Parental Consent Rule May Proceed for a Circumcision Ritual, a Judge Says

New York City health officials may proceed temporarily with a plan to require parental consent before an infant may undergo a particular Jewish circumcision ritual, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

City officials say 12 cases of herpes simplex virus have likely resulted from the procedure, known as metzitzah b’peh, since 2000, including one Brooklyn case reported this week. Two infants died, and two suffered permanent brain damage. Most Jews no longer practice metzitzah b’peh, in which the circumciser uses his mouth to suck blood from the wound, but it remains common among some ultra-Orthodox communities.

Citing the risk of infection, health officials in September introduced a regulation that would require parents to provide written consent stating that they were aware of the health risks.

But the Central Rabbinical Congress of the United States and Canada, Agudath Israel of America, and the International Bris Association sued in October to stop the rule from taking effect, calling it an infringement of their constitutional rights. They also denied the procedure posed a risk and asked a federal court to put the rule on hold while the litigation proceeded.

In denying the request for a preliminary injunction, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of the United States District Court for the Southern District wrote that the risks were clear.

“In light of the quality of the evidence presented in support of the regulation, we conclude that a continued injunction against enforcement of the regulation would not serve the public interest,” she wrote.

City lawyers said they were gratified by the ruling, but Andrew Moesel, a spokesman for the plaintiffs, said the groups would appeal. “We continue to believe that this case is a wrongful and unnecessary intrusion into the rights of freedom of religion and speech,” he said.

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Parental Consent Rule May Proceed for a Circumcision Ritual, a Judge Says

New York City health officials may proceed temporarily with a plan to require parental consent before an infant may undergo a particular Jewish circumcision ritual, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

City officials say 12 cases of herpes simplex virus have likely resulted from the procedure, known as metzitzah b’peh, since 2000, including one Brooklyn case reported this week. Two infants died, and two suffered permanent brain damage. Most Jews no longer practice metzitzah b’peh, in which the circumciser uses his mouth to suck blood from the wound, but it remains common among some ultra-Orthodox communities.

Citing the risk of infection, health officials in September introduced a regulation that would require parents to provide written consent stating that they were aware of the health risks.

But the Central Rabbinical Congress of the United States and Canada, Agudath Israel of America, and the International Bris Association sued in October to stop the rule from taking effect, calling it an infringement of their constitutional rights. They also denied the procedure posed a risk and asked a federal court to put the rule on hold while the litigation proceeded.

In denying the request for a preliminary injunction, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of the United States District Court for the Southern District wrote that the risks were clear.

“In light of the quality of the evidence presented in support of the regulation, we conclude that a continued injunction against enforcement of the regulation would not serve the public interest,” she wrote.

City lawyers said they were gratified by the ruling, but Andrew Moesel, a spokesman for the plaintiffs, said the groups would appeal. “We continue to believe that this case is a wrongful and unnecessary intrusion into the rights of freedom of religion and speech,” he said.

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Visit by Google Chairman May Benefit North Korea

BEIJING — As a work of propaganda, the images that North Korea circulated this week showing Google’s executive chairman, Eric E. Schmidt, touring a high-tech incubation center are hard to beat.

Adrian Bradshaw/European Pressphoto Agency

Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, at left wearing a tie, and former Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico spoke to reporters in Beijing on Thursday after returning from North Korea.

With former Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico at his side, Mr. Schmidt, who is fond of describing the Internet as the enemy of despots, toured what was presented as the hub of the computer industry in one of the world’s most pitiless police states. Both men gazed attentively as a select group of North Koreans showed their ability to surf the Web.

It is unclear what the famously hermetic North Koreans hoped to accomplish by allowing the visit. But the photos of the billionaire entrepreneur taking the time to visit the nation’s computer labs were bound to be useful to a new national leader whom analysts say needs to show his people that their impoverished nation is moving forward.

It will matter little, those experts say, that the visitors were bundled against the cold, indoors — a sign of the country’s extreme privation — or that the vast majority of North Koreans have no access to computers, much less the Web beyond their country’s tightly controlled borders.

The men’s quixotic four-day trip ended Thursday much the way it began, with some analysts calling the visit hopelessly naïve and others describing it as valuable back-channel diplomacy at a time when Washington and Pyongyang are not on speaking terms (again).

“I’m still spinning my wheels to figure out a plausible motivation for why they went,” said Daniel Pinkston, a North Korea specialist at the International Crisis Group.

Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Richardson insist they accomplished some good — showing the world has not forgotten the plight of an American detained in the North, and at least trying to nudge the tightly sealed nation a bit closer to the fold of globally connected nations.

“As the world becomes increasingly connected, their decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their  physical world, their economic growth and so forth,” Mr. Schmidt told reporters after arriving at Beijing International Airport. “We made that alternative very, very clear.”

The unofficial visit, however, raised hackles in Washington, and provided rich fodder for commentators and comedians. Even before the Americans left Pyongyang, someone created an account on Tumblr, the popular social blogging site, called “Eric Schmidt looking at things,” that parodied sites (themselves parodies) featuring the country’s leaders earnestly inspecting livestock, soldiers or leather insoles. (Mr. Schmidt is shown looking intently at computer screens, “the back of a North Korean Student,” and Mr. Richardson.)

Others were less kind. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, took to Twitter to call the self-appointed delegation “useful idiots,” and John R. Bolton, a former United Nations ambassador, said the delegation was unwittingly feeding the North Korean propaganda mill as it sought to burnish the credentials of Kim Jung-un, the nation’s leader, who is in his 20s.

“Pyongyang uses gullible Americans for its own purposes,” Mr. Bolton wrote in The New York Daily News.

The State Department said it did not think the timing of the visit was “particularly helpful,” given efforts by the United States to rally international support for tougher sanctions following North Korea’s recent launching of a rocket that intelligence experts say could help in the development of missiles that could one day reach the United States.

As if on cue, the North Korean news media hailed the visit by “the Google team” — which included Jared Cohen, who leads Google’s think tank — highlighting their visit to the mausoleum where Mr. Kim’s grandfather and father lie in state. There, Mr. Richardson and Mr. Schmidt “expressed admiration and paid respect to Comrade Kim Il-sung and Comrade Kim Jong-il,” the North’s main party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said.

Choe Sang-Hun contributed reporting from Seoul, South Korea, Claire Cain Miller from San Francisco, and Edward Wong from Beijing.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 11, 2013

An earlier version of this article paraphrased incorrectly State Department comments about the visit to North Korea by Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Richardson. The Department said it did not think the timing of the visit was “particularly helpful.” It did not call the visit “not particularly helpful.”

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Hotel Fire in Philippines Kills 7, Officials Say

OLONGAPO CITY, Philippines — A fast-moving fire ripped through a small hotel early Friday morning near the former United States naval base in Subic Bay, killing seven people, including four foreign visitors to the area, officials said.

 

The fire started on the ground floor of the Dryden Hotel Subic, in the Barrio Barretto entertainment district, sending flames and smoke into upstairs rooms where guests were sleeping, Jose Borlagdatan, Olongapo City’s chief fire investigator, said in an interview outside the establishment.

 

Fire investigators on the scene described a hellish situation as the fire raged through the hotel’s upper floors, where guests died trying to escape fast-moving flames and intense smoke. One woman was found dead cowering in a cabinet apparently trying to avoid the smoke.

 

“The casualties were the people sleeping upstairs,” said Mr. Borlagdatan, who added that the cause of the blaze was still under investigation.

 

Mr. Borlagdatan said hotel front desk registration records helped identify three American fatalities – James Brigati of Kodiak, Alaska, and Patrick Burt and Joseph Valuso, whose cities of residence were not known. A South Korean national was identified as Kyung Ook Kim of Suwan City.

 

The other casualties were nationals of the Philippines whose identities had not yet been determined, Mr. Borlagdatan said.

 

The fire department received the initial report of the blaze at 3:37 a.m. Friday morning and quickly extinguished it upon arriving at the scene, said Mr. Barlagdatan.

 

Jovy Lustre, a cashier and front desk clerk working at the hotel when the fire broke out, that she was alerted when a co-worker ran from the back of the establishment yelling “fire.”

 

Ms. Lustre said she checked the back of the hotel and saw fire near a back office, with flames licking the ceiling and sending smoke gushing forward. She said she tried to call the fire department but the hotel phone had no dial tone. She ran to a nearby community center to report the incident.

 

“The fire got bigger and bigger,” she said. “It was fast.”

 

On Friday afternoon, the hotel – which is along a national highway about 100 miles north of Manila – appeared gutted. The windows on the second floor, where guests where sleeping when the fire broke out, were broken and the panes were charred.

