangular paintings, all of modernized Voudou deities, which like the ancient gods can be seen as personifications of nature and of human types and temperaments. Erzulie, for example, the Ioa of love akin to the Greek Aphrodite, is updated as a gaudy exotic nightclub dancer. This hybrid wall demonstrates migration of styles and ideas; migration as the movement of peoples is evoked in the larger-than-life Ioas with flocked surfaces in hot colors who sit disconsolately in a flotilla of wooden boats hanging in midair. They represent Baron Samedi, spirit of death and sex, Erzulie, spirit of female power, and others. In Duval-Carrie’s imagination, everyone is leaving a desolated Haiti, even her presiding spirits.

At Steinbaum, Duval-Carrie showed, along with a small installation, an explosive array of large, emblematic paintings in sea greens and blues heated with Caribbean magentas, reds and oranges. The figures and symbols are as flat, frontal and linear as Byzantine icons; the intricate floral backgrounds tame jungle vegetation into elegant patterns. In some compositions, Duval-Carrie includes a group of tiny palm trees at the right of the image and on the left, a cluster of skyscrapers as the destination of the silhouetted boatload of migrants who traverse the lonely space between.

Several paintings allude to the political and social history of Haiti. Confiserie Sucre Noir (Black Sugar Confections) refers to French’ control of the sugar industry through the importation and use of black slaves. It parodies the kind of picture that could advertise the brand name of such a product on an 18th-century candy box. Against the background of a wallpaper pattern of repeated black heads, the black face in the center, fixed in place by a lacy collar, hovers above a flowery hemisphere.

Duval-Carrie presents his canvases in wide, wooden frames that become part of the painting-as-object. Some frames show remnants of a gold-leaf Rococo decoration (Duval-Carrie uses a stencil sold by Ralph Lauren to produce a “traditional” effect) on which layers of tropical sea-blue resin encroach, studded with carved emblems like hearts, anchors, infants and Haiti’s royal palm tree. His frames increase esthetic distance, emphasize the artfulness of the images they contain and, like all of Dural-Carrie’s pensively comic work, suggest the palimpsest of history.

Although fans of the hometown Indians might frown on the analogy, The Cleveland Clinic–arguably the central service world’s equivalent to the New York Yankees–used its size and an impressive collection of financial and human resources to its best advantage and came away as the 2002 winner of the Healthcare Purchasing News Central Service Department of the Year award It can rightfully be said that the larger institutions have the means as well as the motive to improve their performance, teamwork, efficiency and the like. But it’s still up to the hospital and its managers and staff to fulfill that potential, and the prestigious Ohio medical center certainly did that. In overwhelming fashion, The Cleveland Clinic finished as the top vote-getter from judges in an outstanding field of hospitals to win this year’s honor. One judge even handed the Clinic a perfect score, the only such accomplishment on the score sheet. Among the leaders in the field were runner-up Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, as well as Women’s Hospital, Baton Rouge, LA, and Baylor University Medical Center, Waco, TX. Congratulations are in order for all entries. Each of these facilities submitted impressive credentials.

“World class care deserves a world class processing department.” In 1998, the surgical processing department (SPD) of The Cleveland Clinic stepped up efforts to improve their delivery of quality products to their customers. In order for the staff of the SPD to achieve their goals, they needed to update their department’s mission statement and plan a comprehensive strategic plan that was sensitive to the needs of their customers. This plan also needed to be communicated to their customer and provide opportunity for customers participation with very little time taken away from patient care.

The fundamental values that form the foundation of the Cleveland Clinic culture: quality, integrity, compassion, collaboration, and commitment. The mission of the surgical processing department: “To provide surgical instrumentation and related hardware which has been decontaminated, inspected, assembled, packaged, sterilized, stored and delivered according to quality assurance procedures for the operating rooms in a manner to support and accomplish the goals and objectives of The Cleveland Clinic.”

