When Life Begins at 5: A New Wake-Up Call

From electricity usage to toilet flushing, the numbers show sleep-deprived Americans are getting up even earlier

By JOHN JURGENSEN
March 25, 2006; Page P1

The lights in America are going on an hour earlier.

As people prepare for the annual hour of sleep deprivation that comes next week with the arrival of daylight-saving time, a broader shift in wake-up times is taking place.

By a wide variety of indicators, from electricity usage to water consumption, more U.S. households are starting their days before dawn. In the last six years, PJM Interconnection, which supplies electricity to more than 50 million people in 13 states, saw its largest uptick in usage between the hours of 5 a.m. and 7 a.m., while in Atlanta, Southern Co.'s peak winter electricity usage shifted to 7 a.m. from 8 a.m. in 2003. Aqua America, a water supplier for 13 states, has seen everything from toilets to washing machines starting up earlier: The company's booster pumps now kick into gear at 5:30 a.m. in Philadelphia instead of 6 a.m., providing 20% additional water pressure to meet higher demand.

Businesses are taking note. CNN and CNBC moved their main morning shows an hour earlier, to 6 a.m., in December. Office-supplies giant Staples has shifted opening hours of some 100 of its stores to 7 a.m. from 8 a.m. after getting the message from regional focus groups and customer surveys. Based on spending patterns of pre-7 a.m. shoppers, Internet boutique Bluefly.com recently began posting all new items and exclusive deals by 6:30.

Of course, for the sleep-deprived, becoming a morning person can be an uphill battle -- 70% of us are not naturally alert and active in the morning, according to the National Sleep Foundation, an educational organization. Videogame designer Frank Rogan used many techniques to train his body to ease into 6 a.m., the only time he can steal for himself. He's experimented with a "dawn simulator" alarm clock that gradually illuminates the bedroom, searched for wake-up tips on the Internet and even forced himself to go to the gym, which he was appalled to find packed at 6 a.m.

"It's like these people are a different species," says Mr. Rogan, who uses his time to work out or enjoy breakfast on the back porch but sometimes can't help logging on and firing off emails before office hours start.

The shift to sunrise comes thanks to everything from heavier rush-hour traffic to BlackBerry overload that has left predawn as the last refuge for many people. In Phoenix, Skydive Arizona has seen a spike in prework parachuting. "These are Type-A personalities -- doctors, lawyers," says jump coordinator Betsy Barnhouse. "Once they face their mortality in the morning, they can just walk through their day."

Others try more sedentary pursuits. In the past year, La Jolla, Calif., psychologist Barbara Rosen says she's started seeing patients at 7 a.m., two hours earlier than her previous first appointments. "I've had requests for 6, but I'm not quite ready to do that," she says.

It's such early risers that helped convince CNN to air its popular morning broadcast earlier. Jonathan Klein, president of CNN, says that in the last 10 years, the number of 25- to 54-year-olds watching TV in the early morning has doubled, a key factor in the decision to move "American Morning" to 6 a.m. from 7 a.m. As for the anchors, who now have to get to work at 3 a.m., "they hate it; they think I'm mean. I'd like to say they cheerfully do it, but hey, it was bad enough that they had to come in at 4 a.m."

At CNBC, the popular "Squawk Box" now airs at 6 a.m., following a new business show at 4 a.m. "There's no question that the fastest growing day part for news is in the mornings," says David Friend, senior vice president of business news. "It was a no-brainer."

Advertiser money is moving in the same direction. An average of about $52 million is spent on network-television commercials during weekday news shows between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m., up from $32 million five years ago, according to research firm TNS Media Intelligence. And though this amount pales in comparison to the hours when "Today" and "Good Morning America" hit the air, the spending increase of 5-7 a.m. outpaced 7-9 a.m. during the same time period, 63% to 46%.

When Tina Sharkey was looking for ways to spend more time with her son, she found it -- at 6:45 a.m. The America Online head of network programming now forces herself out of bed and into the gym at 5:30 so she can have time to read to her 6-year-old before the school bus comes. "We've been attacking Harry Potter from 6:45 to 7:31 in the morning," she says. "The only place I can give is sleep."

