TCS Daily : September 2005 Archives
Dealing with Hamas
In early August, the week before Israel's unilateral disengagement from Gaza, I argued that following the withdrawal the onus would be on the international community, and especially the EU, to acknowledge the huge political and personal risks that Israeli Prime...
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Bill Bennett's Reality-Based Defenders
Former Drug Czar and Secretary of Education Bill Bennett's comments over skin color, crime and abortion have lots of folks howling, from Nancy Pelosi to Howard Dean to the NAACP to Ted Kennedy to the White House (go figure). What...
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Is the Current Era of Hurricane Activity Unprecedented?
In the age of instant media, the pictures coming from the southeastern United States of the damage wrought by the one-two punch of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have triggered a generous response from our nation to those hurt the most...
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What's the Evidence for and Acrylamide and Cancer Link?
Editor's note: This is part II in a series on the latest acrylamide and cancer scare. To read part I, click here. The major source of bad science on the issue of acrylamide and cancer has been the Center for...
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Limiting the Statute of Limitations
When life seems lovely and good, I like to remind myself that humanity is a depraved and wicked race whose depredations are rarely put to right in a single lifetime. I keep a folder of bookmarks in Internet Explorer, titled:...
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The Spirit of St. Louis: Labor Rising in America
"We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old"-- "Solidarity Forever" Famous Union Song ST. LOUIS -- Anybody who thought that organized labor is dead in America should have attended this week's "Change to Win"...
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Poland's Promised Land?
The results of the Sunday parliamentary elections in Poland were a bit of a surprise and caused some consternation even among the winners. The Law and Justice (PiS) party, which received nearly 30 percent of the votes, was unable...
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Manure vs. Machine
The marketing of "organic" food is where environmentalists and hucksters converge. By most definitions an "organic" product must not contain genetically modified organisms and its production must not involve synthetic chemicals such as pesticides, herbicides or syn
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Call in the Cavalry? Not So Fast
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush asked a logical, though politically complex, question: "Is there a natural disaster, of a certain size, that would then enable the Defense Department to become the lead agency in coordinating and...
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The Bomb-Blowing Heroes of Iraq
In a war in which most coalition casualties are caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs), no unit is more important than Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD). What I saw with an EOD team when I was embedded at Camp Fallujah,...
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Phantom Acrylamide Menace
"This product contains a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer." -- Proposed California Acrylamide Warning Ever since California Attorney General Bill Lockyer announced that he was filing suit against McDonald's, Burger King, Frito-Lay and six o
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Fear of the Other
Not long ago, I was riding the U-bahn in Vienna; the train ducked into underground stops, thundered through the concrete tunnels, and then re-emerged at street level at a more ambling pace. Slow enough, anyway, for me to catch...
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Assumption Function
Is it possible the environmentalist movement is creating yet another doomsday myth out of global warming? After all, it has a history of false alarms, most notably the claim during the 1970s that we were going to experience a new...
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Sharia Scare in Canada
On September 11, 2005 -- perhaps thinking that on a hallowed anniversary in the war against Islamist radicalism, he was engaged in a courageous defense of Western democracy -- Dalton McGuinty, premier (equivalent to governor) of the Canadian province of...
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Reimportation Storm
You'd think Louisianans would know the importance of good levees, following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. But Sen. David Vitter, R-La., is seeking to lower America's levees against reimportation of prescription drugs from abroad, all in the hopes of a...
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Deadly Assumptions: Radiation and Risk
A new report tells us that the number of future cancer deaths as a consequence of the disaster in Chernobyl has been adjusted downward from tens or even hundreds of thousands to 4,000. But even this estimate may be...
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What Do You Want to Know?
What Do You Want to Know? For many years I held that question in mind, as it was my business to write, edit, and see into publication a number of works of reference, whose purpose was to inform persons who...
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Return of Mahathir?
On Malaysia's national day, 31 August, trade and industry minister Rafidah Aziz pulled a surprise act. At the end of a day of celebration which had gathered current and former leaders, Rafidah spotted former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad. Rushing...
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The UN's Biotech for Food Scandal
CHIBA, Japan -- John Bolton, the blunt and controversial U.S. ambassador to the UN, has promised "to advance American interests and ideals at the United Nations." During his first two months on the job, Bolton has denounced the United Nations...
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The European Descent
ATHENS, GREECE -- As I got on the ferry to return to this dirty, dusty, concrete-slathered megalopolis, I couldn't help but think that the cult of ancient provenance I'd witnessed over ten days' travels was but a microcosm of the...
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UneasyJetters
If the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research has its way, the travel revolution that created the new class of "EasyJetters" across Europe will screech to a halt. The Centre has said that such travel must be curtailed if the...