Today, the SPD supports 59 surgical operating rooms with an annual caseload of 34,000-plus surgical procedures, performing 16,800 sterilization loads and processing more than 373,860 sets of instruments to include the inspection and handling of over 6.25 million reusable surgical medical devices per year. This type of performance and statistical indicators would not be feasible without the professional dedication of the 70 FTEs in the SPD.

But this story is more than just numbers. It’s about how one SPD achieved success and won this year’s award. “Customer Service is the key,” says Richard Schule, who has led the department since 1994 and sounds as much like a motivator as a department head. “Never get discouraged over the day’s events. Perseverance and a positive attitude will endure.” With that in mind, the SPD has developed and implemented numerous tools to meet and exceed their customer’s expectations.

Innovative ideas

The Clinic developed several resource tools designed to raise the level of efficiency and awareness of the production process. For example, the SPD assisted in the development and implementation of an instrument daily usage report from the OR scheduling system. This report identifies the types and quantities of instruments needed to support the next day’s surgery schedule and to help prioritize the workload.

Inside the department, visual aids were posted throughout the production process featuring oversized graphics portraying the loading of washer loading racks with reusable medical devices, instrument tray assembly, sterilizer loading cart set up, sterile storage and case cart production, to help staff identify with consistent replication of quality production.

Another improvement was the way in which sharps were reported to the staff and SPD customers. The staff took a site visit to Invacare, a large homecare products supplier. Says Schule, “We noticed how a picture of a green safety cross was colored to represent the number of injury free production days for a given month. The SPD created a picture of a syringe with 31 squares to represent each day of the month and to have a colored square for each day that a sharps event takes place.”

Improvements begin with a will to do and knowledge to understand the reasoning. The SPD staff at Cleveland Clinic came to recognize the importance of communicating with their customers as well as with each other. With that in mind, a “communications board” was designed to capture monthly statistics and include production indicators and volume. “This board allowed us to communicate safety issues such as the number of sharps incidents that were occurring each month in addition to what types of sharps the staff were being exposed to,” says Schule. “Such communication has been received favorably by our customers, and the raised awareness has reduced sharps occurrence by 64 percent.”

In a decision that reverberated from coast to coast, Iowa’s Sweet Corn Technical Institute in Des Moines voted to change the name and logo of its athletic teams from the “Grasshoppers” to the “Indians,” a course running counter to current fashion. “This tribute to the courage, dignity and historical tenacity of an often-derided minority is long overdue,” said Athletic Director Giffer Goffer.

“We are proud to emphasize our cultural kinship with a group which in the face of overwhelming odds during this nation’s founding maintained ethnic pride and whose accomplishments since should bring a blush, so to speak, of admiration to us all” he added after the unanimous vote of students and faculty.News of the Sweet Corn decision caused the New York Times to reverse one of that paper’s more foolish policies: A Times editorial thundered that “it is about time the silly campaigns by local governments and many schools to eliminate such team names as `Indians,’ `Braves’ and `Redskins’ is recognized for the absurdity that it is. We regret our past endorsement of such demeaning efforts to deny America’s indigenous people the emblematic prominence they deserve. It is inspiriting that this challenge comes from Des Moines, the heartland of the heartland, and we trust the bold decision will be emulated widely.” The Washington Post, noting the Times’ policy retreat, several days later also published a lead editorial: “Bravo to the faculty and students of Sweet Corn Technical Institute for asserting that symbols can be eloquent. For our part, this newspaper will no longer use the term `Native Americans,’ realizing that the very imprecise usage is insensitive to immigrants and their descendants. We salute Iowa’s Democratic senator, Tom Harkin, for his quick appreciation of the decision in his state: `What’s good enough for Sweet Corn is good enough for me,’ the ultraliberal Harkin said at a press conference.”

Whoa! Enough whimsical improbability.

