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When a customer claimed to have found a severed finger in a bowl of chilli served at a Wendy’s fast-food franchise in California, the chain’s sales fell by half in the San José area where the incident was reported. Wendy’s brand and reputation were at risk, until the claim was exposed as a hoax in late April and the company, operator of America’s third-biggest hamburger chain, was vindicated.
Yet the share price of Wendy’s International, the parent company, rose steadily through March and April, despite the finger furore and downgrades from analysts. One reason was heavy buying by hedge funds, led by Pershing Square Capital. This week Pershing made its intentions public, saying that it was worried by market rumours that Wendy’s might soon buy more fast-food brands, and arguing that the firm should be selling assets instead. Pershing’s approach indicates rising pressure on American restaurant companies to perform, at a time when the industry’s growth prospects look increasingly tough.
The hit on customers’ wallets from higher petrol prices and rising interest rates will probably mean that year-on-year sales growth across the American restaurant industry slows to just 1% by the fourth quarter of 2005, down from a five-year historic average of 5.6%, say UBS, an investment bank, and Global Insight, a forecasting group. Looking further ahead, says UBS’s David Palmer, the industry may have to stop relying on most of the long-term trends that were behind much of its recent growth.
Three-quarters of Americans already live within three miles of a McDonald’s restaurant, leaving little scope for green-field growth. [Obesity is a growing issue in America, and with it come the threat of liability lawsuits against big restaurant chains and, perhaps, legal limits on advertising.] This week America’s biggest food trade group, the Grocery Manufacturers’ Association, was said to be preparing tougher guidelines on the marketing of food to children, in the hope of staving off statutory controls. Home cooking may also be making a comeback, helped by two factors. The percentage of women joining America’s workforce may have peaked, and supermarket chains such as Wal-Mart have been forcing down retail food prices.
Expansion overseas is one option for American restaurant chains. Burger King, the privately owned number two hamburger chain, opened its first outlet in China last month, apparently aiming to maintain strong growth ahead of an initial public offering next year. McDonald’s has 600 outlets in China and plans 400 more. But at home, the future seems to hold only an ever more competitive and cost-conscious restaurant industry. Fast-food chains are trying to poach customers from "casual dining" chains (such as Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill), while those chains are squeezing out independent restaurants unable to compete on cost or in marketing clout. Business conditions, not severed fingers, are the real threat to the weaker firms in the restaurant business.

One of the many theories about alcoholism is the learning and reinforcement theory, which explains alcoholism by considering alcohol drinking as a reflex response to some stimulus and as a way to reduce an inner drive state such as fear or anxiety. Characterizing life situations in terms of approach and avoidance, this theory holds that persons tend to be drawn to pleasant situations or repelled by unclean, sanity ones. In the latter case, alcohol drinking is said to reduce the tension or feelings of unpleasantness and to replace them with the feeling of pleasure generally observed in most persons after they have consumed one or more drinks.
Some experimental evidence tends to show that alcohol reduces fear in an approach-avoidance situation. Conger trained one group of rats to approach a food goal and trained another group to avoid electric shock. After an injection of alcohol the pull away from the shock was measurably weaker, while the pull toward food was unchanged.
The obvious troubles experienced by alcoholic persons appear to contradict the learning theory in the explanation of alcoholism. The discomfort, pain, and punishment they experience should presumably discourage the alcoholics from drinking. The fact that alcoholic persons continue to drink in the face of family discord, loss of job, and illness is explained by the proximity of the drive of reduction to the consumption of alcohol; that is, alcohol has the immediate effect of reducing tension while the unpleasant consequences of drunken behavior came only later. The learning pattern, therefore, favors the establishment and repetition of the resort to alcohol.
In fact, the anxieties and feelings of guilt caused by the consequences of excessive alcohol drinking may themselves become the signal for another time of alcohol abuse. The way in which the desire for another drink could be caused by anxiety is explained by the process of stimulus generalization: conditions or events securing at the time of reinforcement tend to acquire all the features of stimuli. When alcohol is consumed in association with a state of anxiety or leer, the emotional state itself takes on the properties of a stimulus, thus triggering another time of drinking.
The role of punishment is becoming increasingly important in explaining a cause of alcoholism based on the principles of learning theory. While punishment may serve to suppress a response, experiments have shown that in some cases it can serve as a reward and reinforce the behavior. Thus if the alcoholic person has learned to drink under conditions of both reward and punishment, either type of condition may trigger renewed drinking.

A cramped public-school test kitchen might seem an unlikely outpost for a food revolution. But Collazo, executive chef for the New York City public schools, and scores of others across the country -- celebrity chefs and lunch ladies, district superintendents and politicians -- say they’re determined to improve what kids eat in school. Nearly everyone agrees something must be done. Most school cafeterias are staffed by poorly trained, badly equipped workers who churn out 4.8 billion hot lunches a year. Often the meals, produced for about $1 each, consist of breaded meat patties, French fries and overcooked vegetables. So the kids buy muffins, cookies and ice cream instead -- or they feast on fast food from McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, which is available in more than half the schools in the nation. Vending machines packed with sodas and candy line the hall ways. "We’re killing our kids" with the food we serve, says Texas Education Commissioner Susan Combs.
As rates of childhood obesity and diabetes skyrocket, public-health officials say schools need to change the way kids eat. It won’t be easy. Some kids and their parents don’t know better. Home cooking is becoming a forgotten art. And fast-food companies now spend $ 3 billion a year on television ads aimed at children. Along with reading and writing, schools need to teach kids What to eat to stay healthy, says culinary innovator Alice Waters, who is introducing gardening and fresh produce to 16 schools in California. It’s a golden opportunity, she says, "to affect the way children eat for the rest of their lives." Last year star English chef Jamie Oliver took over a school cafeteria in a working-class suburb of London. A documentary about his work shamed the British government into spending $ 500 million to revamp the nation’s school-food program. Oliver says it’s the United States’ turn now. "If you can put a man on the moon," he says, "you can give kids the food they need to make them lighter, fitter and live longer."
Changing school food will take money. Many schools administrators are hooked on the easy cash- up to $ 75,000 annually -- that soda and candy vending machines can bring in. Three years ago Gary Hirshberg of Concord, N. H., was appalled when his 13-year-old son described his daytime meal -- pizza, chocolate milk and a package of Skittles. "I wasn’t aware Skittles was a food group," says Hirshberg, CEO of Stonyfield Farm, a yogurt company. So he devised a vending machine that stocks healthy snacks: yogurt smoothies, fruit leathers and whole-wheat pretzels. So far 41 schools in California, Illinois and Washington are using his machines -- and a thousand more have requested them. Hirshberg says, "schools have to make good food a priority."
Some states are trying. California, New York and Texas have passed new laws that limit junk food sold on school grounds. Districts in California, New Mexico and Washington have begun buying produce from local farms. The soda and candy in the vending machines have been replaced by juice and beef jerky. "It’s not perfect," says Jannison. But it’s a cause worth fighting for, Even if she has to battle one chip at a time.