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Where the Boys Aren't
I like to walk around campus on nice days, and sometimes I take pictures. When I post them on my blog, people always comment on the number of women in them. But, in fact, that's a pretty accurate reflection of...
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Who You Gonna Call?
In response to the massive costs associated with the post-Katrina recovery effort, the Blogosphere has started the Porkbusters campaign to get rid of excess government waste. The linked webpage allows for viewers to learn more about the campaign, track the...
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Better Living, Sensible Regulation
The United Nations' Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) was discussed last week in Vienna. It seeks to internationalize a "precautionary principle" approach essentially similar to the EU's REACH proposal, which is causing great concern
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Fear the Reapers
Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have a notoriously bad reputation in France. In such a hostile environment, some people have not hesitated to destroy the few authorized fields of genetically modified plants in the name of the precautionary principle. This sum
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Time to Bring Back a Miracle Drug?
The makers of the multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri have just announced they will seek Food and Drug Administration approval to resume sales of the drug. I don't have MS, but I couldn't be happier. Since April, when I wrote about...
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Agency Head Wanted, Wimps Need Not Apply
The sudden departure of FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford leaves a high-level opening in the Bush administration for the right candidate. It's a hard job, but a potentially rewarding one, offering the opportunity to influence policies and decisions that affect the..
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This Hedge Bet is No Winner
New Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Chris Cox recently told the Wall Street Journal that he plans for the Commission to go forward with its controversial rule requiring hedge fund managers to register with the SEC. Under the rule, registration...
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A Textbook Case of How Bureaucracy Kills
I tend not to get too angry at whatever stupidities the various weasels, politicians and bureaucrats who rule us get up to, preferring to ignore them and exist in a susurration of "what did you expect?"s and "typical"s. After all,...
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Asthma and Air Pollution
The prevalence of asthma rose by about 75 percent overall between 1980 and 1996, and by nearly a factor of two in children up to 17 years of age.[1] Prevalence seems to have leveled off since then.[2] Roughly 6...
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Millennium Development Holes
Editor's note: This article is the second of two parts. Part one may be read here. Pick up just about any management text today and there is a chapter or two about the importance of strategic thinking and planning, organizational...
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A Case for Immigration
"The Census Bureau reported last week that since 1989 about 70 percent of the increase in people below the government's official poverty line occurred among Hispanics. Over the same period, Hispanics accounted for more than half of the increase in...
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Dangerous Demagoguery
It's no secret that Hurricane Katrina did awful damage to the Gulf Coast region and the US energy infrastructure in the Gulf. A lesser known casualty of the storm has been the thinking of many politicians and pundits. Some of...
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The Matter with Kansas Can Be Understood at Woolworth's
Not long ago, while waiting to meet some friends for dinner, I dropped into a bookstore where I happened to glance through the political bestseller, What's the Matter With Kansas? -- a title borrowed from a once famous article by...
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Cataloguing the Federal and State Response to Katrina
Many columns have been written on this site in the last few weeks about what the federal government should do in response to Katrina (see here and here for example). Unfortunately, given the nature of political responses to disaster, many...
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'Corpse Bride' Stares Us Cold in the Face
The new movie "Corpse Bride" is getting great reviews. And it's probably destined for a pretty good take at the box office. But it could have been much more. If it had been more faithful to its source material,...
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Katrina Costs Justify Cutting Amtrak
Following our nation's worst-ever natural disaster, Washington will probably send $200 billion in aid to rebuild New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities. Doing so will cause the federal deficit to skyrocket. President Bush suggested last week that some Hurricane...
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The Technorati Candidate
In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore found out that it was possible to win the popular vote, and still lose the electoral vote. In last week's Democratic primary for New York City Public Advocate, Andrew Rasiej found out that...
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Dangerous Demagoguery
It's no secret that Hurricane Katrina did awful damage to the Gulf Coast region and the US energy infrastructure in the Gulf. A lesser known casualty of the storm has been the thinking of many politicians and pundits. Some of...
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California's Policies Are Based on True Lies
It hasn't been the best of times for California's Arnold Schwarzenegger lately. So last week's Summit on Health, Nutrition and Obesity, finally provided the Terminator with a few minutes of celebrity filled photo-ops with the likes of Dr. Phil, SpongeBob...
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Terror Pipeline
An unprecedented acknowledgement by the Saudi interior ministry that a terrorist cell eliminated recently by the security forces in Dammam was planning to attack key oil installations, coupled with a near-simultaneous revelation that four Iraqi insurgents had been
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No Deal With NoKo
Is the news that North Korea has finally agreed to disband its offensive nuclear technology in exchange for economic incentives proof that diplomacy "does work after all" in the words of a New York Times editorial? After decades of deceit...
