Month: June 2011

  • Canadian Grand Prix 2011: Jenson Button survives monsoon – and Lewis Hamilton shunt – for superb vic

     

    A truly extraordinary Canadian Grand Prix, lasting almost four hours due to torrential rain and five safety cars, ended in the most dramatic fashion imaginable, with Jenson Button – having pitted six times during the race – coming through on the final lap for victory.

     
    Tom Cary

    By Tom Cary, Montreal

    9:30AM BST 13 Jun 2011

     

    Button shrugged off a collision with his own team mate, Lewis Hamilton, to take his first victory since April last year from Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel, who nevertheless extended his lead in the championship to 60 points. Vettel’s team mate Mark Webber held off a resurgent Michael Schumacher to take third.

    “What a race. What a race,” Buttton screamed as he crossed the finish line to spark scenes of wild celebration in the McLaren garage and across a bedraggled Ile Notre Dame in general. Button later called his 10th grand prix victory the best of his life.

    “I’m bound to say that, I guess, as it’s just happened,” he beamed after descending from the podium.

    It would be hard to disagree with him. Button’s first win in Hungary in 2006, in similar inclement weather, pushes it close. And as a performance his championship-clinching drive at Interlagos in 2009, when he was under more pressure, was perhaps finer. But this was crazy. Surreal.

    With the weather abysmal and standing water on the track, race director Charlie Whiting chose to start the grand prix behind a safety car, prompting indignation from fans and commentators who felt they were being denied the chance to see some on-track action.

    They did not have long to wait long. The safety car came in at the end of lap four and all hell broke loose. While Vettel held off the Ferrari of Fernando Alonso at the front, it was Hamilton, almost inevitably given his track record this season, who was at the centre of things. A tangle while attempting to pass Red Bull’s Mark Webber on lap five, which spun the Australian and led to both men losing places, prompted an investigation by the stewards although neither driver was punished.

    Webber later said he was surprised at Hamilton’s “clumsy” move, especially given how long there was left to run in the race.

    Hamilton then tried rather optimistically to go around the outside of Schumacher at the hairpin but only ended up losing sixth place to Button. In a desperate attempt to reclaim that position the 26 year-old took advantage of a mistake by his McLaren team mate as they exited the final chicane before the start of lap eight.

    Hamilton moved up the inside on the start-finish straight but Button, apparently unsighted due to the heavy rain and spray, did not see him and moved across and onto the racing line pushing Hamilton into the pit wall.

    While Hamilton was forced to retire with his rear left tyre hanging off the car, Button publicly questioned his team mate’s driving over the team radio, screaming: “What’s he doing?”

    That intervention may have been designed to curry favour with the stewards – many observers were of the opinion that it was Button rather than Hamilton who was at fault – although he later revealed he had said sorry. “I couldn’t see anything when he was alongside me. I have apologised to him, and from then on it was a fight,” he said.

    It certainly was. The collision between the McLarens led to another safety car period but as the rain started falling harder and harder – building into a veritable monsoon – it became obvious that the race would have to be red flagged.

    It would be over two hours before the cars left the pit lane, once again behind the safety car. And even then they only managed four laps before Button was again in the wars, this time after colliding with Alonso who was also forced to retire.

    Button was last when the race was restarted on lap 40 but he fought his way through the field, passing Schumacher with five laps remaining before eating into Vettel’s three-second lead.

    In an unbelievably dramatic finish, they entered the last lap separated by less than a secondd whereupon Vettel made his first serious mistake in a race this season, putting a wheel off line on to the wet part of the track and half-spinning.

    “I don’t know what to say,” Button said of the 10th win of his career. “It was an immense battle. I’m just so emotional. I’m sure we’ll have a great night tonight.”

     

     

    © Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2011 All Rights Reserved

  • Canadian Grand Prix 2011: McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton must mature off track to achieve greatness o

     

    How do you solve a problem like Lewis Hamilton? The most prodigiously talented racing driver of this and arguably any other generation. Yet one who is not winning.