Clever, rich or both -- almost every country in the world has some sort of programme to attract desirable migrants. The only exceptions are "weird places like Bhutan" says Christian Kalin of Henley & Partners, which specializes in fixing visas and passports for globe-trotters. Competition is fierce and, as with most things, that lowers the price and increases choice. Britain has two programmes, one for the rich -- who have to invest ￡ 750,000 ($1.36m) in actively traded securities -- and one, much larger, for talented foreigners.
Both have worked well. Unlike some other countries, Britain does not make applicants find a job first: with good qualifications, they can just turn up and look for work. That helps keep Britain’s economy flexible and competitive. But now a bureaucratic snag is threatening the scheme.
The problem comes with anyone wanting to convert his visa into "indefinite leave to remain" (Britain’s equivalent of America’s Green Card). This normally requires four years’ continuous residence in Britain. After a further year, it normally leads to British citizenship.
The law defines continuous residence sensibly. Business trips and holidays don’t count, if the applicant’s main home is in Britain. As a rule of thumb, an average of 90 days abroad was allowed each year. But unpublished guidelines seen by The Economist are tougher: they say that "none of the absences abroad should be of more than three months, and they must not amount to more than six months in all." Over the four years needed to quality, that averages only six weeks a year.
For many jet-setters, this restriction is a career-buster. Six weeks abroad barely covers holidays, let alone business travel. Alexei Sidney, a Russian consultant, has to turn down important jobs because he cannot afford any more days abroad. If applicants travel "too much", their children risk losing the right to remain in Britain.
The Home Office insists that the rules have not changed since 2001. That would confirm Mr. Gherson’s suspicion that the new policy has come in by accident, probably as a result of zeal or carelessness by mid-ranking officials. Their attitude is at odds with the stance of the government, which has been trying for years to make the system more user-friendly for the world’s elite. It even moved processing of business residency cases from a huge office in Croydon, notorious for its slowness and hostility to would-be immigrants, to a new outfit in Sheffield.
But lawyers such as Mr Kalin are in no doubt of the risk Britain is running. America, he says, is already losing out in the global talent market because of its "painful and humiliating" immigration procedures. If Britain’s rules stay tight, he says, foreigners will go elsewhere. Likely beneficiaries are Ireland and Austria, European Union countries whose residency visas and passports confer the same convenience as British ones, with less hassle.

A cramped public-school test kitchen might seem an unlikely outpost for a food revolution. But Collazo, executive chef for the New York City public schools, and scores of others across the country -- celebrity chefs and lunch ladies, district superintendents and politicians -- say they’re determined to improve what kids eat in school. Nearly everyone agrees something must be done. Most school cafeterias are staffed by poorly trained, badly equipped workers who churn out 4.8 billion hot lunches a year. Often the meals, produced for about $1 each, consist of breaded meat patties, French fries and overcooked vegetables. So the kids buy muffins, cookies and ice cream instead -- or they feast on fast food from McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, which is available in more than half the schools in the nation. Vending machines packed with sodas and candy line the hall ways. "We’re killing our kids" with the food we serve, says Texas Education Commissioner Susan Combs.
As rates of childhood obesity and diabetes skyrocket, public-health officials say schools need to change the way kids eat. It won’t be easy. Some kids and their parents don’t know better. Home cooking is becoming a forgotten art. And fast-food companies now spend $ 3 billion a year on television ads aimed at children. Along with reading and writing, schools need to teach kids What to eat to stay healthy, says culinary innovator Alice Waters, who is introducing gardening and fresh produce to 16 schools in California. It’s a golden opportunity, she says, "to affect the way children eat for the rest of their lives." Last year star English chef Jamie Oliver took over a school cafeteria in a working-class suburb of London. A documentary about his work shamed the British government into spending $ 500 million to revamp the nation’s school-food program. Oliver says it’s the United States’ turn now. "If you can put a man on the moon," he says, "you can give kids the food they need to make them lighter, fitter and live longer."
Changing school food will take money. Many schools administrators are hooked on the easy cash- up to $ 75,000 annually -- that soda and candy vending machines can bring in. Three years ago Gary Hirshberg of Concord, N. H., was appalled when his 13-year-old son described his daytime meal -- pizza, chocolate milk and a package of Skittles. "I wasn’t aware Skittles was a food group," says Hirshberg, CEO of Stonyfield Farm, a yogurt company. So he devised a vending machine that stocks healthy snacks: yogurt smoothies, fruit leathers and whole-wheat pretzels. So far 41 schools in California, Illinois and Washington are using his machines -- and a thousand more have requested them. Hirshberg says, "schools have to make good food a priority."
Some states are trying. California, New York and Texas have passed new laws that limit junk food sold on school grounds. Districts in California, New Mexico and Washington have begun buying produce from local farms. The soda and candy in the vending machines have been replaced by juice and beef jerky. "It’s not perfect," says Jannison. But it’s a cause worth fighting for, Even if she has to battle one chip at a time.