The cult of “victimhood” first cousin to multicultural faddism, is too embedded at the moment for any actual transition to mother wit to occur. Indeed, there is a bow-wave of enthusiasm for promoting “group identities” and erasing supposed denigration of minorities. This daft confusion of perspective was exemplified by former vice president Al Gore, when at a campaign rally he slyly translated one of the nation’s mottos, E pluribus unum (From Many, One) as “From One, Many.” When questions arose, his handlers insisted the reversal was inadvertent.

The most recent nonsense comes from — where else? -the nation’s capital. An organization composed of representatives from the city and surrounding jurisdictions passed a resolution urging that the owner of the Washington Redskins professional football team change its name by next season.

In the overheated rhetoric usual in these peevish squeakings, the resolution proclaimed, “The use of this degrading and dehumanizing term for a team name is offensive and hurtful to Native Americans and to many people who reject racial stereotypes, racial slurs and bigotry as socially and morally unacceptable.” Two members of the body voted against the addled motion and five abstained. The resolution is toothless: Such a coagulation of governmental officials has no enforcement power.

The trend frequently in cases such as this is for the offending school or team immediately to grovel and acquiesce to the demand for change — notwithstanding that students and parents often object. Happily, at least so far, the Washington Redskins are not impressed. A spokesman for the team said, “We have no intention of changing our name.”

Actually, changing the name of any National Football League (NFL) team would require a decision by NFL Big Chief Paul Tagliabue. The last time there were mutterings about renaming the Redskins, he sensibly demurred.

A similar feel-good assault on athletic nomenclature in 1997 led Washington’s pro-basketball team to change its name from the “Bullets” to the “Wizards.” The notion behind that episode was that “Bullets” was suggestive of violence and guns and it might lead impressionable younger fans to secure pistols or antitank guns.

In the midst of a vastly important mobilization in the war against terror, and the national consensus that is supporting it, the niggling efforts to get team names changed and to enforce other tenets of liberal political rectitude are as germane as flying a kite in a hurricane.

If anything, the continual involvement of governmental bodies in such flapdoodle makes an irrefutable case (as if it needed making yet again) that the United States now suffers from excessive layers of officialdom. Too many of these puny panjandrums do not have enough serious labor to concentrate their attention.

Traditions are not immune to criticism or change, of course, nor should they be. It is well, however, that fiddling with them ought to be consensual — ought to meet even a modestly democratic concurrence — rather than be the result of promiscuous itches by politicians seeking feel-good issues.

Nobody likes to have his fashion sense questioned, but Mariners reliever Arthur Rhodes is a shining example of someone who takes self-expression too far. After the Indians’ Omar Vizquel complained that Rhodes’ diamond earrings were causing a distracting glare in a day game last Saturday, the two players began yelling at each other. Rhodes became so incensed he eventually was tossed. “He started pointing at my head,” Vizquel says. “He was pointing at me like he was going to hit me or something.” Maybe Vizquel wasn’t accessorizing right.You can nominate a major league player for the Doghouse. Call Kevin Wheeler’s show, 6-9 a.m. ET Saturdays on Sporting News Radio. For an affiliate near you,

PLEASANTON — The library won a $25,000 grant from the California State Library that will fund programs and events revolved around culture from India.

To the library, thats big money, said Penny Johnson, the adult programming librarian. To a business, its not so much. I work with a $2,000 budget. So this is huge.

The competitive grant was issued through the state librarys Cultural Crossroads program, which awards libraries that collaborate with cultural organizations.

Libraries have to find a community, ethnic or cultural organization to partner with, Johnson said. And they have to come up with a good idea. Pleasantons population has changed. Its a lot more diverse than it was 30 years ago. We want to celebrate the Indian culture this year and hopefully next year, well celebrate another culture. We hope its ongoing.

The library partnered with East Bay Marathi Mandal, based in Pleasanton, which promotes Maharashtrian culture, which is a region in western India. However, planned events will cover all areas and cultures of India.