    Canadian Grand Prix 2011: McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton must mature off track to achieve greatness on it
    Learning curve: Lewis Hamilton is a former F1 world champion but he is still learning from his mistakes Photo: ACTION IMAGES

     
    Tom Cary

    By Tom Cary

    9:28PM BST 10 Jun 2011

     

    Comments47 Comments

     

    When he burst on to the scene in 2007, unnerving his double world champion team-mate Fernando Alonso to such an extent that the Spaniard had to leave McLaren, Hamilton was hailed as a phenomenon.

    Formula One had never seen his like before. And not simply because he was a mixed race kid from a council estate in Stevenage.

    His precociousness behind the wheel was apparent to even to the untutored eye; aggressive, utterly fearless, with a seemingly innate ability to spot a pass that would not even occur to others and the ability to make it stick.

    It was not just in the cockpit that Hamilton broke the mould. Here was a young, good-looking driver, groomed since the age of 13 by McLaren to become a Formula One champion. Hamilton arrived ready-made. A sponsor’s dream.

    Sir Jackie Stewart spoke for many when he predicted that the boy from Stevenage would “rewrite the book” in terms of his achievements both on and off the track.

    “Niki Lauda and James Hunt changed the culture of racing drivers” the three-time world champion said. “But they were not role models. They said nothing, didn’t give a damn. Lewis can become the role model.”

    Four years on from his first Formula One victory — here at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on June 10, 2007 – the question must be asked: has Hamilton lived up to those lofty expectations?

    The answer must be no. Neither as a driver nor as a role model. Hamilton is still young, of course. At 26 he has another decade in front of him if he can stay motivated and focused.

    But all the same, the arc of his development both as a driver and as a man has patently not managed to keep to the trajectory of those first two years.

    When Hamilton became Formula One’s youngest ever world champion in 2008 on the penultimate corner of the final lap of the final race in Brazil, the world was at his feet.

    You would have been laughed out of town if you had suggested he would be stuck on 15 wins now.

    Mostly, of course, that is down to the cars Hamilton has been handed, but his driving style must take its share of the blame. Hamilton’s commitment to all-out attack is absolute. He says he will not change it at any cost.

    There are those who feel he still needs to smooth a few rough edges, to see the bigger picture, if he wants to be considered a great driver and not simply a great racer.

    Veteran driver Rubens Barrichello observed recently that Hamilton still had some growing up to do as regards when to stick and when to twist.

    Off the track, Hamilton’s career has been punctuated by regular controversy: Liegate, Crashgate, Swiss Tax Exile-gate.

    For any other driver, none of those incidents would have been big news. But Hamilton is box office; his magnetism the product of an intense and unusual upbringing.

    His split with his father and former manager, Anthony, last year caused major upheaval and he definitely changed for the better. But the growing pains continue.

    Most recently, after a deeply frustrating weekend in Monaco a fortnight ago, Hamilton lashed out at two of his fellow drivers and suggested the stewards might be punishing him because of his skin colour.

    The reaction, as always where Hamilton is concerned, was hysterical but at the same time instructive.

    “The problem with Lewis is that it’s always someone else’s fault,” opined former driver Martin Brundle, articulating a view shared by many up and down the pit lane where he remains an outsider.

    Fiercely private on the one hand, celebrity-seeking on the other, Hamilton’s life away from the track remains enigmatic.

    Thanks to his girlfriend, the American pop star Nicole Scherzinger, he has been able to access a different world, full of rappers and actors, in Los Angeles. Frankly, the ‘bling’ side to the McLaren man bothers some in the paddock.

    Hamilton does not care and nor should he. As long as he delivers on track, that is all that matters. But herein lies the rub. He is not winning. And the longer he goes without doing so, the more the pressure builds.

    Some believe his decision to sign with Simon Fuller’s XIX Entertainment to have been a mistake; a sign that he is putting wealth and celebrity before his day job. That is harsh.

    Hamilton does care about his bank balance — with 18 months left on his McLaren contract talks will start this summer regarding a bumper new one — and has clearly thought of his life post-F1. But he is also aware of his place in the pantheon. Like his idol Ayrton Senna, he wants to achieve greatness.

    It is frustrating the hell out of him that Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel, a man he clearly feels he would thrash given the same car, has arrived to steal his thunder. The German has the same amount of wins as Hamilton — 15 — from nine fewer races.

    Hamilton always imagined it would be Fernando Alonso who would provide the benchmark for him, but now his status as the greatest driver of his generation, let alone of all time, is under threat from a younger man.