When a customer claimed to have found a severed finger in a bowl of chilli served at a Wendy’s fast-food franchise in California, the chain’s sales fell by half in the San José area where the incident was reported. Wendy’s brand and reputation were at risk, until the claim was exposed as a hoax in late April and the company, operator of America’s third-biggest hamburger chain, was vindicated.
Yet the share price of Wendy’s International, the parent company, rose steadily through March and April, despite the finger furore and downgrades from analysts. One reason was heavy buying by hedge funds, led by Pershing Square Capital. This week Pershing made its intentions public, saying that it was worried by market rumours that Wendy’s might soon buy more fast-food brands, and arguing that the firm should be selling assets instead. Pershing’s approach indicates rising pressure on American restaurant companies to perform, at a time when the industry’s growth prospects look increasingly tough.
The hit on customers’ wallets from higher petrol prices and rising interest rates will probably mean that year-on-year sales growth across the American restaurant industry slows to just 1% by the fourth quarter of 2005, down from a five-year historic average of 5.6%, say UBS, an investment bank, and Global Insight, a forecasting group. Looking further ahead, says UBS’s David Palmer, the industry may have to stop relying on most of the long-term trends that were behind much of its recent growth.
Three-quarters of Americans already live within three miles of a McDonald’s restaurant, leaving little scope for green-field growth. [Obesity is a growing issue in America, and with it come the threat of liability lawsuits against big restaurant chains and, perhaps, legal limits on advertising.] This week America’s biggest food trade group, the Grocery Manufacturers’ Association, was said to be preparing tougher guidelines on the marketing of food to children, in the hope of staving off statutory controls. Home cooking may also be making a comeback, helped by two factors. The percentage of women joining America’s workforce may have peaked, and supermarket chains such as Wal-Mart have been forcing down retail food prices.
Expansion overseas is one option for American restaurant chains. Burger King, the privately owned number two hamburger chain, opened its first outlet in China last month, apparently aiming to maintain strong growth ahead of an initial public offering next year. McDonald’s has 600 outlets in China and plans 400 more. But at home, the future seems to hold only an ever more competitive and cost-conscious restaurant industry. Fast-food chains are trying to poach customers from "casual dining" chains (such as Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill), while those chains are squeezing out independent restaurants unable to compete on cost or in marketing clout. Business conditions, not severed fingers, are the real threat to the weaker firms in the restaurant business.

One of the many theories about alcoholism is the learning and reinforcement theory, which explains alcoholism by considering alcohol drinking as a reflex response to some stimulus and as a way to reduce an inner drive state such as fear or anxiety. Characterizing life situations in terms of approach and avoidance, this theory holds that persons tend to be drawn to pleasant situations or repelled by unclean, sanity ones. In the latter case, alcohol drinking is said to reduce the tension or feelings of unpleasantness and to replace them with the feeling of pleasure generally observed in most persons after they have consumed one or more drinks.
Some experimental evidence tends to show that alcohol reduces fear in an approach-avoidance situation. Conger trained one group of rats to approach a food goal and trained another group to avoid electric shock. After an injection of alcohol the pull away from the shock was measurably weaker, while the pull toward food was unchanged.
The obvious troubles experienced by alcoholic persons appear to contradict the learning theory in the explanation of alcoholism. The discomfort, pain, and punishment they experience should presumably discourage the alcoholics from drinking. The fact that alcoholic persons continue to drink in the face of family discord, loss of job, and illness is explained by the proximity of the drive of reduction to the consumption of alcohol; that is, alcohol has the immediate effect of reducing tension while the unpleasant consequences of drunken behavior came only later. The learning pattern, therefore, favors the establishment and repetition of the resort to alcohol.
In fact, the anxieties and feelings of guilt caused by the consequences of excessive alcohol drinking may themselves become the signal for another time of alcohol abuse. The way in which the desire for another drink could be caused by anxiety is explained by the process of stimulus generalization: conditions or events securing at the time of reinforcement tend to acquire all the features of stimuli. When alcohol is consumed in association with a state of anxiety or leer, the emotional state itself takes on the properties of a stimulus, thus triggering another time of drinking.
The role of punishment is becoming increasingly important in explaining a cause of alcoholism based on the principles of learning theory. While punishment may serve to suppress a response, experiments have shown that in some cases it can serve as a reward and reinforce the behavior. Thus if the alcoholic person has learned to drink under conditions of both reward and punishment, either type of condition may trigger renewed drinking.