For some people, it's simply a matter of trying to beat the traffic. In the last five years, the number of people leaving home between 5 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. increased by 12%, the biggest jump in rush-hour departure times, according to the Census Bureau. That, of course, moves everything else earlier. Quality Care Associates, a child-care company that serves several high-powered New York City suburbs, says requests for nannies to start at 7 a.m. are up 5% over the last year.

Getting up earlier comes fairly easy to Chris Oberbeck -- it's his family that sometimes balks. The private-equity investor in Greenwich, Conn., says that between his 11 p.m. conference calls to India and an ever-buzzing BlackBerry, dawn is "the only shot we've got." Among the new morning activities he's lined up: family birthday parties with waffles instead of cake. But with four boys to drag out of bed, Mr. Oberbeck says rebellion is inevitable: "The most grumbling comes from the one assigned to cook."

For Robert Cobourn, mornings have become a chance to catch up on late-night TV shows he programs on his TiVo. Mr. Cobourn's 10-year-old son Jack, whose afternoons are taken up with soccer practice and nights with homework, recently tried setting his alarm earlier, too, so he could squeeze in videogames before school. Lately, though, Jack's been sleeping right through: "I'm more of a stay-up-late person, anyway."

DAWN PATROL: HOW SIX POWER PLAYERS WAKE UP

Jack Brennan, 51, chairman and CEO, Vanguard Group, Wayne, Pa.

Wake time: 5:15 a.m.

Routine: Wakes up two minutes before the alarm: "I'm on a mental alarm clock." Gets to work at 6 a.m. and makes coffee for himself and any early employees.

Myron E. "Mike" Ullman III, 59, chairman and CEO, J.C. Penney, Turtle Creek, Texas

Wake time: 4:45 a.m.

Routine: Reads four papers online. Leaves his house around 6:45 a.m. and rereads the papers in print during the ride to work.

Hugh Hefner, 79, founder and editor in chief, Playboy magazine, Los Angeles

Wake time: Late morning, no alarm.

Routine: Eats breakfast in bed, then dresses for work: "I just change out of one pair of pajamas and into another."

David Lee Roth, 51, former lead singer of Van Halen, now host of a morning radio show, New York

Wake Time: 3:30 a.m.

Routine: Takes helicopter-flying lessons three days a week. Often does martial arts before arriving at the studio at 5:15 a.m.

Gary C. Kelly, 51, vice chairman and CEO, Southwest Airlines, Plano, Texas

Wake Time: 5 a.m.

Routine: Breakfast consists of vitamins with a glass of sugar-free cranberry juice. Calls his wife from the car at the same intersection every morning.

Michael J. Critelli, 57, chairman and CEO, Pitney Bowes, Darien, Conn.

Wake time: 6:30 a.m.

Routine: Often stops at a doughnut shop on the way to work to read the newspaper. In times of stress, sometimes gets up at 3 or 4 a.m. to work or take a walk.

Write to John Jurgensen at john.jurgensen@wsj.com

Google's Half Victory

March 21, 2006; Page A14

Google won a partial victory against the Justice Department late Friday night when a federal judge ruled that the company would not be compelled to hand over a sample of users' search queries.

As Judge James Ware noted in his 21-page opinion, search strings like "Jessica Simpson" or "nudity" would not, by themselves, impinge on users' privacy. But a random sampling of searches could well pull up less generic queries. To borrow the judge's example, "[user name] third trimester abortion san jose" might well raise privacy concerns -- not to mention the embarrassment from the publication of the "vanity searches" that Google users have been known to perform, every half hour or so, on themselves.

Judge Ware did grant Justice's request for a random sampling of 50,000 of the sites Google indexes for its searches, so both sides ended up with something. But as the judge also noted, the government remains decidedly vague on how it intends to use the data it was seeking from the major search engines in the underlying case, which concerns the 1998 Child Online Protection Act. Justice says the goal is to "assess the amount of harmful material available to minors" on the Internet. But it doesn't take a genius -- or a subpoena -- to figure out that there's lots of that if you look for it.