    This week Hamilton is back in the groove. He took his entire team bowling on Wednesday night, said the right things in his Thursday press conference, and added that he would do his talking on the track.

    Unusually for him, he played down expectations.

    “I’m not Muhammad Ali,” he told us. “I’m not one to say this is going to be the best weekend ever.” He was right about one thing. He is not yet The Greatest.

    Hamilton remains a work in progress; still electrifyingly quick, still a little raw both on and off the track. By some distance the most compelling driver out there.

  • Rough start hurts Animal Kingdom’s chances

    By David Grening
    Daily Racing Form

    ELMONT, N.Y. — Five weeks after enjoying a dream trip to win the Kentucky Derby, Animal Kingdom experienced a nightmarish start in Saturday’s Belmont Stakes, leading to a sixth-place finish in the final leg of the Triple Crown.

     

    Coming out of the starting gate, Animal Kingdom, the 5-2 favorite, got bumped by Mucho Macho Man, the horse to his immediate outside. A few strides later, Animal Kingdom appeared to clip heels with Monzon, nearly propelling jockey John Velazquez out of the saddle just a few strides into the race.

     

    “I don’t know how I stayed on the horse,” Velazquez told Barry Irwin, head of the Team Valor International syndicate that owns Animal Kingdom.

     

    It took Velazquez more than a sixteenth of a mile to get his left foot back in the stirrup. By the time he did, Animal Kingdom was last, 15 lengths off the pace after the opening quarter of a mile. While Animal Kingdom did make a bold move from the half-mile pole to the quarter pole to reach contention, he tired in the stretch, finishing sixth, beaten 9 1/4 lengths over the sloppy main track. This rally occurred three weeks after he rallied from last to finish second to Shackleford in the Preakness.

     

    “I wanted to be on the pace, I didn’t want to be too far back,” Velazquez said. “The plan was to break a bit better than we did in the Preakness, and hopefully, we catch up and have a good trip. Right from the start we didn’t.”

     

    Back in the jocks’ room, Velazquez spoke angrily by phone with the stewards, saying, “You get bad horses that aren’t supposed to be in the race, and look what happens,” before hanging up the phone.

     

    Watching the race from the grandstand, Graham Motion, the trainer of Animal Kingdom, couldn’t believe his colt’s misfortune at the break.

     

    “I was sick. How could you not be sick?” Motion said. “You knew you had no shot after that. The race was over for him.”

     

    Animal Kingdom trailed the field through the first mile and was still 11 lengths off the pace with one-half mile to run. Leaving the half-mile pole, Animal Kingdom launched a bid, and by the three-eighths pole he had passed five horses. He continued that momentum and moved into fifth, four lengths back at the quarter pole. But it was a bid he could not sustain.

     

    “I really felt down the backside we didn’t have any shot at all,” Motion said. “Then he started to make that incredible move. By that point it was asking too much too late.”

     

    Despite Animal Kingdom’s move to contention Velazquez knew he wouldn’t be able to keep going.

     

    “No, I was already asking him way too much to be where I was from the half-mile pole to the quarter pole,” Velazquez said. “I was just hoping he could get a piece of it, and that’s why I rode him like that. No way he was going to catch up that much.”

     

    It was a disappointing end to a Triple Crown season that had started so promisingly for Animal Kingdom and Motion five weeks ago at Churchill Downs.

     

    “It’s disappointing not to give the horse a chance to run his race,” Motion said. “That’s a tough way to lose. There’s a lot of ways to lose in this game, but that’s a tough way to lose”

     

    Motion called the last five weeks “remarkable.”

     

    “It’s been an extraordinary trip,” he said. “It’s been so cool to do it with such a neat horse. I think you’re going to hear great things from this horse down the road.

  • Belmont Stakes.

    The Belmont Stakes
     Animal Kingdom, who won the Kentucky Derby, finished sixth.
     
    Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

    Ruler on Ice Wins the Belmont Stakes

    By MELISSA HOPPERT 6 minutes ago

    With a late push down the stretch, Ruler on Ice, ridden by Jose Valdivia Jr., held off Stay Thirsty to win the 143rd running of the Belmont Stakes.