Clever, rich or both -- almost every country in the world has some sort of programme to attract desirable migrants. The only exceptions are "weird places like Bhutan" says Christian Kalin of Henley & Partners, which specializes in fixing visas and passports for globe-trotters. Competition is fierce and, as with most things, that lowers the price and increases choice. Britain has two programmes, one for the rich -- who have to invest ￡ 750,000 ($1.36m) in actively traded securities -- and one, much larger, for talented foreigners.
Both have worked well. Unlike some other countries, Britain does not make applicants find a job first: with good qualifications, they can just turn up and look for work. That helps keep Britain’s economy flexible and competitive. But now a bureaucratic snag is threatening the scheme.
The problem comes with anyone wanting to convert his visa into "indefinite leave to remain" (Britain’s equivalent of America’s Green Card). This normally requires four years’ continuous residence in Britain. After a further year, it normally leads to British citizenship.
The law defines continuous residence sensibly. Business trips and holidays don’t count, if the applicant’s main home is in Britain. As a rule of thumb, an average of 90 days abroad was allowed each year. But unpublished guidelines seen by The Economist are tougher: they say that "none of the absences abroad should be of more than three months, and they must not amount to more than six months in all." Over the four years needed to quality, that averages only six weeks a year.
For many jet-setters, this restriction is a career-buster. Six weeks abroad barely covers holidays, let alone business travel. Alexei Sidney, a Russian consultant, has to turn down important jobs because he cannot afford any more days abroad. If applicants travel "too much", their children risk losing the right to remain in Britain.
The Home Office insists that the rules have not changed since 2001. That would confirm Mr. Gherson’s suspicion that the new policy has come in by accident, probably as a result of zeal or carelessness by mid-ranking officials. Their attitude is at odds with the stance of the government, which has been trying for years to make the system more user-friendly for the world’s elite. It even moved processing of business residency cases from a huge office in Croydon, notorious for its slowness and hostility to would-be immigrants, to a new outfit in Sheffield.
But lawyers such as Mr Kalin are in no doubt of the risk Britain is running. America, he says, is already losing out in the global talent market because of its "painful and humiliating" immigration procedures. If Britain’s rules stay tight, he says, foreigners will go elsewhere. Likely beneficiaries are Ireland and Austria, European Union countries whose residency visas and passports confer the same convenience as British ones, with less hassle.

A cramped public-school test kitchen might seem an unlikely outpost for a food revolution. But Collazo, executive chef for the New York City public schools, and scores of others across the country -- celebrity chefs and lunch ladies, district superintendents and politicians -- say they’re determined to improve what kids eat in school. Nearly everyone agrees something must be done. Most school cafeterias are staffed by poorly trained, badly equipped workers who churn out 4.8 billion hot lunches a year. Often the meals, produced for about $1 each, consist of breaded meat patties, French fries and overcooked vegetables. So the kids buy muffins, cookies and ice cream instead -- or they feast on fast food from McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, which is available in more than half the schools in the nation. Vending machines packed with sodas and candy line the hall ways. "We’re killing our kids" with the food we serve, says Texas Education Commissioner Susan Combs.
As rates of childhood obesity and diabetes skyrocket, public-health officials say schools need to change the way kids eat. It won’t be easy. Some kids and their parents don’t know better. Home cooking is becoming a forgotten art. And fast-food companies now spend $ 3 billion a year on television ads aimed at children. Along with reading and writing, schools need to teach kids What to eat to stay healthy, says culinary innovator Alice Waters, who is introducing gardening and fresh produce to 16 schools in California. It’s a golden opportunity, she says, "to affect the way children eat for the rest of their lives." Last year star English chef Jamie Oliver took over a school cafeteria in a working-class suburb of London. A documentary about his work shamed the British government into spending $ 500 million to revamp the nation’s school-food program. Oliver says it’s the United States’ turn now. "If you can put a man on the moon," he says, "you can give kids the food they need to make them lighter, fitter and live longer."
Changing school food will take money. Many schools administrators are hooked on the easy cash- up to $ 75,000 annually -- that soda and candy vending machines can bring in. Three years ago Gary Hirshberg of Concord, N. H., was appalled when his 13-year-old son described his daytime meal -- pizza, chocolate milk and a package of Skittles. "I wasn’t aware Skittles was a food group," says Hirshberg, CEO of Stonyfield Farm, a yogurt company. So he devised a vending machine that stocks healthy snacks: yogurt smoothies, fruit leathers and whole-wheat pretzels. So far 41 schools in California, Illinois and Washington are using his machines -- and a thousand more have requested them. Hirshberg says, "schools have to make good food a priority."
Some states are trying. California, New York and Texas have passed new laws that limit junk food sold on school grounds. Districts in California, New Mexico and Washington have begun buying produce from local farms. The soda and candy in the vending machines have been replaced by juice and beef jerky. "It’s not perfect," says Jannison. But it’s a cause worth fighting for, Even if she has to battle one chip at a time.

When a customer claimed to have found a severed finger in a bowl of chilli served at a Wendy’s fast-food franchise in California, the chain’s sales fell by half in the San José area where the incident was reported. Wendy’s brand and reputation were at risk, until the claim was exposed as a hoax in late April and the company, operator of America’s third-biggest hamburger chain, was vindicated.
Yet the share price of Wendy’s International, the parent company, rose steadily through March and April, despite the finger furore and downgrades from analysts. One reason was heavy buying by hedge funds, led by Pershing Square Capital. This week Pershing made its intentions public, saying that it was worried by market rumours that Wendy’s might soon buy more fast-food brands, and arguing that the firm should be selling assets instead. Pershing’s approach indicates rising pressure on American restaurant companies to perform, at a time when the industry’s growth prospects look increasingly tough.
The hit on customers’ wallets from higher petrol prices and rising interest rates will probably mean that year-on-year sales growth across the American restaurant industry slows to just 1% by the fourth quarter of 2005, down from a five-year historic average of 5.6%, say UBS, an investment bank, and Global Insight, a forecasting group. Looking further ahead, says UBS’s David Palmer, the industry may have to stop relying on most of the long-term trends that were behind much of its recent growth.
Three-quarters of Americans already live within three miles of a McDonald’s restaurant, leaving little scope for green-field growth. [Obesity is a growing issue in America, and with it come the threat of liability lawsuits against big restaurant chains and, perhaps, legal limits on advertising.] This week America’s biggest food trade group, the Grocery Manufacturers’ Association, was said to be preparing tougher guidelines on the marketing of food to children, in the hope of staving off statutory controls. Home cooking may also be making a comeback, helped by two factors. The percentage of women joining America’s workforce may have peaked, and supermarket chains such as Wal-Mart have been forcing down retail food prices.
Expansion overseas is one option for American restaurant chains. Burger King, the privately owned number two hamburger chain, opened its first outlet in China last month, apparently aiming to maintain strong growth ahead of an initial public offering next year. McDonald’s has 600 outlets in China and plans 400 more. But at home, the future seems to hold only an ever more competitive and cost-conscious restaurant industry. Fast-food chains are trying to poach customers from "casual dining" chains (such as Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill), while those chains are squeezing out independent restaurants unable to compete on cost or in marketing clout. Business conditions, not severed fingers, are the real threat to the weaker firms in the restaurant business.