The real question is whether criminalizing whole categories of speech on the basis of vaguely worded "community standards" is the least restrictive way of protecting children. Friday's ruling doesn't address that, as the underlying case is being adjudicated in a different court. But it did establish some limits on what the government can demand from private corporations in seeking to defend this law against a First Amendment challenge. Justice's initial request was for every indexed Web address and two months' worth of search queries. By comparison, what the government will now get looks reasonable indeed.

Government vs. Google

Web-Search Battle Offers Fireworks,But Look Deeper for the Real IssueMarch 20, 2006
Google is fencing with the Justice Department about access to users' search requests -- the latest chapter in the federal government's quest to get a star-crossed antiporn law on the books. But the real issue in this battle goes beyond porn or kids -- it's a basic fear about privacy, one bigger than worries about government snooping or corporate data warehouses, and one that will be with us for some time.

A little background: In 1998 a law was passed called the Child Online Protection Act, or COPA, which requires U.S. commercial distributors of material harmful to minors to prevent said minors from accessing their sites. As such, COPA was an attempt to narrow provisions of the Communications Decency Act, which the Supreme Court had shot down as unconstitutional. But it hasn't fared much better. Enforcement of COPA was stayed by injunction, and in 1999 an appeals court struck the law down, saying its reliance on "community standards" to define harmful materials was too broad. In 2002 the Supreme Court returned the law to the appeals court for further review, but kept the injunction intact. In 2003, the appeals court struck down COPA again, finding the law would limit protected speech between adult. In 2004 the Supreme Court upheld the injunction on enforcement and warned that COPA was likely unconstitutional. It also noted that the law was likely to be out of date, given technological advances in filtering software and other methods for protecting children from online smut.

• Hot Topic: Google vs. Justice

The Justice Department, in an effort to keep the law alive, is trying to show that filters are flawed and further protections are needed. And it's trying to show that by subpoenaing search-engine providers' data about search queries and Web addresses. Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL handed over such information voluntarily; Google chose to fight. After the government revised its demands to 5,000 search queries and 50,000 randomly chosen Web addresses (from millions of queries and 1 million addresses), a federal judge last week ordered Google to cooperate with the government in supplying the Web addresses but denied the request for the search queries, saying that could cost Google the trust of some users and expressing concern that the queries could be potentially sensitive information.

Between porn, kids, the government and privacy, there's a lot of red meat for various sides in this fight. But there are also a fair number of red herrings.

It's worth arguing about how COPA's "community standards" should be interpreted, or whether the law would bar teens from health-related or artistic sites. But that ignores a basic flaw with COPA: Even if it were perfectly constructed and didn't catch non-porn sites in its net, it would hardly keep kids safe online. Among those porn purveyors not affected: run-of-the-mill commercial porn sites run from Amsterdam or the Azores; dodgy overseas porn merchants who've thrown up sites full of dirty pictures and laced with malware; fly-by-nights creating and abandoning ad-laden porn blogs at speeds that far exceed court filings; and people whose hobby is collecting or making porn and who don't mind sharing. That's a lot of porn sites right there -- too many to rest easy if you've got a 12-year-old using the PC unsupervised. A typical Justice Department release on COPA promises that "the department will continue to work to defend children from the dangerous predators who lurk in the dark shadows of the World Wide Web."

But COPA doesn't venture into those dark shadows -- it polices the comparatively well-lit precincts in which U.S. commercial enterprises dwell.

Google's motion in opposition to the government's request for information makes for entertaining reading: Google's lawyers argue that the government doesn't understand what it's asking for, won't find what it's looking for, and will hurt Google in doing so. Google's lawyers deride one government statement as "so uninformed as to be nonsensical. Search queries run on Google's databases come from such a wide variety of sources that Google's query data, stripped of personally identifying information, will not reveal whether the search query was run by a minor or adult, human or non-human, or on behalf of an individual or business." And in noting that Web addresses aren't reliable indicators of their page's content, Google cheekily offers up the example of porn site whitehouse.com. (You can find the brief linked from this entry on Google's corporate blog.)