The events center on the makings of spicy desi/spicy desh. Desi is slang for an Indian person while desh is slang for the land of India. So far there are more than a half-dozen events tentatively scheduled. The first four are:

-From 3:30 to 7 p.m., on Sept. 9, there will be a food festival in front of the library. Food writers Laxmi Hiremath and Lachu Moorjani will discuss the various uses of spices in different regions of India.From 2 to 3 p.m., on Oct. 22, the library will host a panel to discuss South Asian women in America. Featured speakers include author Padma Shandas, director Sarah Khan and medical researcher Sunita Puri.

-From 3:30 to 7 p.m., on Oct. 28, the library will offer a program for teenagers to discuss the difficulties of growing up in a bi-cultural setting. The program will include a Bollywood dance lesson and a pizza party.

-At 2 p.m. on Feb. 11, check out an Indian fashion show.

More programs and events are in the works.

Its a great honor for the city of Pleasanton that we got this grant, Johnson said. We wont just be throwing parties. People will learn from them. They will come away with an understanding of the Indian culture.

Thursday, Feb 16 FoodBarDC recently declared its independence from upstairs neighbors Cobalt and 30 Degrees Lounge, and while we wait to see if the restaurant can finally — finally — do something with that awesome corner space on 17th Street, we’re looking forward to tonight’s debut of Thursday Night Trivia . If the questions on the Web site are anything to go by, this is our kind of arcane trivia night: Where are the Haversian Canals? Which war ended in 1856 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris? (Answers are at the end of this column.) Three rounds of trivia begin at 8 p.m. There’s a $4 entry fee for each team of 2 to 4 players, but winners receive cash, bar tabs and other prizes. You may recognize host and DJ Edward Daniels from his gig running karaoke at Freddie’s Beach Bar in Arlington. Let’s hope he’s just as good with the trivia game.Long-distance relationships can be a hit-or-miss affair. Thankfully, jangly pop quintet the Apparitions are showing no signs of strain yet. Primary singer/songwriter Mark Heidinger just moved to D.C. from Lexington, Kentucky, where his four bandmates remain. The inter-band dynamics remain interesting: Heidinger handles vocal duties on about two-thirds of the group’s songs, which milk its three-guitar attack to create sunny tunes in the vein of Ok Go and Fountains of Wayne. Bassist Robbie Roberts looks sort of like, well, the Band’s Robbie Robertson in one of his beard phases. He doesn’t have the magnetic on-stage persona that Heidinger has, but the four dynamic songs he sang that evening were the best of the set. Plus, he sings on “God Monkey Robot,” which is now entering its second month of non-stop play on David’s iPod.Joining the Apparitions on a ridiculously crowded five-band bill at DC9 is the latest proof that a ridiculous band name will indeed get you recognized. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin is perhaps the silliest of the “phrase band” trend sweeping the indie scene (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Say Hi To Your Mom, She Wants Revenge, etc.) and it’s a lot more likely to draw the attention of bloggers than your usual The (Plural Noun) method. To the Missouri group’s credit, it plays delicate, shambly indie pop that brings to mind the work of early Beulah, Of Montreal and the less bizarre bands that were a part of the Elephant 6 collective.

There’s another stacked show a few blocks away on the Black Cat ’s backstage. If you’ve always loved bands like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and the Jesus and Mary Chain but missed out on the chance to see them in person, just close your eyes tonight and you’ll be able to replicate the U.K.’s late ’80s shoegazer scene. Headliners Alcian Blue has long been a favorite for its shimmering soundscapes, double guitar assault and atmospheric keyboards. Tonight’s openers, Ceremony and A Place to Bury Strangers , both feature former members of Fredericksburg, Va. noise merchants Skywave and continue to make dark, sonically intense drone rock. Expect an evening of drum machines, moody vocals and songs good enough to cut through possibly ear-shattering volume.