 

The hotel, lodged between the Lollipop and Rum Jungle nightclubs, which were also damaged in the fire, offered rooms from $20 to $30 for visitors to the beach and entertainment district near Subic Bay.

 

The United States turned over the Subic Bay Naval Base to the Philippines in 1991 and since then the facility has been transformed into a special economic zone. Neighboring Olongapo City was a booming red-light district for decades while the navy base supported the operations of the American navy’s Seventh Fleet.

 

In the 20 years since the base was handed over, Olongapo has retained a red-light district but has also gained popularity as a popular beach resort area for Filipino families seeking to escape the heat and congestion of Manila.

 

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Chinese Firm Buys an American Solar Technology Start-Up

Alexander F. Yuan/Associated Press

The chief of MiaSolé, John Carrington, left, at the announcement of the company’s purchase by Hanergy Holding Group, for which Zhou Jiesan is an executive.

Just a few years ago, Silicon Valley investors were pouring money into solar technologies and talking about how they would bring the same kind of innovation to green energy that they had to the computer chip.

But few anticipated that prices for silicon, the main component of traditional solar panels, would plummet or that Chinese manufacturers, backed by enormous subsidies from their government, would increase solar production capacity by a factor of 17 in just four years.

The resulting plunge in solar panel prices wiped out the dream of a new Solar Valley. Despite making advances in the new technology, known as thin-film solar, the American companies just couldn’t compete.

The federal government’s imposition of steep tariffs last year on Chinese conventional panels helped, but the industry had waited so late to apply for the tariffs that balance sheets had already been crippled with accumulated losses and investors had lost interest.

Some thin-film companies went bankrupt, including Solyndra, which had received half a billion dollars in federal subsidies. Others, like Stion, licensed their technology or formed strategic partnerships with large corporations.

On Wednesday, the chief executive of MiaSolé, one of the most promising Silicon Valley solar start-ups, appeared in Beijing for the announcement that Hanergy Holding Group of China had completed the purchase of his company and its technology for a fraction of what investors had put in. Hanergy made its money building hydroelectric dams.

Hanergy’s purchase of the 100-employee MiaSolé, based in Santa Clara, Calif., follows its acquisition in September of the 400-employee thin-film solar unit of Q.Cells, an insolvent German solar company. The two deals have allowed Hanergy to acquire at low cost an array of patents developed for hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital investments.

“Going head to head against the Asian low-cost, mass-volume crystalline silicon manufacturers is not a wise strategy if you’re trying to produce an ultracheap module in the United States or in high-cost markets,” said Neil Z. Auerbach, managing partner of Hudson Clean Energy Partners, a SoloPower investor. “But if you’re adopting advanced technology, you have a niche strategy in which those incumbents do not have a competitive edge because they don’t really have a product that suits.”

The industry’s broad competitive challenges have prompted American investors to shun the sector. Last year, venture capital financing in the solar sector plummeted nearly 50 percent to $992 million in 103 deals from $1.9 billion in 108 deals in 2011, according to Mercom Capital Group, a clean-tech research and communications company.

Chinese regulators, too, have begun trying to deal with the overcapacity, discouraging their banks from making more large loans to the solar panel sector.

Li Hejun, the chairman of Hanergy, said at the news conference in Beijing that the company’s hydroelectric dams produce several hundred million dollars a year in free cash flow, so it can finance its own investments in solar, which already include six thin-film solar factories, plus three more under construction.

“Everyone knows about the overcapacity in solar energy industry in China, but for us industrial insiders, this overcapacity is but a relative one,” he said. “For those who have technology, the situation is the opposite.”

The thin-film technology championed by the Silicon Valley start-ups uses more exotic materials than conventional solar panels, which are made from crystalline silicon.

Most thin-film modules are slightly less efficient at converting sunlight into electricity than conventional panels, but they are much lighter, which makes them easier to mount in locations that may not support the weight of conventional panels.

Supporters of thin-film technology contend that it has the potential for considerable further efficiency gains that may not be possible for conventional panels, which have been researched for decades. And some research has shown that thin-film can outperform conventional silicon-based panels at high temperatures, such as in deserts, where solar farms are often located.

The technology’s promise attracted the attention of the Obama administration, which provided clean-energy grants and loans to some of the companies, although not to MiaSolé.

Diane Cardwell reported from New York and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong. Patrick Zuo contributed research from Beijing.