At least there's a silver lining for Google in this fight: It gets to cast itself as defending its users against government snoops peeking at their Web searches. That means better Internet buzz for a company that could use some: Google has been bloodied for its self-censored Chinese site, annoyed Wall Street with accidental disclosures of financial targets, and raised eyebrows with its determination to index all the information in the world it can get its digital hands on, whether it's the text of books or the contents of your PC. As I've written before, I'm not against Google's efforts to do that, or its strategies for doing so. But finding Google beavering away at information everywhere you turn strikes many people as creepy, amplifying the uneasy feeling that far too much information about us is out there for someone -- online predators, government Javerts, RIAA bounty hunters, identity thieves -- to find. And that's the real anxiety in this case.

Surveying Google vs. the Government, the thing that worries me most isn't keeping my kid away from porn -- though I do fret about that, as I wrote two weeks ago. It's not the government looking at people's Web searches, though I don't think the government should do that. And it's not knowing Google bots are out there compiling as fast as their little crawlers can crawl, though that can be unsettling.

Rather, it's fearing that all this information -- public and private, trivial and critical -- is getting swept up and made available as more and more information from the analog age migrates to the digital world. And that's happening more quickly than we can identify what ought to be left out -- just ask the CIA, which had to answer questions from the Chicago Tribune about how searches of publicly available databases outed a number of covert operatives.

Rather than protections from porn, we need a basic compact governing what information about ourselves is publicly available, what safeguards there should be on its use, and how we can get information that shouldn't be available quickly and reliably removed. I think such a compact will emerge, and the digital unease of today will be seen as part of the Net's growing pains. But how long do we have to wait? And what mistakes will be made while we do?

What personal information should be available online? How should it be policed? And whose job is that? Drop me a line at realtime@wsj.com -- comments will be posted periodically in Real Time. If you don't want your comments considered for Real Time, please make that clear.

日韓出現降黃雪怪現象

2006年3月16日 22:30星期四 [中日關係]


以前一些日韓愛情電影與電視劇在拍攝雪景時加一個淡黃filter，十分詩情畫意。現在不用加filter了，因為近數年自然界出現怪現象，日韓不時錄得 天降黃雪。浪漫嗎？不！因為這是從中國大陸飄來的?砂加上有毒粒子（超標30倍！）。中國成為美國之後另一公害輸出大國。

家寶在最近的講話中承認任總理以來沒有處理好環境問題而引以為憾。他保証中國不會先發展經濟，後整治環境。他可是有心無力，地方滿是土皇帝。中國公害問題 日益嚴重，而且禍及鄰邦。俄國、日本及南韓都身受其害。環境問題也成為國際問題。繼酸雨及海上垃圾飄洋過海後，現在出現黃雪。

日本對中國大陸而來的?染反應最大，也為右傾人士增添攻擊中國的話題。近年日本政府的ODA亦不少用於幫助中國種樹木、防沙漠化、設置淨水廠等與環保有關的項目。不過似乎功效有限。

黃雪是中國北部黃砂引起的。一半天災，一半人禍。水源破壞及伐林造成中國北方?砂風暴近數年十分厲害。想不到中國黃砂竟吹到韓國與日本，與雪一起落下便成 為黃雪。雖然?雨及黃雪以前也曾在日韓出現過，不過單是今年首三個月中國已發生四次?砂風暴，令人關注。最近首爾一帶及日本日本海沿岸曾降?雪。?雪積在 地面與?穢雜物混合，變成淺紅色，因此也稱「赤雪」。每年三月至五月是黃砂風暴的高潮，料今年春季黃雨/雪將為日韓帶來煩惱。

為了自己國民的健康，為了睦?，中國環保已急不容緩。盲目追求經濟發展，卻賠上國民健康及國家形象，值得嗎？

中國國務院確立京滬高鐵以德日技術為本「自主開發」

　　據日本的傳媒報導，中國大陸的國務院國家發展暨改革委員會表示，北京─上海間的京滬高速鐵路專案建議書，和上海─杭州間的滬杭磁浮高鐵建議書皆已獲得國家批准。

　　京滬高鐵經過充分論證、科學比選，各方面就技術方案等重大問題基本上取得了共識，建設時機已經成熟；將採輪軌技術，全長1320公里，其設計最高時速350公里、運行時速300公里。未來會成立「京滬高速鐵路」公司，經營軌道建設和整條高鐵路線的運作。至於車輛則是要從德、日廠商引進技術而自主開發、製造。