     

  • Syria: Thousands still fleeing into Turkey


    Syrian displaced in Red Crescent camp in Altinozu, Turkey
    Turkey says it might need international help if the crisis gets worse

    Syria Crisis

    At least 4,300 people have now fled violence in Syria to seek refuge in Turkey, a senior Turkish official says.

    A BBC correspondent on the border says the real number of displaced people is probably much higher.

    The Syrians have mainly been fleeing the town of Jisr al-Shughour, targeted in a government crackdown.

    An eyewitness described a tank attack on a nearby village on Friday morning, in which people were killed and crops destroyed.

    Syria’s government says its forces went into the town to restore order after the deaths of 120 security personnel.

    Clashes throughout the country on Friday led to the deaths of at least 32 people.

    Hundreds of people have been killed in a crackdown in recent weeks on anti-government protests, which began in March.


    Analysis

    image of Owen Bennett-Jones

    Owen Bennett-JonesBBC News, Guvecci, Turkey

    An eyewitness to some of the events in north-west Syria on Friday said that Syrian troops used tanks to attack a village near Jisr al-Shughour.

    He said the attack began at six in the morning when people were still in their beds. He said his village is 4km from Jisr al-Shughour and lies high on a hillside. The attack he saw was on the village beneath his own.

    Forty tanks, he said, went into the village. They were surrounded by soldiers holding guns. The tanks fired at the houses and he said people were killed but he couldn’t say how many. He said the soldiers then burnt the wheat crops around the village and ripped up the olive groves.

    Thinking his village would be next, he decided to flee and with his wife, 10 children and four horses. He walked to Turkey. The journey took four hours and he says he left his family on the Syrian side of the border while he sees whether it will be possible to move the horses into Turkey.

    Meanwhile the US White House strongly condemned Syria’s “outrageous use of violence” against the protesters and called for an “immediate end” to the violence.

    ‘Not refugees’

    The BBC’s Owen Bennett Jones, in Guvecci on the Turkish-Syrian border, says the real number of displaced people is probably much higher than official total because many have slipped across the border unnoticed by the Turkish army.

    Senior Foreign Ministry official Halit Cevik said Turkey would deal with the crisis as best it could.

    “If they are coming, this is a humanitarian issue,” he said. “We will do whatever is needed within our means.”

    He added that while Turkey could cope with the crisis at the moment, it might need international help if things got worse.

    But Mr Cevik said that the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, would not be involved.

    The Syrians involved were not seeking refuge in Turkey, he said, as their eventual aim was to go back home.

     

    Unverified amateur video appears to show Syrian soldiers kicking prisoners.

    On the outskirts

    Some of those arriving at temporary camps across the border inside Turkey have serious gunshot injuries, including a Syrian Red Crescent worker who said he was shot in the back as he tried to help the injured in Jisr al-Shughour.

    Both state media and activists on the ground have reported troops and tanks advancing on the town. Most residents are believed to have abandoned it.

    Map locator

    The government blamed “armed groups” for the deaths of 120 security personnel in Jisr al-Shughour earlier this week, but some reports said the troops were shot after a mutiny.

    Syrian TV said troops had reached the outskirts of the town after securing nearby villages, and that they had killed or captured a number of armed men.

    Activists said they had blasted the town with tank fire, but it is unclear how much resistance the troops are facing in an area whose population has largely fled.

    Witnesses said troops had been bulldozing homes and torching crops and fields.

    Our correspondent says that with all this going on it is inevitable that the exodus into Turkey will continue.

    Syria has prevented foreign journalists, including those from the BBC, from entering the country, making it difficult to independently verify reports from there.

    Turkey has also so far denied journalists access to displaced Syrians, but Mr Cevik said that when “all is in order” access would be given.

     

     

    Copyright. 2011. BBC.com All Rights Reserved

  • Big Banks Penalized for Performance in Mortgage Modification Program

    Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

    A demonstration outside of a Wells Fargo shareholders meeting in San Francisco. Some have accused the banking giant of foreclosing on homeowners through fraudulent paperwork.

     

     

    June 9, 2011
     

    Big Banks Penalized for Performance in Mortgage Modification Program

    By 

    As the nation’s housing market continues to teeter, the Treasury Department on Thursday penalized three of the nation’s largest banks for subpar performance in administrating a government-sponsored program to modify mortgage loans for distressed homeowners.