Friday, Feb. 17 If you didn’t get enough warmth in your heart earlier this week, reprise the sentiments tonight at Constitution Hall with two acts who have penned some of the best hip-hop and R&B love songs of the past five years. If you think ditties like R. Kelly’s “Sex in the Kitchen” fit into that category, you’re immediately required to listen to Floetry and Common ’s duet “Superstar.”

Take a titan of the dance music world and strip away the trappings of the massive nightclubs that are often the only places where you can hear hallowed bosses of the turntables: No drunken fools mashing your feet and busting your groove on the floor; no egregious cover charge and chain-gang line outside; no requirement to wear fancy clothing that will just get smokehoused; a sound system properly tuned to the type of music being played. This can be your Friday night. House music legend Tony Humphries plays D.C. Sanctuary , and you want to be there.

Saturday, Feb. 18 It’s been a while since we’ve heard from one of our favorite local acts, Los Hermanos Rodriguez , and it seems like most of the band’s time over the past couple of years has been spent building up its label District Records instead of working on new material. We say that because the three LHR songs featured on the new “District Records: Volume One” sampler are the same three songs we’ve been rocking out to over here for the past three years or so. They still have that edgy, pre-Nirvana, SST/Dischord feel, which just makes us wish there was some new stuff. Perhaps there will be when the Los Hermanos hit the stage at Chief Ike’s Mambo Room tonight to celebrate the release of “Volume One.”. It will be a long evening with seven bands (all featured on the compilation) scheduled to perform; besides LHR, we recommend the Alphabetical Order , who will probably make you say, “Hey, these guys sort of remind me of Hum … and I kind of liked Hum!” and the Nuclears , who won the D.C. portion of the Little Steven’s Battle of the Bands in 2004 before being disqualified for being too young. The Nuclears kick things off at 4 p.m., with a new band scheduled to hit the stage at the top of the hour until Trip Lizard at 10 p.m. And not to detract from the bands, but now the possible highlight: There will be free pizza and $2 beer specials

Stephen P. Cohen , a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in South Asian security issues, was online Thursday, March 2, at 2 p.m. ET to discuss President Bush ’s trip to South Asia and his visits with leaders in Afghanistan and India. Bush made a surprise stop in Kabul Wednesday and held a joint press conference with Afghan leader Hamid Karzai . Today the President and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reached a major deal under which the U.S. would provide nuclear power assistance to India while conducting routine inspections of its nuclear facilities. The visit coincides with increasing concern over Iran’s development of nuclear capabilitiesStephen P. Cohen: I hope it does not die , but that it is reincarnated in some more effective fashion. I was disappointed in Bush’s lack of reference to the broader proliferation problem, the administration may say more now that the India deal is done. I’d like to see a new or modified NPT regime include more than the “Proliferation security Initiative.” States that really feel insecure will seek the bomb, the answer is not a treaty, but addressing their (in)security needs in some cases, it may be direct action in others, and it may be a half-way house, such as that provided to India, in still others. The basic NPT agreement has been unraveling, this is going to have to be an issue that the Bush administration deals with, especially because the India agreement modifies the NPT in some ways.

_______________________

Washington, D.C.: Why do U.S. presidents combine visits to India with Pakistan all the time, whereas whenever they visit China, or Japan, the President goes to China or Japan only, like any other major country in like Russia. Don’t you think it makes India feel bad?

Stephen P. Cohen: I believe that originally he wanted to go to India early in his first term, but 9/11 changed priorities around. I agree, that it might have been better if he had made two separate trips, linking the Pakistan visit (which was very important, however) to perhaps a trip to Turkey or Central Asia, and doing India in connection with a visit to (perhaps) another Asian democracy (Sri Lanka?).

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Gujranwala, Pakistan: The current basis of U.S.-Pakistan relationship is negative: antiterrorism and anti-proliferation. What could be in your view, positive long-term basis for this relationship?