　　大陸政府預定在2010年整建成7000公里的旅客專用（高鐵）路線，北京─上海間的京滬高速鐵路是其中最重要的一項。（2006/3/14）

拜「熟年離婚」之賜而興起的「熟年再婚」事業

台灣日本綜合研究所　　　傅婉禎

　　去年因為連續劇「熟年離婚」、老後年金分割和整個離婚情況統計讓「熟年離婚」這個問題被日本重視起來了，可能很多人想說這些「熟年離婚」的人好不容易離了婚後應該再也不嚮往婚姻生活，會希望能一個人生活個痛快，但其實並不然。

　「熟年離婚」是指共渡結婚生活10幾20年的老夫老妻長久累積下來的不滿，因一個關鍵點爆發而結束了長時間的婚姻生活，事實上這類的「熟年離婚」也有很多是在婚姻剛開始沒多久就埋下潛在爆發點，但礙於已生下小孩，希望給小孩一個健全的成長環境，所以一直忍耐到小孩已能獨立時才離婚。

　　就在這樣「熟年離婚」的背景下，除了因為要離婚而使得一些律師或是離婚諮商公司有了新的生意之外，其實就算是已過了20年自己不滿意的婚姻生活的「熟年離婚」的人想再找個新的、投緣的「老伴」共渡一生的還是不少，這時就誕生了因應這股風潮而起的「熟年再婚」事業。

　　第一是婚姻介紹所，像是位於東京赤坂的「M’s Bridal Japan」婚姻介紹所便提供只要將自己的照片和資產等登錄，就可以從資料庫中找出條件相符合的人，並代為介紹的服務。該公司表示，他們最近50歲以上的會員激增，從公司開設5年以來已突破了2500人，其社長感受到很多年長者想要再結婚的熱情，但卻苦於沒有可以為他們介紹的管道，因此有預感這類高齡者對於婚姻介紹所的需求會再繼續延伸成長。

　　第二是結婚情報中心，最近也不少結婚情報中心接到很多來自50歲以上甚至是60、70歲的人要來入會的訊息，而這種情報中心就會以企畫一些像是社團活動或是旅行之類，讓會員在短時間內能互相認識，聽說，實際上交往並再婚的人不少。

　　除了這兩大結婚相關的單位外，像是結婚介紹所等需要繳交的照片等，也有專門從事幫高齡者拍這類特殊的「相親照」的照相館，畢竟高齡者跟年輕的人需求不太一樣，所以也牽動了高齡相親照的照相市場。

　　此外，還有特例就是如同台灣現在盛行娶外籍新娘一般，也有人大肆宣傳「熟年再婚」就是該娶外籍新娘，甚至鼓吹一些已退休的「熟年離婚」男性們不用把外籍新娘娶回日本，而是將退休金直接拿去東南亞買個房子、娶個年輕的外籍新娘，以日本的退休金在東南亞是鐵定是可以過比在日本還要寬裕的生活。

　　之所以會有人鼓吹去娶外籍新娘甚至移居到東南亞，他們的主張是如果是「熟年離婚」的男性，在日本國內就算要找想要再婚的對象也只能找與自己年齡相當的，而去參加各種像相親派對的活動，會來參加的女性也已是年華老去的熟女們，要找個年輕一點的女性再婚礙於日本風俗是不容易的。因此想再娶年輕女性的話，東南亞對日本人可以說是個天堂，再加上娶了年輕的老婆在老後若生病需要人照顧也不用擔心老婆年老力衰無法勝任，住在東南亞娶個年輕的老婆也不會有人說閒話，過得可要比日本來得舒適自在。

　　姑且不論「熟年再婚」是在日本當地好還是在國外好，的確是有看過自己的父母在「熟年離婚」後又再婚的子女表示，能看到自己的父母重新抓住屬於自己的幸福，也讓他對於「離婚」這兩個字不再抱持著負面的態度。不過，既然選擇了「熟年離婚」，就表示有想要再一次重新抓住屬於自己的幸福的希望，但或許也是因為日本人的民族性較壓抑，所以才會有「熟年離婚」和「熟年再婚」的市場出現，要是換作台灣人，可能是受不了就先離婚再說吧！