One of the many theories about alcoholism is the learning and reinforcement theory, which explains alcoholism by considering alcohol drinking as a reflex response to some stimulus and as a way to reduce an inner drive state such as fear or anxiety. Characterizing life situations in terms of approach and avoidance, this theory holds that persons tend to be drawn to pleasant situations or repelled by unclean, sanity ones. In the latter case, alcohol drinking is said to reduce the tension or feelings of unpleasantness and to replace them with the feeling of pleasure generally observed in most persons after they have consumed one or more drinks.
Some experimental evidence tends to show that alcohol reduces fear in an approach-avoidance situation. Conger trained one group of rats to approach a food goal and trained another group to avoid electric shock. After an injection of alcohol the pull away from the shock was measurably weaker, while the pull toward food was unchanged.
The obvious troubles experienced by alcoholic persons appear to contradict the learning theory in the explanation of alcoholism. The discomfort, pain, and punishment they experience should presumably discourage the alcoholics from drinking. The fact that alcoholic persons continue to drink in the face of family discord, loss of job, and illness is explained by the proximity of the drive of reduction to the consumption of alcohol; that is, alcohol has the immediate effect of reducing tension while the unpleasant consequences of drunken behavior came only later. The learning pattern, therefore, favors the establishment and repetition of the resort to alcohol.
In fact, the anxieties and feelings of guilt caused by the consequences of excessive alcohol drinking may themselves become the signal for another time of alcohol abuse. The way in which the desire for another drink could be caused by anxiety is explained by the process of stimulus generalization: conditions or events securing at the time of reinforcement tend to acquire all the features of stimuli. When alcohol is consumed in association with a state of anxiety or leer, the emotional state itself takes on the properties of a stimulus, thus triggering another time of drinking.
The role of punishment is becoming increasingly important in explaining a cause of alcoholism based on the principles of learning theory. While punishment may serve to suppress a response, experiments have shown that in some cases it can serve as a reward and reinforce the behavior. Thus if the alcoholic person has learned to drink under conditions of both reward and punishment, either type of condition may trigger renewed drinking.

Clever, rich or both -- almost every country in the world has some sort of programme to attract desirable migrants. The only exceptions are "weird places like Bhutan" says Christian Kalin of Henley & Partners, which specializes in fixing visas and passports for globe-trotters. Competition is fierce and, as with most things, that lowers the price and increases choice. Britain has two programmes, one for the rich -- who have to invest ￡ 750,000 ($1.36m) in actively traded securities -- and one, much larger, for talented foreigners.
Both have worked well. Unlike some other countries, Britain does not make applicants find a job first: with good qualifications, they can just turn up and look for work. That helps keep Britain’s economy flexible and competitive. But now a bureaucratic snag is threatening the scheme.
The problem comes with anyone wanting to convert his visa into "indefinite leave to remain" (Britain’s equivalent of America’s Green Card). This normally requires four years’ continuous residence in Britain. After a further year, it normally leads to British citizenship.
The law defines continuous residence sensibly. Business trips and holidays don’t count, if the applicant’s main home is in Britain. As a rule of thumb, an average of 90 days abroad was allowed each year. But unpublished guidelines seen by The Economist are tougher: they say that "none of the absences abroad should be of more than three months, and they must not amount to more than six months in all." Over the four years needed to quality, that averages only six weeks a year.
For many jet-setters, this restriction is a career-buster. Six weeks abroad barely covers holidays, let alone business travel. Alexei Sidney, a Russian consultant, has to turn down important jobs because he cannot afford any more days abroad. If applicants travel "too much", their children risk losing the right to remain in Britain.
The Home Office insists that the rules have not changed since 2001. That would confirm Mr. Gherson’s suspicion that the new policy has come in by accident, probably as a result of zeal or carelessness by mid-ranking officials. Their attitude is at odds with the stance of the government, which has been trying for years to make the system more user-friendly for the world’s elite. It even moved processing of business residency cases from a huge office in Croydon, notorious for its slowness and hostility to would-be immigrants, to a new outfit in Sheffield.
But lawyers such as Mr Kalin are in no doubt of the risk Britain is running. America, he says, is already losing out in the global talent market because of its "painful and humiliating" immigration procedures. If Britain’s rules stay tight, he says, foreigners will go elsewhere. Likely beneficiaries are Ireland and Austria, European Union countries whose residency visas and passports confer the same convenience as British ones, with less hassle.