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Recipes for Health: Tunisian Style Baked Cauliflower Frittata — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

In the authentic version of this frittata there is a lot more olive oil, as well as chopped hard-boiled eggs. This one is lighter and simpler. It is great for lunch or dinner and keeps well in the refrigerator.

1/2 medium head cauliflower (about 1 1/4 pounds), trimmed of leaves, bottom of the stem trimmed away

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 small onion, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

8 eggs

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1/2 cup finely chopped parsley

2 teaspoons ground caraway seeds

2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan

1/2 teaspoon harissa dissolved in 1 teaspoon water, or 1/4 teaspoon cayenne

Freshly ground pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a 2-quart casserole, preferably earthenware or in a 9-inch cast iron skillet, and brush the bottom and sides of the dish with the oil.

2. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt generously. Add the cauliflower and boil gently until very tender, about 15 minutes. If you prefer, you can cut up the cauliflower and steam it for 15 minutes. Using slotted spoons or tongs remove the cauliflower from the water (or from the steamer), transfer to a bowl of cold water and drain. Cut the florets from the stem and mash into little pieces with a fork. You should have about 3 cups.

3. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil over medium heat in a large, heavy skillet and add the onion. Cook, stirring, until the onion softens, about 5 minutes. Stir in the garlic, stir together for about 30 seconds and remove from the heat.

4. Whisk the eggs in a large bowl. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Stir in the cauliflower, onion and garlic, parsley, ground caraway and Parmesan. Make sure the harissa is dissolved in the water if using, and stir in; otherwise stir in the cayenne. Scrape into the casserole dish.

5. Place in the oven and bake 40 minutes, or until set. Allow to cool for at least 10 minutes before serving. In Tunisia these frittatas are served at room temperature, but you can also serve it hot.

Yield: Serves 6

Advance preparation: The frittata is delicious served the next day. Bring back to room temperature or heat slightly in a low oven before serving. The cooked cauliflower will keep for about 3 days in the refrigerator.

Nutritional information per serving: 165 calories; 12 grams fat; 3 grams saturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 6 grams monounsaturated fat; 249 milligrams cholesterol; 5 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams dietary fiber; 139 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 10 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Recipes for Health: Tunisian Style Baked Cauliflower Frittata — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

In the authentic version of this frittata there is a lot more olive oil, as well as chopped hard-boiled eggs. This one is lighter and simpler. It is great for lunch or dinner and keeps well in the refrigerator.

1/2 medium head cauliflower (about 1 1/4 pounds), trimmed of leaves, bottom of the stem trimmed away

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 small onion, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

8 eggs

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1/2 cup finely chopped parsley

2 teaspoons ground caraway seeds

2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan

1/2 teaspoon harissa dissolved in 1 teaspoon water, or 1/4 teaspoon cayenne

Freshly ground pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a 2-quart casserole, preferably earthenware or in a 9-inch cast iron skillet, and brush the bottom and sides of the dish with the oil.

2. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt generously. Add the cauliflower and boil gently until very tender, about 15 minutes. If you prefer, you can cut up the cauliflower and steam it for 15 minutes. Using slotted spoons or tongs remove the cauliflower from the water (or from the steamer), transfer to a bowl of cold water and drain. Cut the florets from the stem and mash into little pieces with a fork. You should have about 3 cups.

3. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil over medium heat in a large, heavy skillet and add the onion. Cook, stirring, until the onion softens, about 5 minutes. Stir in the garlic, stir together for about 30 seconds and remove from the heat.

4. Whisk the eggs in a large bowl. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Stir in the cauliflower, onion and garlic, parsley, ground caraway and Parmesan. Make sure the harissa is dissolved in the water if using, and stir in; otherwise stir in the cayenne. Scrape into the casserole dish.

5. Place in the oven and bake 40 minutes, or until set. Allow to cool for at least 10 minutes before serving. In Tunisia these frittatas are served at room temperature, but you can also serve it hot.

Yield: Serves 6

Advance preparation: The frittata is delicious served the next day. Bring back to room temperature or heat slightly in a low oven before serving. The cooked cauliflower will keep for about 3 days in the refrigerator.