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Encourage Supply: A Cure for the Public's Anger
"An angry public wants quick relief from high prices" at the pump, says Business Week. That's hardly a surprise. Over the past year, the Energy Department reports, a gallon of regular gasoline has gone from $1.86 to $2.96. But even...
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Iraq and the Police Principle
On October 19th, 2005, the reckoning will begin for the man who ruled Iraq by fear and murder for thirty-five years. Once Saddam Hussein dreamed that he was a successor to Saladin, filled the squares with his statues, and made...
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The Planning Illusion
"Hurricane Katrina has transformed Mississippi's mayors into car thieves, and senators into blockade runners. Isolated by the initial hit of the storm and failed by the slow federal response, citizens have fended for themselves in some original and not entirely...
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The Chirac Doctrine
Under President Jacques Chirac, French foreign policy has become increasingly assertive - although one French academic recently described its raison d'être as to "oppose just to exist." But such descriptions are not entirely fair. While Chirac inherited a French fo
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From New Orleans to Gaza
Watching last week's sickening footage of the desecration of Gaza's synagogues and other holy places, I couldn't help thinking I'd seen this movie before. The astonishing images of young, armed men running riot around a once-civilized place, of people hauling...
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The Politics of Population Control
One of the biggest casualties in the battle over democracy and demography is individual freedom. For their part, India and China fought this war using coercive policies to impose controls on population growth. India's program of forced sterilization under Indira...
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With China In the Mix, Today Isn't Quite Yesterday
Light water still bedevils Asia's diplomatic heavyweights. North Korea's demand for light water nuclear reactors, that is. Monday's hosanna headlines suggested Kim Jong Il's evil regime in Pyongyang had decided to ditch its nuclear weapons program. The North
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The Next Proletariat?
Since the peak of the Industrial Revolution, the nature of work in western capitalist economies has been changing. The massive factory manufacturing model of employment is giving way to more specialized skill and knowledge based employment, as technology replaces.
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Confessions of an Engineering Washout
I am an engineering washout. I left a chemical engineering major in shame and disgust to pursue the softer pleasures of a liberal arts education. No, do not pity me, gentle reader; do not assuage your horror and dismay at...
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Bell Bottom Blues
If you closed your eyes tight -- to ignore the fashion differences -- and merely listened to news broadcasts, you'd swear you were in the 1970s. On Capitol Hill last week, debate swirled around the Supreme Court and a woman's...
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On the Right Path
As America recovers from Hurricane Katrina, another storm is growing ever more menacing for the Department of Homeland Security. Accusations of institutional failure by DHS in its response to Katrina increase each day. No target has been left untouched --...
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Avoiding Losership
"Fight this war right or get out." This warning sent by the mother of one of the 16 Ohio-based marines killed in August summarizes the alternatives facing the Bush administration. Popular support for the war is fading. Casualties are...
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Is This the Right Way to Return to the Moon?
President George W. Bush has called for Americans to return to the moon by 2020. Now NASA has come out with a more detailed presentation, reported in Space.com, of what they have in mind: NASA briefed senior White House officials...
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India Still Has a Ways to Go
A common refrain heard throughout India over the last half of the twentieth century was that the double-barreled British economic weapon of forced free trade and textile dumping sent India into a destitution from which she suffers to this...
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No Solons, They
By most accounts, John Roberts dazzled at his confirmation hearings this past week. The Washington Post endorsed Judge Roberts's confirmation and Post editorial writer David Broder called the Judge "obviously -- ridiculously -- well-equipped to lead government's th
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A Farewell to Imams
Italy's recent crackdown on suspected terrorists led some analysts to wonder if the country is toughening its anti-terror policies, after years of lacking a serious strategy to deal effectively with the problem. It seems that at least this time...
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Where is the Wealth of Nations?
The World Bank has just released a report called "Where is the Wealth of Nations?". As the Private Sector Development Blog (which is itself an offshoot but not a part of the World Bank) describes it: "Meant to challenge...
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City of Light, Ablaze
PARIS -- High-pitched screams pierce the soft night air. Wave upon wave of piercing screams. Coming from rue du Roi Doré. The African squatters? The screams intensify, tearing into the soul of the night. What could be happening? Tribal...
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The Impossibility of 'Planned Improvisation'
"Uncertainty refers, per Frank Knight's 1921 definition, to unmeasurable and unquantifiable risk...[It] bears a close relationship to 'ambiguity'...Entrepreneurs who undertake uncertain initiatives face a wide spread between desirable and undesirable outcomes, but
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Poverty and Governance: Two Sides of the Same Coin
NEW YORK -- The Clinton Global Initiative wrapped up in New York over the weekend. The three-day confab, created by the 42nd president, brought together political and corporate leaders, Hollywood stars and philanthropists for a kind of American Davos. The...