    As part of a new assessment of mortgage servicers, Treasury officials said they would withhold incentive payments for the three banks — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo — until the problems are resolved. At that point, those payments would be made, a Treasury spokeswoman said.

    In May, the three banks received $24 million in incentives as part of the modification program.

    The Treasury Department has previously withheld payments from mortgage servicers, but Thursday’s action focused on some of the biggest players in the program. Called the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, it is voluntary for mortgage servicers. Nearly all of the nation’s largest banks have signed contracts to participate.

    The Obama administration has long been criticized as being too easy on the mortgage servicers, and Thursday’s announcement did little to quiet that criticism.

    Neil M. Barofsky, who resigned in March as special inspector general for the bank bailout, described the assessments and penalties as a “lost opportunity” to hold lenders more accountable.

    “It further reaffirms Treasury’s long-running toothless response to the servicers’ disregard of their contract with Treasury, and by extension, the American taxpayer,” Mr. Barofsky said in an e-mail.

    Timothy G. Massad, assistant Treasury secretary, defended the approach. He said the assessments of banks and other mortgage servicers “will serve to keep the pressure on servicers to more effectively assist struggling families.”

    “We need servicers to step up their performance to meet the needs of those still struggling,” he said in a statement.

    The mortgage servicers were evaluated on a scale of one to three stars during the first quarter on whether they had identified and searched for eligible homeowners; assessed homeowners’ eligibility correctly; and maintained effective program management, governance and reporting. Bank of America received the lowest grade, one star, on four of seven areas that were evaluated; Wells received one star in three areas; and Chase, in one.

    A fourth mortgage servicer, Ocwen Loan Service, was also assessed as needing substantial improvement, but Treasury said it would not withhold payments to Ocwen because it was negatively affected by a large acquisition of mortgages to service.

    Six other mortgage servicers were graded as needing moderate improvement. There were no servicers deemed as needing only minor improvement.

    Wells Fargo issued a statement saying it was “formally disputing” the Treasury’s findings.

    “It paints an unfairly negative picture of our modification efforts and contradicts previous written assessments shared with us by the Treasury,” said spokeswoman Vickee J. Adams, who said the criticisms were dated and did not reflect recent improvements.

    Chase said it too had made significant improvements. “The bank respectfully disagrees with the assessment,” the company said in a statement.

    Dan B. Frahm, a spokesman for Bank of America, said that the bank was “committed to continually improving our processes to assist distressed homeowners” through the federal modification program and its own internal program. But he added, “We acknowledge improvements must be made in key areas, particularly those affecting the customer experience.”

    The modification program was created using $50 billion that was set aside from the bank bailout to help distressed homeowners. The idea was that the Treasury Department would provide incentives to mortgage servicers and investors to modify mortgages for struggling homeowners, rather than foreclose on them.

    The administration predicted that three million to four million Americans would benefit, but so far, only 699,053 permanent modifications have been started.

    To date, Treasury has spent about $1.34 billion on HAMP. One problem was that the mortgage servicers, at least initially, were not prepared to handle the onslaught of modifications, and homeowners complained that paperwork had been routinely lost and trial modifications had dragged on for months.

    Copyright. 2011. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved

  • Rare Infection Strikes Victims of a Tornado in Missouri

    By 
    Published: June 10, 2011

     

    Several people who were injured when a tornado devastated Joplin, Mo., last month have become sickened by an uncommon, deadlyfungal infection and at least three have died, although public health officials said Friday that a link between the infection and the deaths was not certain.

    Also on Friday, the death toll from the tornado was raised to 151.

    Eight tornado victims have fallen ill from the mysterious infection, and each had “multiple injuries and secondary wound infections,” said Jacqueline Lapine, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. Citing confidentiality rules, officials declined to discuss the treatment or condition of the patients.

    The fungus that causes the infection, which is believed to be mucormycosis, is most commonly found in soil and wood, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is studying samples from the eight Joplin patients. “It is a very aggressive and severe infection,” said Dr. Benjamin Park, chief of the epidemiology team in the C.D.C.’s Mycotic Diseases Branch. “It is also very rare.”

