TCS Daily : April 2005 Archives
Video (Games) Killed the Media Stars
As everyone knows, the videogame industry has eclipsed the movie industry in terms of total revenues. Still, in terms of cultural impact and influence, movies still predominate. Yet that could be changing. How do I know that such change...
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Grid Lock
Europe's nascent single market has been suffering teething problems. Monetary union is a case in point. Uniform interest rates across member states have exposed in stark relief growth-rate differentials between countries which adapt (think of Spain or Ireland) and
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Hybrid Hubris?
The Commonwealth of Virginia is faced with an unpleasant problem with its HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) lanes in the highways of Northern Virginia. Designed to speed people who are willing to take the bus or carpool to their workplaces...
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Question Authority?
Last Saturday Night, Jews around the world ushered in the eight-day-long holiday of Passover, which celebrates the exodus of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. The prevailing theme is freedom: the escape from an enslaving regime, the beginning of communal...
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James Hansen's Increasing Insensitivity
It seems that the longer NASA scientist Jim Hansen studies the climate, the more insensitive he, or should we say, his interpretation of the climate, becomes. Climate "sensitivity" is the change in surface temperature expected for each additional Watt of...
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Americans Despise this Tax, So Why Compromise at All?
The clock is ticking. Unless Congress acts -- who knows? -- we could see a wave of suicides, patricides, matricides and rich-uncle killings in 2010. That's the year that the federal tax on estates -- also known as the "death...
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Only the Plump Die Young?
Some people don't know when to quit. You would think that after the debacle over the grossly inflated estimates of so-called obesity-related deaths from the US Center for Disease Control that the fat police would have the decency to just...
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Lebanon's Withdrawal Symptoms
BEIRUT -- It was enlightening, though not surprising, that in the days leading up to the Syrian Army's pullout from Lebanon, which was completed on Tuesday, a peculiar activity took place. Syrian soldiers removed statues and other effigies of the...
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Semper Infantilis
Damn those sexy Marines! A curse upon their macho swagger and fascinating scars and rugged boot-camp-sculpted physiques and manly ill-fitting uniforms! How dare these vulpine volcanoes of voluptuous virility vend their voluminous values to vexed valedictorians? Who
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Getting Over Our China Syndrome
Jane screws up, yet Jane endures. That seems to be the lesson of the success of Jane Fonda's new autobiography, "My Life so Far" (Random House). One reason Americans like Miss Fonda is that her challenges are so often their...
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Promoting Democracy Abroad: a Debate Continues
Justin Logan has penned this reply to my piece on the shape and nature of a libertarian foreign policy. While I think that Logan has made some interesting contributions to this debate, he does make a number of arguments with...
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Critical Hurdles Towards Thailand-US Free Trade
The third round of formal negotiations for the Thailand-US Free Trade Agreement (TUSFTA) during 4-9 April 2005 in Pattaya, Thailand brought the free trade talk to a critical stage. The first three rounds of formal negotiations since August 2004 consisted...
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Profiles in European Courage: The Surviving and Thriving Euro-atlanticists
Former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar writes in his new book, Portraits and Profiles, from Fraga to Bush, about French President Jacques Chirac. "He is not a pro-Atlanticist," Aznar says. "If he can start alliances to weaken the...
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Bad Architects Destabilize Global Markets
After widespread economic and financial turmoil in much of East Asia in 1997 and 1998, there was a widespread perception that global markets were in a state of crisis and that emerging markets were victimized by short-term capital flows. This...
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United Nutters
This week it was confirmed that Zimbabwe has been one of 15 countries chosen by members of the UN's Economic and Social Council in New York to serve on the UN Commission on Human Rights. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill...
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"Profiling" the Critics of Extremist Islamic Ideology
A continuous propaganda of grievance emanates from the Wahhabi lobby in America - the range of organizations that make up the country's "Islamic" establishment. Backed by Saudi Arabia and its state cult, which is the most extreme form of the...