Nutritional information per serving: 165 calories; 12 grams fat; 3 grams saturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 6 grams monounsaturated fat; 249 milligrams cholesterol; 5 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams dietary fiber; 139 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 10 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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State of the Art: Mixing and Matching to Create the Near-Perfect Digital Calendar - State of the Art

60 Seconds With Pogue: Calendars:
David Pogue reviews calendar apps and software.

You know what’s kind of wild? We can identify products by their container designs. You’d know a ketchup bottle, even if it was empty and unlabeled, no matter what the brand. You’d know a pickle jar, or a milk jug, or a bottle of salad dressing, or a cereal box just by their container shapes.

Same goes for the big software categories. You’d know a spreadsheet anywhere — formula bar at the top, grid below — no matter what company made it. Or e-mail program, word processor, Web browser. They all work pretty much alike.

But there’s one software category, an incredibly important one, where there’s no standard design or set of features: calendar software. Each one seems to have evolved on its own Galápagos island.

Take the new Calendar app in Windows 8. So much of Windows 8’s touch-screen mode is modern, updated and fresh — color, gestures, typography — that you’d expect an equally modernized calendar app at its heart.

Wow, would you be wrong. Listen, Microsoft: 1990 called. It wants its calendar back.

You can’t drag vertically through the Day-view column to create an appointment. You can’t drag an appointment to reschedule it. You can’t record an auto-repeating appointment like “Monday, Wednesday, Friday” or “first Tuesday of the month.”

And incredibly, you can’t create separate categories, like Home, Work and Social. There’s no way to color-code your appointments or hide certain categories.

That same week, on another computer, I installed a Mac calendar program called BusyCal 2.0. You know what’s so brilliant? When you open it, today’s date is always in the top row, no matter what week of the month this is. You always see the next four or five weeks, even if some are in the following month.

And why not? Almost always, you open your calendar to check coming dates — so why fill the screen with dates that have already gone by? That’s a limitation of paper calendars, where every month shows 1 in the first square.

And that’s when I had my epiphany. Our electronics are capable of fantastic flexibility, features and design; why are we still modeling our digital calendars on paper ones?

Apple’s Calendar app for the Mac goes so far as to display a little leather “binding” at the top, complete with scraps of torn-off “paper” to indicate where previous months’ “pages” have been torn off. Why?

If you spend enough time with the world’s calendar apps, you can see, through the mist, a vision of the ultimate digital calendar program. If you could mix and match the best of all the motley calendar apps, here’s what you might come up with.

¶ Give us an alternative to tabbing from Start Time to End Time and typing numbers into a tiny New Event box. Let us drag to indicate a meeting’s length. Or give us speech — intelligent speech, like Siri on the iPhone. “Make an appointment next Tuesday morning at seven: tennis with Casey,” you can say. Your hands never leave the wheel, the cat or the delicious beverage.

We should also be able to type plain-English phrases like “tomorrow 1pm lunch mtg” or “4/15 730p Dinner with boss,” and marvel as it creates the right appointment on the right calendar square at the right time. (Google, Apple’s Calendar for the Mac, BusyCal and, in particular, the iPhone app Fantastical can all do this.) Here again, you’re not fiddling with a dialogue box to enter a new event.

¶ Microsoft’s greatest calendaring effort remains Outlook, the e-mail program that comes with some versions of Microsoft Office. Outlook has its detractors, but one thing it got right is integration with your e-mail and address book. What are appointments, after all, but interactions with people you know — and how better to set up meetings with them than with e-mail?

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 9, 2013

An earlier version of this article stated that Apple and Android phones do not allow users to drag to reschedule appointments on their calendar apps. The standard Android calendar does not allow users to drag to reschedule.

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Three Kurdish Women Found Shot Dead in Paris, Police Say

PARIS (Reuters) - Three Kurdish women said to include a founding member of the PKK militant group were shot dead overnight in Paris in killings that appeared politically motivated, police and other sources said on Thursday.

The bodies of the women were found early on Thursday at the Information Centre of Kurdistan in the city centre, a police source said.

An employee of the centre, which has close links to Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), told French broadcaster i<Tele that one of the dead was a founding member of the group, which is fighting for greater Kurdish autonomy.

The Firat news agency, which is close to the PKK, said another victim was the Paris representative of the Brussels-based Kurdistan National Congress political group.

"There is no doubt this was politically motivated," Berivan Akyol, the centre employee, told i<Tele.

Police launched a murder investigation after discovering the bodies, along with three shell casings, in a room of the Centre in central Paris, the source said, adding that their nationality was Turkish.

The PKK has waged a 28-year insurgency against the Turkish state in which more than 40,000 people are estimated to have been killed.