A cramped public-school test kitchen might seem an unlikely outpost for a food revolution. But Collazo, executive chef for the New York City public schools, and scores of others across the country -- celebrity chefs and lunch ladies, district superintendents and politicians -- say they’re determined to improve what kids eat in school. Nearly everyone agrees something must be done. Most school cafeterias are staffed by poorly trained, badly equipped workers who churn out 4.8 billion hot lunches a year. Often the meals, produced for about $1 each, consist of breaded meat patties, French fries and overcooked vegetables. So the kids buy muffins, cookies and ice cream instead -- or they feast on fast food from McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, which is available in more than half the schools in the nation. Vending machines packed with sodas and candy line the hall ways. "We’re killing our kids" with the food we serve, says Texas Education Commissioner Susan Combs.
As rates of childhood obesity and diabetes skyrocket, public-health officials say schools need to change the way kids eat. It won’t be easy. Some kids and their parents don’t know better. Home cooking is becoming a forgotten art. And fast-food companies now spend $ 3 billion a year on television ads aimed at children. Along with reading and writing, schools need to teach kids What to eat to stay healthy, says culinary innovator Alice Waters, who is introducing gardening and fresh produce to 16 schools in California. It’s a golden opportunity, she says, "to affect the way children eat for the rest of their lives." Last year star English chef Jamie Oliver took over a school cafeteria in a working-class suburb of London. A documentary about his work shamed the British government into spending $ 500 million to revamp the nation’s school-food program. Oliver says it’s the United States’ turn now. "If you can put a man on the moon," he says, "you can give kids the food they need to make them lighter, fitter and live longer."
Changing school food will take money. Many schools administrators are hooked on the easy cash- up to $ 75,000 annually -- that soda and candy vending machines can bring in. Three years ago Gary Hirshberg of Concord, N. H., was appalled when his 13-year-old son described his daytime meal -- pizza, chocolate milk and a package of Skittles. "I wasn’t aware Skittles was a food group," says Hirshberg, CEO of Stonyfield Farm, a yogurt company. So he devised a vending machine that stocks healthy snacks: yogurt smoothies, fruit leathers and whole-wheat pretzels. So far 41 schools in California, Illinois and Washington are using his machines -- and a thousand more have requested them. Hirshberg says, "schools have to make good food a priority."
Some states are trying. California, New York and Texas have passed new laws that limit junk food sold on school grounds. Districts in California, New Mexico and Washington have begun buying produce from local farms. The soda and candy in the vending machines have been replaced by juice and beef jerky. "It’s not perfect," says Jannison. But it’s a cause worth fighting for, Even if she has to battle one chip at a time.

One of the many theories about alcoholism is the learning and reinforcement theory, which explains alcoholism by considering alcohol drinking as a reflex response to some stimulus and as a way to reduce an inner drive state such as fear or anxiety. Characterizing life situations in terms of approach and avoidance, this theory holds that persons tend to be drawn to pleasant situations or repelled by unclean, sanity ones. In the latter case, alcohol drinking is said to reduce the tension or feelings of unpleasantness and to replace them with the feeling of pleasure generally observed in most persons after they have consumed one or more drinks.
Some experimental evidence tends to show that alcohol reduces fear in an approach-avoidance situation. Conger trained one group of rats to approach a food goal and trained another group to avoid electric shock. After an injection of alcohol the pull away from the shock was measurably weaker, while the pull toward food was unchanged.
The obvious troubles experienced by alcoholic persons appear to contradict the learning theory in the explanation of alcoholism. The discomfort, pain, and punishment they experience should presumably discourage the alcoholics from drinking. The fact that alcoholic persons continue to drink in the face of family discord, loss of job, and illness is explained by the proximity of the drive of reduction to the consumption of alcohol; that is, alcohol has the immediate effect of reducing tension while the unpleasant consequences of drunken behavior came only later. The learning pattern, therefore, favors the establishment and repetition of the resort to alcohol.
In fact, the anxieties and feelings of guilt caused by the consequences of excessive alcohol drinking may themselves become the signal for another time of alcohol abuse. The way in which the desire for another drink could be caused by anxiety is explained by the process of stimulus generalization: conditions or events securing at the time of reinforcement tend to acquire all the features of stimuli. When alcohol is consumed in association with a state of anxiety or leer, the emotional state itself takes on the properties of a stimulus, thus triggering another time of drinking.
The role of punishment is becoming increasingly important in explaining a cause of alcoholism based on the principles of learning theory. While punishment may serve to suppress a response, experiments have shown that in some cases it can serve as a reward and reinforce the behavior. Thus if the alcoholic person has learned to drink under conditions of both reward and punishment, either type of condition may trigger renewed drinking.

When a customer claimed to have found a severed finger in a bowl of chilli served at a Wendy’s fast-food franchise in California, the chain’s sales fell by half in the San José area where the incident was reported. Wendy’s brand and reputation were at risk, until the claim was exposed as a hoax in late April and the company, operator of America’s third-biggest hamburger chain, was vindicated.
Yet the share price of Wendy’s International, the parent company, rose steadily through March and April, despite the finger furore and downgrades from analysts. One reason was heavy buying by hedge funds, led by Pershing Square Capital. This week Pershing made its intentions public, saying that it was worried by market rumours that Wendy’s might soon buy more fast-food brands, and arguing that the firm should be selling assets instead. Pershing’s approach indicates rising pressure on American restaurant companies to perform, at a time when the industry’s growth prospects look increasingly tough.
The hit on customers’ wallets from higher petrol prices and rising interest rates will probably mean that year-on-year sales growth across the American restaurant industry slows to just 1% by the fourth quarter of 2005, down from a five-year historic average of 5.6%, say UBS, an investment bank, and Global Insight, a forecasting group. Looking further ahead, says UBS’s David Palmer, the industry may have to stop relying on most of the long-term trends that were behind much of its recent growth.
Three-quarters of Americans already live within three miles of a McDonald’s restaurant, leaving little scope for green-field growth. [Obesity is a growing issue in America, and with it come the threat of liability lawsuits against big restaurant chains and, perhaps, legal limits on advertising.] This week America’s biggest food trade group, the Grocery Manufacturers’ Association, was said to be preparing tougher guidelines on the marketing of food to children, in the hope of staving off statutory controls. Home cooking may also be making a comeback, helped by two factors. The percentage of women joining America’s workforce may have peaked, and supermarket chains such as Wal-Mart have been forcing down retail food prices.
Expansion overseas is one option for American restaurant chains. Burger King, the privately owned number two hamburger chain, opened its first outlet in China last month, apparently aiming to maintain strong growth ahead of an initial public offering next year. McDonald’s has 600 outlets in China and plans 400 more. But at home, the future seems to hold only an ever more competitive and cost-conscious restaurant industry. Fast-food chains are trying to poach customers from "casual dining" chains (such as Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill), while those chains are squeezing out independent restaurants unable to compete on cost or in marketing clout. Business conditions, not severed fingers, are the real threat to the weaker firms in the restaurant business.