Stephen P. Cohen: You’ve identified the problem correctly–Pakistan is important for negative reasons. A re-democratized Pakistan, that had a normal relationship with India, would be a great asset. I’ve discussed this at length in my just-published book, “The Idea of Pakistan.” Right now, Pakistan could turn out to be America’s biggest foreign policy problem of the next five years, although I do believe that there are more than enough Pakistanis to run a modern, free, and economically viable state. This is also in India’s interest.

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Chicago, Ill.: Why are non-proliferation experts in the U.S. so angry over allowing civilian nuclear technology access to democratic India while allowing it readily to China which has a dictatorship at the helm and has been a terrible proliferator?

Stephen P. Cohen: Many of them dealt with India over the last several decades, and the Indians simply lied about their military program (which was embedded in a supposedly civilian program), while lecturing the US about its nuclear weapons and the need for eliminating all nukes. So, they have a history of distrust and anger, which is exactly matched by those in the Indian nuclear program. With luck and political skill, these passions can be put aside, and a workable deal, that will separate the Indian military and civilian program to Congress’ satisfaction (and that of the Nuclear Suppliers group), can be consummated, but I foresee a lot of debate and many hearings in Congress. However, even if the deal does not go through this time, the idea is a good one, and both sides may try it again before the end of Bush’s term as president. India should realize that another president may not be as interested in South Asia, and that Bush’s political influence in the US itself is in decline.

The fashion retail trade is hard graft these days. A quick glance down any high street will reveal a mass of bargain basement midseason sales trying to lure shoppers and, to make matters worse, it is nearly November and people are still wandering around in T- shirts. So perhaps it is little wonder that traders are speculating Next is poised to issue a profit warning.

The shares were under pressure against a much stronger market yesterday as rumours spread that the company is suffering more than most in the current difficult trading conditions, just five weeks after reporting record first-half profits. However, some market sources put the rumours down to reports of a shareholder presentation in which Next said there has been a slowdown in September in line with the rest of the retail trade. The shares traded down 50p in early trade before closing 19p weaker at 1,851p. National Grid was also unable to join in the market rally as Citigroup placed a line of 26 million shares on behalf of an anonymous seller at 675p per share - a 10.5p

discount to Tuesday’s close. Traders said the whole line had been placed with investors by the end of the session as shares in National Grid closed 11p worse at 674.5p.

Stronger-than-expected housing figures in the US helped the Dow Jones power through the 12,000-barrier for the first time and gave a boost to shares in Hanson and Wolseley. The building supply groups surged 19.5p to 754p and 35p to 1,233p respectively.
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British Energy continued discount to rally after Monday’s disastrous cracked pipes news, as Deutsche Bank cut its target to 750p but told its clients that the share-price reaction “looks overdone”. The shares topped the blue-chip leader board for most of the day, closing 24p firmer at 474p, still some way short of the value it will need to retain its place at the top table.

In the wider market, the Dow helped London shares to recover most of Tuesday’s losses as the FTSE 100

closed 41.8 firmer at 6150.4. There was particular strength in pharmaceutical and mining issues. Astra-Zeneca climbed 46p to 3,422p, a four-year high, while GlaxoSmithKline added 12p to 1,476p on rumours that its latest batch of drug-trial data will be better than expected.

A rumour that the Indian rival Reliance is mulling an offer for Wood Group, the mid-cap oil services company, sent the shares sharply higher early in the session. The stock peaked at 259p, a gain of 19p, before a round of profit-taking saw it close just 7.75p firmer at 247.75p. Both companies declined to comment on the rumours, leading some traders to comment that the denial is a sure sign something is going on.

The weapons developer Qinetiq is enjoying something of an Indian summer after a tough first year on the public markets. The shares have performed poorly since a controversial initial public offering in February, marked by severe criticism of the Government and its private equity backers, The Carlyle Group. The shares closed 8.25p better at 188p, a 16.6 per cent jump from the low.

Traders said the bounce is in part attributable to consolidation speculation, with VT Group, 3.25p firmer at 488.75p, continuing to attract support on word that talks with BAE Systems could be revived.