The Turkish government has recently acknowledged holding talks with the organization's jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan.

They have agreed a framework for a peace plan, according to Turkish media reports.

Firat said two of those killed were shot in the head and one in the stomach, and that the murder weapon was believed to have been fitted with a silencer.

"A couple of colleagues saw blood stains at the door. When they broke the door open and entered they saw the three women had been executed," French Kurdish Associations Federation Chairman Mehmet Ulker was reported as saying by Firat.

Turkish broadcasters reported police as saying the women had links to the PKK and could have been the victims of executions conducted within the group.

The PKK is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union.

(Reporting By Nicolas Bertin, Nicholas Vinocur, additional reporting by Daren Butler in Istanbul; Writing by Nick Vinocur; Editing by John Stonestreet)

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A Bold Dissenter at the Fed, Hoping His Doubts Are Wrong

RICHMOND, Va. — Jeffrey M. Lacker, the Federal Reserve’s most persistent internal critic, does not much resemble a firebrand. He is personally cheerful, professionally inclined to see both sides of an issue and quick to acknowledge he may not be right. He says he would rather be wrong.

Steve Ruark for The New York Times

Jeffrey M. Lacker questions the Fed's tack.

But for the last several years, Mr. Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, has warned repeatedly that the central bank’s extraordinary efforts to stimulate growth are ineffective and inappropriate and, worst of all, that the Fed is undermining its hard-won ability to control inflation.

Last year, Mr. Lacker cast the sole dissenting vote at each of the eight meetings of the Fed’s policy-making committee, only the third time in history a Fed official dissented so regularly.

“We’re at the limits of our understanding of how monetary policy affects the economy,” Mr. Lacker said in a recent interview in his office atop the bank’s skyscraper here. “Sometimes when you test the limits you find out where the limits are by breaking through and going too far.”

As the Fed enters the sixth year of its campaign to revitalize the economy, the debate between the Fed’s majority and Mr. Lacker — whose views are shared by others inside the central bank, as well as some outside observers — highlights the extent to which the Fed is operating in uncharted territory, making choices that have few precedents, unclear benefits and uncertain consequences.

The economy continues to muddle along, shadowed by the threat of another government breakdown, and the crisis of high unemployment is only slowly receding. But in trying to address those problems by suppressing interest rates, the Fed risks the unleashing of speculation and inflation.

It is basically a matter of disposition: is it better to risk doing too much, or not enough?

Mr. Lacker, 57, often uses the word “humility” in describing his views. He means that the Fed should recognize that its power to stimulate the economy is limited, both for technical reasons and because it should not encroach on the domain of elected officials by picking winners and losers.

As he sees it, the Fed’s current effort to reduce unemployment by purchasing mortgage-backed securities crossed both lines. He sees little evidence that it will help to create jobs. And he says that buying mortgage bonds is a form of fiscal policy, because it lowers interest rates for a particular kind of borrower.

But Mr. Lacker is at pains to emphasize that his disagreement with the other 11 members of the Federal Open Market Committee, who supported the purchases, is not about the need for help.

“It’s very unfair to think of me as not caring about the unemployed,” he said. “It just seems to me that there are real impediments, that just throwing money at the economy is unlikely to solve the problems that are keeping a 55-year-old furniture worker from finding a good competitive job.”

That sense of caution is deeply frustrating to proponents of the Fed’s recent efforts. The economists Christina D. Romer and David H. Romer wrote in a paper published last month that such pessimism about the power of monetary policy is “the most dangerous idea in Federal Reserve history.”

“The view that hubris can cause central bankers to do great harm clearly has an important element of truth,” wrote the Romers, both professors at the University of California, Berkeley. “But the hundred years of Federal Reserve history show that humility can also cause large harms.”

It also makes an interesting contrast with Mr. Lacker’s personality. His favorite escape is driving a Porsche Boxster racecar; a model sits on a shelf at his office. He jokes that the track is the only place that people don’t ask him about interest rates — although, he adds, they do care about fuel prices.

And at the Fed, an institution that likes consensus, dissenting also requires a certain amount of boldness. Mr. Lacker has now said no at 13 of the 24 regular policy meetings he has attended as a voting member, one-third of all dissents since Ben S. Bernanke became the Fed’s chairman in 2006. He voted in 2006, 2009 and 2012 as part of the regular rotation of reserve bank presidents.

Even some who sympathize with his concerns doubt the efficacy of such public stands.

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