    Mucormycosis enters the body either via a puncture wound or when a victim breathes in its mold spores, officials said. Those who have weakened immune systems have a mortality rate as high as 90 percent. Other people at risk include those with diabetes orcancer and burn victims.

    On Friday, the Jasper County coroner’s office said that 151 people died in the May 22 tornado. It is revising the toll as additional death reports come in from hospitals where tornado victims had been taken.

    That figure includes the three dead victims who appear to have had the fungal infection — though the cause of those deaths has not yet been established because they had other injuries as well, said Rob Chappel, the Jasper County coroner.

    Even before the updated death toll was released Friday, the tornado was the deadliest in the United States since modern record-keeping began. As many as one-third of the town’s buildings were damaged, including the city’s main hospital, St. John’s Regional Medical Center. St. John’s, which lay in the path of the tornado, was evacuated.

    Health officials said they were not aware of any other cases of mucormycosis arising from the series of tornadoes that struck the Midwest and the South this spring, killing hundreds of people and injuring thousands.

    “Although this is a naturally occurring infection, to have a cluster which potentially involves this many people is highly unusual,” Dr. Park said.

    Health officials said even busy hospitals around the country might see no more than a case or two of mucormycosis each year. They have asked that tornado victims from Joplin who have wounds that have failed to heal properly see a doctor immediately. It cannot be spread from person to person.

    Mucormycosis and similar fungal infections that enter the skin through puncture wounds can usually be prevented once a wound is disinfected in a hospital, health officials said. But during a natural disaster, when there is confusion and a shortage of medical personnel and supplies, wounds are sometimes treated inadequately. In Joplin, staff members from St. John’s treated some of the thousands injured at makeshift clinics.

    Mucormycosis, which can have an incubation period of two weeks or more, must be treated with intravenous antibiotics and in some cases the removal of the affected tissue.

     

    Copyright. 2011. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved

     

  • The organizers of the Formula One Bahrain Grand Prix announce cancellation.

    Page last updated at 01:33 GMT, Friday, 10 June 2011 02:33 UK

    F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone and FIA president Jean TodtJean Todt (right) has asked Bernie Ecclestone to revise the 2011 calendar

    The race was originally due to open the Formula One season in March, but was called off amid the political unrest and put back to October.

    Earlier this week, F1 president Bernie Ecclestone said the Bahrain race could not go ahead as teams had objected.

    Any change in the calendar required unanimous agreement from the teams.

    Bahrain circuit chairman Zayed Alzayani said in a statement: “Whilst Bahrain would have been delighted to see the Grand Prix progress on October 30th… it has been made clear that this fixture cannot progress and we fully respect that decision.

    “We want our role in Formula One to continue to be as positive and constructive as it has always been, therefore, in the best interest of the sport, we will not pursue the rescheduling of a race this season.”

    The race in the Gulf kingdom was initially due to open the season in March.

    But it was called off in February because of pro-democracy protests in which more than 20 people died.

    After giving Bahrain months to decide whether it was in a position to hold the race, the governing International Automobile Federation (FIA) announced last Friday that it would be rescheduled for 30 October.

    The FIA said civil unrest in the country had stabilised.

    But the decision outraged human rights campaigners, and nearly half a million people signed an online petition demanding a boycott of the Bahrain race.

    Cancellation was seen as inevitable since any change in the calendar required the unanimous written agreement of the teams.

    They had written to the FIA and the commercial rights holder – Bernie Ecclestone – to express their opposition to the move.

    The inaugural Indian Grand Prix – which had been provisionally moved to December to accommodate Bahrain – will now revert to the original 30 October slot.

     

    Copyright. 2011.BBC.com All Rights Reserved

  • Rave music

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zcmb-8qzZQ&feature=player_detailpage#t=61s

  • A Generation of Slackers? Not So Much

    Alex Nabaum

     

    May 28, 2011
     

    A Generation of Slackers? Not So Much

    By 

    YOU’D think there would be a little sympathy. This month, college graduates are jumping into the job market, only to land on their parents’ couches: the unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds is a whopping 17.6 percent.

    The reaction from many older Americans? This generation had it coming.

    Generation Y — or Millennials, the Facebook Generation or whatever you want to call today’s cohort of young people — has been accused of being the laziest generation ever. They feel entitled and are coddled, disrespectful, narcissistic and impatient, say authors of books like “The Dumbest Generation” and “Generation Me.”