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Music Hellevision
One of the superstitions I picked up in my youth is that things come in threes and along comes a TV show to prove me right. First we had Margot Wallstrom introducing a new blog. Now we have two more...
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The Great Illusion, Redux
In case you've been residing under a rock these past few years, or have just been reading the newspaper and watching the news, you probably didn't notice that peace is at hand. Not just any peace, mind you, but...
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A Media Tipping Point?
Over three years ago, I wrote: Big journalism is in trouble, and big journalists don't like it. . . . Annoyance to journalists is the least of this, because what is really going on is something much more profound:...
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Sick Man of the World
A hundred years ago Europe was at the center of the world. The British controlled a far-flung empire - the banner head of a flourishing global free trade system. To the south of Europe, the former Sea of Prosperity, the...
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Climate Political Science
Residents in the New York metropolitan region now can consult Climate Change Information Resources. This new web page sews together climate science and public advice through an advisory committee that includes government agencies and environmental organizations. Th
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A Poor Helmsman Navigates FDA's Perfect Storm
The President's nominee to head the FDA, Lester Crawford, faces daunting challenges. As acting commissioner for most of the past four years, Crawford has confronted a kind of perfect storm. First there were claims that the labeling of certain antidepressants...
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Wall Street's Endangered Species
The New York Stock Exchange's sudden decision to merge with electronic trading system Archipelago, coupled with a similar announcement only days later by Nasdaq that it would acquire Instinet's electronic trading market, means that the Wall Street floor trader is..
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Consequences for Bad Leadership
This week (April 25-30), the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is visiting several countries in Latin America. In recent years, this region has been marked by a high degree of political instability, which has been reflected in the rise...
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Galloway's Gallows
"Sir, I salute your courage, your strength." So said fawning then-British Member of Parliament George Galloway to Saddam Hussein on one of his pre-war visits to Iraq to praise Saddam and pick up a check. All together, through a college...
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They Don't Embarrass Easily
A few years ago The New York Times ran a cartoon that showed two Washington DC policy experts having a conversation. "In Washington the search for truth is a creative process. First, you create a premise. Next you create...
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Tax Reform 101
While economic policy makers focus their attentions on Social Security, President Bush's Tax Reform Commission is quietly going about its work and receiving almost no notice. But it is only a couple of months until the commissioners are required to...
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Restless in Gaza
We are entering the 100-day period before the disengagement from Gaza begins. The odds are we will see pictures similar to what we saw when Israel gave back Yamit - a settlement that came to be known as the Jewish...
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Punting Globally
April 25th marks Africa Malaria Day, a day to ponder the havoc malaria wreaks upon Africa, killing over a million people a year and crippling economies on that continent alone. If this were not sad enough, April 25th has now...
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New Labour Looks Back
"Forward not back" is the Labour Party's election battle cry - so why is it looking to the party's past in search of identity? When it came into power in 1997, New Labour called year zero, an absolute break with...
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Bon Appetit!
With tremendous media fanfare last year, Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced that overweight and obesity had killed 400,000 Americans in 2000. The CDC paper m
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The Tip of the Iceberg
Last week on Earth Day, AP newswire led with a real scare story: "Study Shows Antarctic Glaciers Shrinking." In doing so, the press, yet again, predictably distorted a global warming story. By "Antarctica" they actually meant the Antarctic Peninsula, which...
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When April Flowered
The climactic month of the 20th Century was April 1945. The war in Europe was entering its final stages. German armies were collapsing and by the end of the month Hitler and Mussolini would be dead. The magnitude of the...
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From Green Zone to Free Zone
While instances of violence are still an almost daily occurrence in Iraq, some analysts believe the country is entering into a phase of abatement in the frequency of attacks overall. Iraqi security forces are better trained, and are growing in...