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The Millennium Sham
Editor's note: This article is the first of two parts. If you listened only to the "leaked" confidences of unnamed UN sources or the world's liberal press the last couple of weeks, you would think that the Millennium Development Goals...
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Velvet Revolutions and the Logic of Terrorism
Part of our difficulty in dealing with global terror directed against civilian populations is that we have not, I believe, understood what it was designed to attack. Some see it as a war between cultural blocs, others as a...
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No Tyranny of the Tiny Minority
As in 1996, New Zealand's Mixed Member Proportional electoral system (borrowed from Germany), has delivered a period of a few weeks of uncertainty. We will not know which party has achieved the highest number of votes until all the special...
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Will Katrina Impoverish the Nation?
With apologies to Newton, every catastrophic action leads to a massive political and economic overreaction. And with apologies to George Santayana, those politicians and bureaucrats who remember the lessons of history are doomed to have learned the wrong ones. That
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Clinton: Kindly Killing the United Nations
NEW YORK -- United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has lots of enemies. But perhaps he really needs to keep an eye on his "friends," such as Bill Clinton. In the minds of many conservatives, the UN is a...
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Fischer King?
BERLIN -- Confused voters plunged Germany into political limbo on Sunday, splitting their ballots among five parties. The result: challenger Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's Social Democrats (SPD) are almost e
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So What Really Happened After Chernobyl?
Why would an energy-craving nation (the U.S.) that also demands a pristine environment put the kibosh on a limitless form of power (nuclear energy) that produces no air pollution and no emissions environmentalists claim cause global warming? It stems essentially...
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What a Piece of [Ongoing] Work Is Man!
What a piece of [ongoing] work is man! So suggest some scientists who have done some complex statistical analyses of the variations in two human genes. These genes affect brain development, and the scientists believe that they have evidence...
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Three Cheers for "Price Gougers"
With every disaster or crisis, it seems that the public, press and politicians require a remedial course in Economics 101. In fact, apparently we need an ongoing educational campaign even when there is no catastrophe, as demonstrated by the recent...
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Gouging? No Such Thing
For various reasons, I took a lot of trips to the local hardware store on Sunday. On my route there were two gas stations gazing at each other across the thoroughfare. On the first trip, I noticed that one...
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The Post-Katrina Jump at the Pump -- Unavoidable?
Under any set of circumstances, Hurricane Katrina would have had a noticeable impact at the pump. However, by hitting America's single largest oil and refining region at a time of already-tight supplies and the high prices, the effects have been...
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Energy and Hurricane Katrina: Poison or Cure?
"How ironic that the world's No 1 polluter is now reaping the, 'rewards' that so many have warned would flow." (Jon Snow, Britain's Channel 4 News)As modern technology has accelerated the diffusion of news, it has hurried the clamor to...
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The Coming Economic Pandemic in AIDS Treatment?
The World Health Organization (WHO) initiated a scale-up on global AIDS treatment in December 2003. At the time, it announced its goal to have three million patients under antiretroviral (ARV) therapy by the end of 2005 (so-called "3 x 5"...
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The Millennium Development Goal Merry-Go-Round
This week the world's leaders are gathering in New York to discuss the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These goals were set in 2000 by the United Nations and aim to improve the lot of humanity on a whole host...
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Tony Blair Pulls the Plug on Kyoto at Clinton Summit
NEW YORK - Kyoto Treaty RIP. That's not the headline in any newspaper this morning emerging from the first day of the Clinton Global Initiative, but it could have been -- and should have been. Onstage with former president Bill...
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Global Warming and Hurricanes: Still No Connection
A scientific team led by Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology today published findings in Science magazine. The team claimed to have found evidence in the historical record of both more tropical cyclones, such as Hurricane Katrina,...
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The Case for Cutting Indonesia's Fuel Subsidy
The Indonesian rupiah has lost more than 5% of its value against the US dollar this year and is at its lowest rate since March 2002. Perhaps the single most important cause of the weakness is the Indonesian government's subsidies...
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Coalition of the Seething
The banner "STOP CLIMATE CHAOS" was unfurled in London earlier in September to announce a new coalition of eighteen social and environmental groups including Greenpeace, Oxfam, WWF, Friends of the Earth, People and Planet. What the banner should say is...
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London Eye
LONDON -- Here in this great world city, the birthplace of modern democratic republican government, the seat of the last great empire, I find myself too overwhelmed to write a single, unified essay. So here are several shorter thoughts held...
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A Perfect Excuse to Commiserate or A Perfect Excuse to Celebrate?
It has become fashionable in trade policy circles to find fault with APEC. Yet much of this criticism is unfounded. In the mid-1990s, the EU was so concerned about the threat posed by this experiment in Asia-Pacific regionalism that it...