Clever, rich or both -- almost every country in the world has some sort of programme to attract desirable migrants. The only exceptions are "weird places like Bhutan" says Christian Kalin of Henley & Partners, which specializes in fixing visas and passports for globe-trotters. Competition is fierce and, as with most things, that lowers the price and increases choice. Britain has two programmes, one for the rich -- who have to invest ￡ 750,000 ($1.36m) in actively traded securities -- and one, much larger, for talented foreigners.
Both have worked well. Unlike some other countries, Britain does not make applicants find a job first: with good qualifications, they can just turn up and look for work. That helps keep Britain’s economy flexible and competitive. But now a bureaucratic snag is threatening the scheme.
The problem comes with anyone wanting to convert his visa into "indefinite leave to remain" (Britain’s equivalent of America’s Green Card). This normally requires four years’ continuous residence in Britain. After a further year, it normally leads to British citizenship.
The law defines continuous residence sensibly. Business trips and holidays don’t count, if the applicant’s main home is in Britain. As a rule of thumb, an average of 90 days abroad was allowed each year. But unpublished guidelines seen by The Economist are tougher: they say that "none of the absences abroad should be of more than three months, and they must not amount to more than six months in all." Over the four years needed to quality, that averages only six weeks a year.
For many jet-setters, this restriction is a career-buster. Six weeks abroad barely covers holidays, let alone business travel. Alexei Sidney, a Russian consultant, has to turn down important jobs because he cannot afford any more days abroad. If applicants travel "too much", their children risk losing the right to remain in Britain.
The Home Office insists that the rules have not changed since 2001. That would confirm Mr. Gherson’s suspicion that the new policy has come in by accident, probably as a result of zeal or carelessness by mid-ranking officials. Their attitude is at odds with the stance of the government, which has been trying for years to make the system more user-friendly for the world’s elite. It even moved processing of business residency cases from a huge office in Croydon, notorious for its slowness and hostility to would-be immigrants, to a new outfit in Sheffield.
But lawyers such as Mr Kalin are in no doubt of the risk Britain is running. America, he says, is already losing out in the global talent market because of its "painful and humiliating" immigration procedures. If Britain’s rules stay tight, he says, foreigners will go elsewhere. Likely beneficiaries are Ireland and Austria, European Union countries whose residency visas and passports confer the same convenience as British ones, with less hassle.

A cramped public-school test kitchen might seem an unlikely outpost for a food revolution. But Collazo, executive chef for the New York City public schools, and scores of others across the country -- celebrity chefs and lunch ladies, district superintendents and politicians -- say they’re determined to improve what kids eat in school. Nearly everyone agrees something must be done. Most school cafeterias are staffed by poorly trained, badly equipped workers who churn out 4.8 billion hot lunches a year. Often the meals, produced for about $1 each, consist of breaded meat patties, French fries and overcooked vegetables. So the kids buy muffins, cookies and ice cream instead -- or they feast on fast food from McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, which is available in more than half the schools in the nation. Vending machines packed with sodas and candy line the hall ways. "We’re killing our kids" with the food we serve, says Texas Education Commissioner Susan Combs.
As rates of childhood obesity and diabetes skyrocket, public-health officials say schools need to change the way kids eat. It won’t be easy. Some kids and their parents don’t know better. Home cooking is becoming a forgotten art. And fast-food companies now spend $ 3 billion a year on television ads aimed at children. Along with reading and writing, schools need to teach kids What to eat to stay healthy, says culinary innovator Alice Waters, who is introducing gardening and fresh produce to 16 schools in California. It’s a golden opportunity, she says, "to affect the way children eat for the rest of their lives." Last year star English chef Jamie Oliver took over a school cafeteria in a working-class suburb of London. A documentary about his work shamed the British government into spending $ 500 million to revamp the nation’s school-food program. Oliver says it’s the United States’ turn now. "If you can put a man on the moon," he says, "you can give kids the food they need to make them lighter, fitter and live longer."
Changing school food will take money. Many schools administrators are hooked on the easy cash- up to $ 75,000 annually -- that soda and candy vending machines can bring in. Three years ago Gary Hirshberg of Concord, N. H., was appalled when his 13-year-old son described his daytime meal -- pizza, chocolate milk and a package of Skittles. "I wasn’t aware Skittles was a food group," says Hirshberg, CEO of Stonyfield Farm, a yogurt company. So he devised a vending machine that stocks healthy snacks: yogurt smoothies, fruit leathers and whole-wheat pretzels. So far 41 schools in California, Illinois and Washington are using his machines -- and a thousand more have requested them. Hirshberg says, "schools have to make good food a priority."
Some states are trying. California, New York and Texas have passed new laws that limit junk food sold on school grounds. Districts in California, New Mexico and Washington have begun buying produce from local farms. The soda and candy in the vending machines have been replaced by juice and beef jerky. "It’s not perfect," says Jannison. But it’s a cause worth fighting for, Even if she has to battle one chip at a time.