    And three in four Americans believe that today’s youth are less virtuous and industrious than their elders, a 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center found.

    In a sign of humility or docility, young people agree. In that 2009 Pew survey, two-thirds of millennials said older adults were superior to the younger generation when it came to moral values and work ethic.

    After all, if there’s a young person today who’s walked 10 miles barefoot through the snow to school, it was probably on an iPhone app.

    So is this the Laziest Generation? There are signs that its members benefit from lower standards. Technology has certainly made life easier. But there may also be a generation gap; the way young adults work is simply different.

    It’s worth remembering that to some extent, these accusations of laziness and narcissism in “kids these days” are nothing new — they’ve been levied against Generation X, Baby Boomers and many generations before them. Even Aristotle and Plato were said to have expressed similar feelings about the slacker youth of their times.

    But this generation has had it easy in some ways.

    They can access just about any resource, product or service anywhere from a mere tap on a touch screen. And as many critics have noted, it’s also easier to get A’s. The typical grade-point average in college rose to about 3.11 by the middle of the last decade, from 2.52 in the 1950s, according to a recent study by Stuart Rojstaczer, professor emeritus at Duke, and Christopher Healy of Furman University.

    College students also spend fewer hours studying each week than did their counterparts in 1961, according to a new working paper by Philip S. Babcock of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Mindy Marks of the University of California, Riverside. That doesn’t mean all this leftover time is spent on PlayStation 3’s.

    There is ample evidence that young people today are hard-working and productive. The share of college students working full time generally grew from 1985 onward — until the Great Recession knocked many millennials out of the labor force, according to the Labor Department.

    And while many college students today — like those of yesterday — get financial help from their parents, 44 percent of students today say that work or personal savings helped finance their higher educations, according to a survey of recent graduates by Rutgers University.

    “I don’t think this is a generation of slackers,” said Carl Van Horn, a labor economist at Rutgers. “This image of the kid who goes off and skis in Colorado, I don’t think that’s the correct image. Today’s young people are very focused on trying to work hard and to get ahead.”

    Defying the narcissism stereotype, community service among young people has exploded.

    Between 1989 and 2006, the share of teenagers who were volunteering doubled, to 26.4 percent from 13.4 percent, according to a report by the Corporation for National and Community Service. And the share of incoming college freshmen who say they plan to volunteer is at a record high of 32.1 percent, too, U.C.L.A.’s annual incoming freshmansurvey found.

    Perhaps most important, many of the behaviors that older generations interpret as laziness may actually enhance young people’s productivity, say researchers who study Generation Y.

    Members of Gen Y, for example, are significantly more likely than Gen X’ers and boomers to say they are more productive working in teams than on their own, according to Don Tapscott, author of “Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World,” a book based on interviews with 11,000 millennials.

    To older workers, wanting help looks like laziness; to younger workers, the gains that come from teamwork have been learned from the collaborative nature of their childhood activities, which included social networks, crowd-sourcing and even video games like World of Warcraft that “emphasize cooperative rather than individual competition,” Mr. Tapscott says.

    Employers also complain about millennials checking Facebook and Twitter on the job, or working with their ear buds in.

    Older workers have a strong sense of separate spheres for work and play: the cubicle is for work, and home is for fun. But to millennials, the boundaries between work and play are fuzzier, said Michael D. Hais, co-author of “Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics.”

    Think of the corporate cultures at prototypical Gen Y employers like Facebook and Google, he says, where foosball, volleyball courts and subsidized massages are office fixtures.

    The prevailing millennial attitude is that taking breaks for fun at work makes people more, not less, productive. Likewise, they accept that their work will bleed into evenings and weekends.

    Some experts also believe that today’s young people are better at quickly switching from one task to another, given their exposure to so many stimuli during their childhood and adolescence, said John Della Volpe, the director of polling at Harvard’s Institute of Politics. (The jury is still out on that one.)

    Of course, these explanations may be unconvincing to older bosses, co-workers and teachers on the other side of this culture clash. But at least they can take comfort in one fact: someday, millennials will have their own new generation of know-it-all ne’er-do-wells to deal with.

     

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