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East Meets West
Economic liberalization in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe is paying off. Per capita incomes in that region are growing faster than those in Western Europe. The fact that the new poorer EU members are catching up with the old is...
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Flat Tax Frenzy
Known for having one of the most complicated and onerous tax regimes in the world, Germany recently surprised observers overseas when it started a public discourse on a concept that has been floated in the United States for quite some...
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Last Exit to Kyoto
The European Parliament's Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety is releasing a new report on the European Commission's communication on "Winning the Battle Against Global Climate Change". The report, edited by Swedish MEP Anders Wijkman, is a.
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Roberts and Rules of Law
Watching the confirmation hearings for John Roberts is illuminating for people like me. I had Civics 101, but it never hurts to be reminded that the job of a judge -- especially a Supreme Court justice -- is to interpret...
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The Iron Law of Oligarchy, Revisited
Those who are earnestly trying to promote the ideal of democracy throughout the world would be well-advised to ponder the work of a German sociologist whose most important book is no longer read, and who, perhaps for that very reason,...
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Ports in a Storm
CHANGI, EAST SINGAPORE -- A great port city is inundated. Hundreds, even thousands die in the initial wave. No. It's not New Orleans. It's Singapore. And it wasn't a hurricane, typhoon or tsunami, but the terrible wave of the Japanese...
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The Technology War Escalates
Take 40 pounds of Kevlar body armor, armor inserts, helmet and support equipment, then add weapon and ammunition. Heat to 125 degrees Fahrenheit, using the Mesopotamian sun as an oven. Now hike down the Baghdad boulevard and remain alert for...
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Little Guys Get Some Love
The analyst industry in the U.S. is undergoing a dramatic reorganization. First, in response to a settlement driven by Eliot Spitzer, millions of dollars are pouring in from the big Wall Street houses to independent research firms. Second, Nasdaq and...
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The Press Gets Backbone. Does It?
One of the silver linings sought in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is the hope that somehow the hurricane -- and the response to it -- have taught the press to "regain its spine" in questioning public officials over failures...
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The Ultimate 'Public Health' Shield
A PETITION from the public health movement, including the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the American Public Health Association, the American Cancer S
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When to Sell a Stock?
My biggest mistake in 25 years of writing newspaper and magazine articles about the stock market started innocently. My intention, in a February 23, 2003, column for the Washington Post, was to show readers how to analyze a stock and...
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Hey, Maybe the Singularity Really Is Near
Ray Kurzweil's book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology comes out next week. And I suspect that a lot of people wonder if things will really happen as fast as Kurzweil suggests. But as I look at the...
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Ultimate Environmentalism
How to save the environment? Not just from mankind, but ultimately from nature itself? Those are tough questions, but we have to start somewhere, and where better than with cute cats? And after we've cloned these cute critters, we have...
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Green Multiple Personality Disorder?
Has the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) finally acquired the mainstream respectability it craves? It has produced a new report "The Green Buck -- using economic tools to deliver conservation goals -- a WWF field guide;" which is posted...
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Constitutional Crisis
There is a palpable disappointment with the new Iraqi constitution, a feeling that it will not sufficiently protect individual rights from the more illiberal traditions of Muslim culture. The concern may be legitimate, but the blame is misplaced. The problem...
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Electric Slide
A group of Italian consumers associations is organizing an "electricity strike" this Wednesday, September 14. Italians are being asked to stop using electricity for five minutes at 11:30 am to protest against rising power costs. Adoc, Adusbef, Codacons, and...
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How to Rebuild a Great City
With rescue and evacuation nearly complete and the broth being sucked out of the bowl of toxic soup, it is the time to stop the finger-pointing and the politicizing and start thinking about how to rebuild New Orleans. "Of course...
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The MSM Bites Back!
Mainstream Media RIP? Not yet. Indeed, for now, the headline should read, "Mainstream Media Rips Bush in Wake of Katrina Crisis." And in fact, the header atop The Boston Phoenix, "Katrina Rips Bush a New One," was far harsher. As...
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Failure to Communicate
Talk about tunnel vision. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, announced last week that the Senate Commerce Committee was putting on hold any action on DTV (digital television) legislation. His reasoning? "We're not going to get involved in any kind of legislation...
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Powers of Mind
Paul Orfalea is a hyperactive dyslexic who barely reads or writes. As a student, he had dismal grades and was expelled several times, even spending some time in a program for the mentally retarded. He graduated eighth from the...
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Penn Station: Back To the Future
Since 1968, Penn Station, one of New York City's two main railroad stations, has been widely hated by commuters for its dank atmosphere and minimalist accommodations. It's also hated because of what it replaced: from 1910 until 1963, the station...