One of the many theories about alcoholism is the learning and reinforcement theory, which explains alcoholism by considering alcohol drinking as a reflex response to some stimulus and as a way to reduce an inner drive state such as fear or anxiety. Characterizing life situations in terms of approach and avoidance, this theory holds that persons tend to be drawn to pleasant situations or repelled by unclean, sanity ones. In the latter case, alcohol drinking is said to reduce the tension or feelings of unpleasantness and to replace them with the feeling of pleasure generally observed in most persons after they have consumed one or more drinks.
Some experimental evidence tends to show that alcohol reduces fear in an approach-avoidance situation. Conger trained one group of rats to approach a food goal and trained another group to avoid electric shock. After an injection of alcohol the pull away from the shock was measurably weaker, while the pull toward food was unchanged.
The obvious troubles experienced by alcoholic persons appear to contradict the learning theory in the explanation of alcoholism. The discomfort, pain, and punishment they experience should presumably discourage the alcoholics from drinking. The fact that alcoholic persons continue to drink in the face of family discord, loss of job, and illness is explained by the proximity of the drive of reduction to the consumption of alcohol; that is, alcohol has the immediate effect of reducing tension while the unpleasant consequences of drunken behavior came only later. The learning pattern, therefore, favors the establishment and repetition of the resort to alcohol.
In fact, the anxieties and feelings of guilt caused by the consequences of excessive alcohol drinking may themselves become the signal for another time of alcohol abuse. The way in which the desire for another drink could be caused by anxiety is explained by the process of stimulus generalization: conditions or events securing at the time of reinforcement tend to acquire all the features of stimuli. When alcohol is consumed in association with a state of anxiety or leer, the emotional state itself takes on the properties of a stimulus, thus triggering another time of drinking.
The role of punishment is becoming increasingly important in explaining a cause of alcoholism based on the principles of learning theory. While punishment may serve to suppress a response, experiments have shown that in some cases it can serve as a reward and reinforce the behavior. Thus if the alcoholic person has learned to drink under conditions of both reward and punishment, either type of condition may trigger renewed drinking.

When a customer claimed to have found a severed finger in a bowl of chilli served at a Wendy’s fast-food franchise in California, the chain’s sales fell by half in the San José area where the incident was reported. Wendy’s brand and reputation were at risk, until the claim was exposed as a hoax in late April and the company, operator of America’s third-biggest hamburger chain, was vindicated.
Yet the share price of Wendy’s International, the parent company, rose steadily through March and April, despite the finger furore and downgrades from analysts. One reason was heavy buying by hedge funds, led by Pershing Square Capital. This week Pershing made its intentions public, saying that it was worried by market rumours that Wendy’s might soon buy more fast-food brands, and arguing that the firm should be selling assets instead. Pershing’s approach indicates rising pressure on American restaurant companies to perform, at a time when the industry’s growth prospects look increasingly tough.
The hit on customers’ wallets from higher petrol prices and rising interest rates will probably mean that year-on-year sales growth across the American restaurant industry slows to just 1% by the fourth quarter of 2005, down from a five-year historic average of 5.6%, say UBS, an investment bank, and Global Insight, a forecasting group. Looking further ahead, says UBS’s David Palmer, the industry may have to stop relying on most of the long-term trends that were behind much of its recent growth.
Three-quarters of Americans already live within three miles of a McDonald’s restaurant, leaving little scope for green-field growth. [Obesity is a growing issue in America, and with it come the threat of liability lawsuits against big restaurant chains and, perhaps, legal limits on advertising.] This week America’s biggest food trade group, the Grocery Manufacturers’ Association, was said to be preparing tougher guidelines on the marketing of food to children, in the hope of staving off statutory controls. Home cooking may also be making a comeback, helped by two factors. The percentage of women joining America’s workforce may have peaked, and supermarket chains such as Wal-Mart have been forcing down retail food prices.
Expansion overseas is one option for American restaurant chains. Burger King, the privately owned number two hamburger chain, opened its first outlet in China last month, apparently aiming to maintain strong growth ahead of an initial public offering next year. McDonald’s has 600 outlets in China and plans 400 more. But at home, the future seems to hold only an ever more competitive and cost-conscious restaurant industry. Fast-food chains are trying to poach customers from "casual dining" chains (such as Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill), while those chains are squeezing out independent restaurants unable to compete on cost or in marketing clout. Business conditions, not severed fingers, are the real threat to the weaker firms in the restaurant business.

Clever, rich or both -- almost every country in the world has some sort of programme to attract desirable migrants. The only exceptions are "weird places like Bhutan" says Christian Kalin of Henley & Partners, which specializes in fixing visas and passports for globe-trotters. Competition is fierce and, as with most things, that lowers the price and increases choice. Britain has two programmes, one for the rich -- who have to invest ￡ 750,000 ($1.36m) in actively traded securities -- and one, much larger, for talented foreigners.
Both have worked well. Unlike some other countries, Britain does not make applicants find a job first: with good qualifications, they can just turn up and look for work. That helps keep Britain’s economy flexible and competitive. But now a bureaucratic snag is threatening the scheme.
The problem comes with anyone wanting to convert his visa into "indefinite leave to remain" (Britain’s equivalent of America’s Green Card). This normally requires four years’ continuous residence in Britain. After a further year, it normally leads to British citizenship.
The law defines continuous residence sensibly. Business trips and holidays don’t count, if the applicant’s main home is in Britain. As a rule of thumb, an average of 90 days abroad was allowed each year. But unpublished guidelines seen by The Economist are tougher: they say that "none of the absences abroad should be of more than three months, and they must not amount to more than six months in all." Over the four years needed to quality, that averages only six weeks a year.
For many jet-setters, this restriction is a career-buster. Six weeks abroad barely covers holidays, let alone business travel. Alexei Sidney, a Russian consultant, has to turn down important jobs because he cannot afford any more days abroad. If applicants travel "too much", their children risk losing the right to remain in Britain.
The Home Office insists that the rules have not changed since 2001. That would confirm Mr. Gherson’s suspicion that the new policy has come in by accident, probably as a result of zeal or carelessness by mid-ranking officials. Their attitude is at odds with the stance of the government, which has been trying for years to make the system more user-friendly for the world’s elite. It even moved processing of business residency cases from a huge office in Croydon, notorious for its slowness and hostility to would-be immigrants, to a new outfit in Sheffield.
But lawyers such as Mr Kalin are in no doubt of the risk Britain is running. America, he says, is already losing out in the global talent market because of its "painful and humiliating" immigration procedures. If Britain’s rules stay tight, he says, foreigners will go elsewhere. Likely beneficiaries are Ireland and Austria, European Union countries whose residency visas and passports confer the same convenience as British ones, with less hassle.