It was another quiet day in the small-cap market, with the majority of significant movers being shares valued at less than a penny. Small-cap market makers are blaming the volatility and relentless rumour mill in the large and mid caps for the current malaise.

Leading the small-cap fallers was Bango, after the mobile telecoms service provider said it would not break even by the end of the year, as had previously been expected. The shares tanked 22.5p to 87.5p, an awfully long way from the 227.5p they peaked at in January.

Traders are looking out for developments in the takeover situation at Sports Cafe. Buried deep in yesterday’s trading statement was confirmation that the group has received more than one offer. The word is that the company has already turned down an offer worth 65p and that the final price will be closer to 75p.

The shares added another penny to close at 48p.

There could also be developments for Monster-Mob, 2.25p better at 71p. The mobile phone content provider has collapsed this year after a brace of grim profit warnings over Chinese regulatory changes and weakness in its core UK operations. The group confirmed it is in takeover talks in August and there is speculation a deal could be announced any day now, according to one trader “valuing the shares at more than 100p”.

Despite their differences they had in fact been on friendly terms since both worked in Washington during the second world war — and Friedman claimed credit for the origin of Galbraith’s connection with India. Some years earlier Galbraith had encountered an Indian government official who told him that Friedman — then one of a tiny, Chicagobased academic minority who dared to challenge the Keynesian orthodoxies embraced by Galbraith — had been proposed by the Eisenhower administration as an adviser on India’s economic planning. Galbraith responded that such an appointment would be ‘like asking the Holy Father to advise on the operations of a birth control clinic’, and found himself invited in Friedman’s place.

When Friedman and his wife Rose visited India in 1963, their invitation to lunch came with a gracious note from the ambassador:

‘As you know, I do not agree with your ideas, but they will do less harm in India than anywhere else I can think of.’ But Rose recorded that lunch was ‘delightful’, and Milton sought cheerful revenge in due course by opposing Galbraith’s candidacy for president of the American Economic Association.
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Now Friedman, who is coming up to 94, has outlived his lanky sparring partner, who died last weekend aged 97, and it would be easy to conclude that he has also won the debate. But has he? Galbraith spent his last quarter-century offering eloquent explanations why his case for ‘affirmative government’ had gone so conclusively out of fashion: it was, he said, all down to a rationalisation of self-interest by a comfortable elite.

Friedman, by contrast, has spent the same period complaining that although many governments may now salute his ideas, few have been brave enough to practise them to the full by taking a big axe to welfare, regulation and public-sector jobs. Gordon Brown was quick to eulogise Galbraith as a ‘brilliant economist . . . and a great friend of the United Kingdom [whose] books will be widely read in generations to come’. But it is difficult to imagine David Cameron summoning Friedman to Downing Street for his advice, as Margaret Thatcher once did. Meanwhile in the academic world, studies such as Avner Offer’s The Challenge of Affluence — which I reviewed here recently — indicate a deep reexamination of free-market values. Ken Galbraith has gone, but the argument he and Milton Friedman aired over the ambassadorial silverware is far from over yet.

My theory that high oil prices are good for us, developed here last year and restated in the Daily Telegraph last week, has been causing quite a stir. A prior engagement prevented me from defending myself on Newsnight, but I did submit to a ‘drive-time’ grilling on Dublin’s NewsTalk 106 radio station. In answer to my pitch that an era of relatively expensive fuel will focus all our minds on using less of it and accelerate the search for abundant, clean alternatives, the interviewer took the wind out of my sails by cataloguing George W. Bush’s response to the current oil price spike. So far the President has released extra fuel from strategic reserves, repeated his call for oil-drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve and temporarily eased federal requirements for fuel additives to reduce air pollution. And he has declined to impose anti-gas-guzzler standards on the US motor industry which might raise the performance of new cars from 21 miles per gallon towards the European average of 35.