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Got Tech?
By almost any measure, the rest of the world is catching up to the U.S. when it comes to preparing the next generation of future technology leaders. Worrisome signs are appearing on the horizon that the U.S. is no longer...
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Hurricane Relief Spending: How Will We Pay For it?
President Bush just signed a bill authorizing an additional $51.8 billion to be spent in hurricane relief. This raises Katrina's cost to federal taxpayers to $62.3 billion so far. "The responsibility of caring for hundreds of thousands of citizens...
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Imperium Americanum? Hardly.
Imperialism. The word has become so thinly stretched its meaning is now gossamer. A Google News search of the word reveals a sorry list of headlines, most of which refer to the United States and the current Administration. If nothing...
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Here's Some Good That Pols Can Do
A week ago, Hurricane Katrina, a Category 4 storm, shoved the waters of the Gulf of Mexico up into shallow Lake Pontchartrain to the north of New Orleans, then dumped the lake into the bowl of the city, causing destruction...
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A Challenge for Brad DeLong
"we should be surprised. FEMA is a bureaucracy. A bureaucracy is designed to keep functioning even when it is headed by a man who was suddenly told by his private-sector bosses to find a new job and whose only qualification...
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New Orleans in the Past Tense
New Orleans, cradle of several American music styles, cuisines, and fictional vampires, wasn't quite like the rest of the country. It often seemed as if it was part of something older, more a hybrid of France and the Caribbean than...
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Four Years After September 11th: The Media Failure
We have reached the fourth anniversary of the terrible attacks of September 11, 2001. I am sorry to say that, in my view, the U.S. and Western media have completely failed to meet the challenge of reporting on Islam, in...
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Are Global Warming and Katrina Linked?
Shortly after the Gulf Coast was slammed by a Category 4 storm, environmental activist Ross Gelbspan wrote in the Boston Globe that the hurricane was "nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service Katrina, [but] its real name was global warming."...
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Ahnold Schwarzen-Gay-Hater?
Opponents of same-sex marriage may claim it as a victory: Ahnold terminates gay marriage in California. Deep down, however, these folks know that this time it's not the Governator saying "I'll be back." It's the people who believe that gay...
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California's New Orleans
Quick, name an American city of 450,000 where the majority of the population is non-white, where a quarter of the population lives in poverty, and where some of the city streets are, even on a dry day, below sea level....
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California's Congressional Pests
Often I find merit in the quip that we are, indeed, a two-party system -- the Stupid One (Republican) and the Evil One (Democratic). Recently, however, the overwhelmingly Democratic California congressional delegation seems to be poaching on the Republicans' turf..
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The Beeb Easy
It's said that half of Louisiana is underwater and the other half is under indictment. That is one quote that the BBC, in its extraordinary coverage of Katrina, missed, but it gives a truer snapshot of Louisiana and the city...
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Energy and Hurricane Katrina: Poison or Cure?
"How ironic that the world's No 1 polluter is now reaping the, 'rewards' that so many have warned would flow." (Jon Snow, Britain's Channel 4 News)As modern technology has accelerated the diffusion of news, it has hurried the clamor to...
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Storms of Stupidity on the Op-Ed Pages
The tragedy and travesty of Katrina and New Orleans has three basic parts: (1) very, very bad weather hitting a perilously situated city; (2) government failure at the local, state, and federal level; (3) the poverty of New Orleans, ensuring...
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Katrina and the Political Waves
Rescuers will still be salvaging bloated bodies from debris of New Orleans when the nation commemorates the fourth anniversary of the last catastrophe that focused the world's attention on America, 9/11. Whether the death toll from Katrina exceeds that killed...
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Interview with Dr. Roy Spencer
Dr. Roy Spencer is a principal research scientist for University of Alabama in Huntsville. In the past, he has served as Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where he directed research into...
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Interview with Dr. James O'Brien
Dr. James J. O'Brien is Director of the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies at Florida State University, where he is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of Meteorology and Oceanography. James Glassman: Dr. O'Brien, in the wake of Hurricane Katr
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Interview with Dr. William Gray
Meteorologist Dr. William Gray may be the world's most famous hurricane expert. More than two decades ago, as professor of atmospheric science and head of the Tropical Meteorology Project at Colorado State University, he pioneered the science of hurricane forecasti
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Bill Easterly Is About to Spoil the Poverty Party
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) yesterday released its annual report, the Human Development Report. I don't think it's really going to surprise anyone to hear that while certain things are getting better, others are not and we should...
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An All Too Perfect Storm
ABERDEEN, MD -- As I look out the window of my train, not far from the "proving ground" where the Army develops and tests the ordnance that our fighting men use in combat, I wonder whether I am being serious...
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The State of Nature in New Orleans: What Hobbes Didn't Know
In the most recent issue of Newsweek, George F. Will has written a remarkably thoughtful essay on the significance of Katrina. In the aftermath of Katrina, Will observes, the city of New Orleans reverted back to what the seventeenth century...
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What the Texas Jury Did to Patients
After a Texas jury awarded a quarter of a billion dollars to the widow of a man who died after taking the pain reliever Vioxx, jury members told the press they wanted to send the drug industry a message. Exactly...
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The Invisible Helping Hand
At this point, there seems little doubt that government -- at all levels from small localities all the way up to the federal government -- fumbled the response to Hurricane Katrina quite badly. As President Bush correctly observed, the response...
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The Machine Stops
As Lake Ponchatrain's waters began to drown his city, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin had the colossal nerve to shout indignantly "Get off your asses, and let's do something" -- and then continued doing nothing himself, but add to...
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State Venture Capital?
The prime minister of Latvia recently abolished the Absurdities Prevention Bureau inherited from his predecessor. At first read that might produce a grin, yet the PM's decision seems immature as the biggest absurdity has yet to be tackled: the desire...
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Trojan Disasters
In the wake of the awful calamity wrought by Hurricane Katrina in both New Orleans and Mississippi, pundits have begun to put forth calls for bigger government to address future catastrophes -- whether natural or man made. Thus, E.J. Dionne...
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Sour Grapes
A week ago, in Northern Italy, in a small town at the foothills of the Dolomite Alps, I was a part of an illegal transaction: a glass of an ancient wine that is illegal to produce for sale was...
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Fools Rush In
While the tragic events are still unfolding in New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast, it is business as usual in Washington DC. Critics of President Bush are blaming him for requesting less money for programs to guard...
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De Villepin's War
"Since my nomination, I have been in a merciless fight against unemployment, which is THE evil of our country. But this evil is not irreparable if jobs we look for jobs where they can be found. That is why,...
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Britain's Mad Mullah
After the July 7 terrorist bombings on London Transport and the now-traditional evasions, equivocations and barely concealed satisfaction of Britain's seething mad mullahs and the Islamic grievance industry, Tony Blair went on national TV to announce that the gove
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Giuliani Time
In an essay[1] last week, Lee Harris argued that the looting of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was the type of behavior that should be expected of human beings when "civilized order collapses." But while it may be inevitable for...
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Gouging? No Such Thing
For various reasons, I took a lot of trips to the local hardware store on Sunday. On my route there were two gas stations gazing at each other across the thoroughfare. On the first trip, I noticed that one...
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Bad Bets
By last Tuesday afternoon I suspected that much. By Thursday evening -- after I saw a distraught black woman pleading into a TV camera: "Help us, they are raping children out there!" and after I watched other cameras repeatedly...
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Failed State
The scenes of wanton chaos, lawlessness, desperation and death in New Orleans can't be blamed on Mother Nature alone. We have known from centuries of bitter experience just what she is capable of. And in Katrina's case, she told...
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Japan's "Lion King" Sharpens His Claws
After more than a decade of stagnation and agonisingly slow moving public life in Japan, more Noh theatre than vibrant modern democracy, suddenly the world's second largest economy is on fast-forward. Previously unthinkable political and economic reforms now look.
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No Refugees in America
There are no Hurricane Katrina refugees in America. This does not mean that there are not evacuees, or disaster victims, or displaced persons who need help. And this does not mean, in the short term, that victims of Hurricane Katrina...
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Storm und Drang
BERLIN -- The chaos and anarchy that reigned in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, culminating in Mayor Ray Nagin's desperate "SOS", has unfortunately produced a resurgence of anti-Americanism in Germany. The timing, which coincides with Germany's election campai
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Privilege 101
One of the arguments that has erupted in relation to the nomination of Judge John Roberts to the United States Supreme Court concerns just how available his writings as a lawyer in the White House Counsel's Office during the Reagan...
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We Need Two National Guards
So the massive catastrophe has wrecked your house, the power is gone, food and water are running low, savages own the streets, the halt and lame are dying in droves, and escape is difficult or impossible. Although the world around...
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The Anti-Theorists: What Bush and Rehnquist Had in Common
George W. Bush has lost his favorite Supreme Court Justice. No, Antonin Scalia has not quietly resigned. (Does Scalia quietly do anything?) And yes, Bush does like to say that Scalia is his favorite Justice. But I have a sneaking...
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Rage and Reason
Like many Americans who watched the scenes of horror unfold in New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina, I found myself feeling a surge of rage and fury against the lack of governmental response to the suffering. Yet,...
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Disasters and Responses
The recovery efforts along the Gulf Coast are still ramping up, but the political point-scoring has been at full pitch for days now. I think that's counterproductive -- and says more about the immaturity of our political and media classes...