Well, there’s no accounting for George W.

Bush. The best we can hope is that he will be dissuaded from starting any more wars in places rich with oil reserves before he leaves office at the end of 2008 — and he has at least talked of offering new tax breaks for makers and buyers of hybrid cars such as the Toyota Prius. In the long run, what any politician says or does on this subject is less important than what happens in company planning departments and research laboratories around the world to combat squeezed profit margins, and in the minds of consumers faced with soaring fuel bills.

A new book by Charles Fishman, The WalMart Effect (Penguin), details how skylights are being installed in the retail chain’s otherwise windowless and soulless superstores in order to save electricity, and how its delivery trucks are re-routed so that they never travel empty.

Another striking example is Union Pacific, America’s biggest railroad operator, which uses 1.4 billion gallons of diesel a year and takes a $13 million hit for every one-cent rise in the fuel price; it is now replacing the shunting locomotives in its vast yards with ‘Green Goat’ hybrids which combine diesel and battery power to reduce fuel consumption by up to 60 per cent and emissions by even more.

The story concerns a banker, Anthony Anscombe, son and soon-to-be squire of a pleasingly ample Oxfordshire estate, which includes the ravishing Elizabethan Winchford Priory. The great thing about Winchford is that no one has touched it for years, enabling each successive Anscombe bride to make her mark. Coleridge is spot on about interior decoration, which he uses as a metaphor for changing times. In the 1960s reign of the mercurial and seductive Amanda there are Moroccan shawls and Indian hangings. Next comes the kindly but dull Sandra, who introduces stripped pine and Laura Ashley sprigged curtains. There is a momentary cease-fire in home improvements when Sandra is usurped by militant vegetarian Nula, who is too busy being a hunt saboteur to bother with pleats or pelmets.
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Lastly comes the flinty but efficient Dita, who has already been married, twice: firstly to a rich but dubious Iranian and then to a Greek shipping magnate. One feels that her passion for doing up houses is what drives her to seek husband after husband: as soon as she’s installed power-showers and plenty of little round tables cloaked in heavily fringed chintz, she moves on to her next victim. Dita goes in for myriad silver-framed photographs, posh scented candles and cushions embroidered with ‘amusing’ sayings.

Anthony’s many children and stepchildren are turned out of their bedrooms — why let them take up all the best spare rooms, reasons Dita — en-suite bathrooms created out of every available nook and Filipino staff engaged, all at vast expense. Dita and her marvellously creepy children were my favourite characters in the book, although they are certainly the least nice.

As well as the wives, there is a large cast of chums and associates, some of them with nicknames like ‘Bong’ and ‘Scrotum’.

Everybody has lots of children and no one seems to mind, much, when some of them turn out to have fathers other than their mothers’ husbands. Anthony Anscombe presides benignly over his extended tribe, gamely paying the school fees of his exwife’s current husband’s children, before giving some of the boys jobs in his bank.

The girls need not concern themselves with the City: the pretty ones become models or pop stars, and the plain ones turn out to be lesbians.

Anthony is unfailingly kind and decent, and passive enough to allow all sorts of terrible mishaps to occur: Anscombe’s bank collapses, wives storm in and out, Dita installs low-level lighting, like the floor lights on an aeroplane, so that people can get up for a pee in the night without disturbing their partners. Most of the ex-wives end up living in cottages at Winchford, supported by Anthony. Except Dita, of course, who moves on to husbands and wallpapers new.

Nicholas Coleridge, whose day job is managing director of Condé Nast, London, goes in for some tongue-in-cheek productplacement: characters are said to appear in the Tatler or Condé Nast Traveller, signifying their success and glamour, or, when Vanity Fair runs a story about them, the intrigue and complexity of their financial ruin. The book spans 40 years and it progresses at a brisk pace: there’s never a dull moment and it’s often very funny indeed. Altogether A Much Married Man is, as any of its characters might say, tremendously good fun.