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The Stakes Are Twice As High
So now the stakes are twice as high. And the stakes over the future of the Supreme Court were already high, even before the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. So debate over new faces on the court will rage,...
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There Are Different Kinds of 'Preparedness'
A professional Cassandra by the name of Lloyd J. Dumas, author of a book on "human fallibility and dangerous technologies," took time out of his criticism of the U.S. military, U.S. nuclear weapons, U.S. space-shuttle missions and other such horrors...
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We Know How This Is Going to End
We already know how this is going to end. The American economy will shiver a bit, stagger slightly, adjust itself and absorb the cost of Katrina. The miserable scumbags who exploited the misery and interfered with the rescue will...
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The Post-Katrina Jump at the Pump -- Unavoidable?
Under any set of circumstances, Hurricane Katrina would have had a noticeable impact at the pump. However, by hitting America's single largest oil and refining region at a time of already-tight supplies and the high prices, the effects have been...
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Reagan in the Big Easy
Seventeen summers ago, my brother and I had the good fortune to stand on the floor of the Superdome in New Orleans. What is today a scene of misery, despair and hopelessness was back then a scene of joy, merriment...
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The City Below Sea Level
The founding of New Orleans owes much to the conniving not of a Frenchman, but of a Scotsman. John Law was a professional gambler who fled Great Britain after killing a man in a duel. After wandering the Continent, he...
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Could the Tragedy Have Been Averted?
The tragedy currently unfolding in New Orleans is in many ways unprecedented in U.S. history, and it is tempting to think that the misery we are witnessing could have been avoided. I would like to suggest that some level of...
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Power Plant Pollution and Environmentalists' Power
"New Rules Could Allow Power Plants to Pollute More" according to Wednesday's Washington Post.[1] The Post story focused on a draft Bush-administration regulation that would make it harder to trigger New Source Review (NSR), a Clean Air Act provision...
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Three Cheers for "Price Gougers"
With every disaster or crisis, it seems that the public, press and politicians require a remedial course in Economics 101. In fact, apparently we need an ongoing educational campaign even when there is no catastrophe, as demonstrated by the recent...
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Breaks in the Levee Logic
The news and opinion spin cycle is moving faster than the winds of a category 4 hurricane. Barely have we had the opportunity to feel denial about the terrible tragedy, feel sympathy for victims and begin lending our support than...
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'The Gift of More'
[T]here is no reason to pity old people. Instead, young people should envy them. It is true that the old have no opportunities, no possibilities in the future. But they have more than that. Instead of possibilities in the future,...
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How Gov't Can Help: By Getting Out of the Way
When the initial rescue efforts wind down in the ravaged Gulf Coast area, the much longer process of cleanup and recovery will begin. In this effort, while government will be involved, millions of people will be picking up -- literally...
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Investing After Enron
Reading Kurt Eichenwald's fascinating book on Enron Corp., "A Conspiracy of Fools," is enough to make an investor throw up his hands (or his lunch), sell all his stocks and buy a bundle of nice short-term U.S. Treasury bonds. Eichenwald...
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Another "Gulf War"
Like an Air Force smart bomb, Hurricane Katrina made a direct hit on a hideously vulnerable spot on the nation's underbelly. Overnight, she turned New Orleans, one of America's most charming and seductive cities, into a festering lake of filth....
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When the Moral Levee Breaks
On the Tuesday after the levees broke in New Orleans, I found myself sitting in a submarine sandwich shop in a suburb of Atlanta, where, for the first time, I saw the video of the looting that was taking...
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The Peter Principle Stalks Brussels
I wrote here recently that as politicians are incompetent we therefore shouldn't ask them to actually try and do very much. I'd just like to call for a big vote of thanks to a certain Peter Mandelson for making my...
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Hurricane of Misinformation
One of the major techniques of modern politics is to take every important event and tie it to the back of one's own particular hobby horse. One of the more ludicrous examples was the utterly absurd claims that the...
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So Much Money, So Much Talent
It's been rough sailing for the hedge fund industry lately. As if the threat of increased regulation of the worldwide hedge fund industry wasn't enough, the recent flap over nearly $440 million in missing funds from Connecticut-based hedge fund Bayou...
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JobBay
As much of Europe struggles with double-digit unemployment this year, the United States has been creating an average of 200,000 new jobs a month. One of our great advantages is the relative ease with which Americans can start new businesses....
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The Second Act in Afghanistan's Evolution
How will the Taliban contest Afghanistan's mid-September parliamentary elections? With their only political weapons: terror strikes and fearful headlines. Scheduled for Sept. 18 -- four years and a week after 9-11 -- the parliamentary elections are the "seco
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