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Blowing the Whistle on Jackpot Justice
Fighting financial mismanagement and fraud throughout the agencies of the federal government is an urgent mission if we ever hope to rebalance the budget. The Office of Management and Budget recently found that the Medicare program made $21.7 billion in...
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Did Benedict XVI Take a Page Out of MacIntyre's Book?
I have a theory about why Joseph Ratzinger chose the papal name "Benedict:" he took his inspiration from Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue. In After Virtue, written in 1984, MacIntyre argues that the Enlightenment project to establish a rational basis for...
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Is the Free Market Glass Half Empty or Half Full?
Hu Jintao and John Howard, Australia's Prime Minister, have announced during Howard's visit to China that Australia and China will negotiate a free trade agreement (FTA). On the surface China's expanding embrace of free trade looks good news. However the...
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One Man's Waste Is Another Man's...?
It's Earth Day and the media will again carry several news items related to the terrible state of the environment on our planet. These will likely offer a variety of solutions such as government regulation, more government regulation, or perhaps,...
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On Earth Day, Teach Our Children
The arrival of Earth Day each year provides teachers with the opportunity to help educate students about environmental issues. There is no question that the Earth's inhabitants need to be good stewards of natural resources, and teaching our children about...
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A Blueprint for Survival, Revisited
So what did you do for Earth Day? Splash on the patchouli oil, drape yourself in tie-dye and dance barefoot in the park? The PJ O'Rourke option? Pour a G&T, lay back on the sofa and watch Flipper? I decided...
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Whoppers and the End of an Epidemic
It isn't just that they were fudging the numbers, it is the scope of the fudging that is so breathtaking. For the last few years Americans have been subjected to an incessant barrage of warnings about the risks of dying...
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The Independence Chimera
There appears to be one issue on which both Republicans and Democrats agree -- the high price of oil and the vulnerability of Middle-East supplies to terrorist attacks calls for a national effort to reduce oil imports. Concern over our...
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Taxed to Death
Earlier this week The Global Fund to Fight AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria claimed that India has replaced South Africa as the most AIDS-diseased country in the world. India's continuing struggle to deal with its AIDS problem is tragic, but some...
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Feigning Foolishness
In his 1991 work, Lure The Tiger Out Of The Mountain, Gao Yuan spelled out the thirty-six negotiating stratagems refined by the Chinese over thousands of years. These are by no means tools of the past. The Chinese government and...
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French People Do Get Fat
"Acting against the obesity epidemic." This is the dubious title of a bill presented by French socialist MPs to the French National Assembly under the leadership of Jean-Marie Le Guen. Two nonsensical notions can be detected immediately, without even reading...
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Causalities of War
President Richard Nixon launched the war on cancer in 1971. Obviously, that war is still ongoing, but the National Institutes of Health is optimistic that we will see a victory of sorts around 2015. The War on Drugs was started...
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Is Viacom Viable?
Media conglomerates like Viacom are struggling with a rapidly-shifting media landscape and a number of external forces that threaten to make their former business models obsolete. Technologies like the Internet, TiVo and satellite radio continue to erode traditiona
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Habemus Papam...Ad Perpetuitatem?
The new pope, Benedict XVI, is seventy-eight years old and, by conventional wisdom, it seems unlikely that he'll come anywhere close to matching the length of term of his immediate predecessor, John Paul II, whose twenty-seven-year tenure was the third...
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Papal Condom-nation
Pope Benedict XVI has only been on the throne for a day and already there are calls for him, from The Guardian and elsewhere, to abandon one of the main planks of the Church's teaching on sex: "Top of...
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Big Fat Mistake
"We misled you. And we plan to keep on misleading you." That's essentially what the Centers for Disease Control announced this week. The agency said Tuesday that it has greatly over-exaggerated the number of lives lost each year to obesity....
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De Tocqueville This Ain't
I just read the most ridiculous bit of serious non-fiction to have crossed my mailbox in quite some time (not subscribing to the New Yorker, I am spared Seymour Hersh). Bernard-Henri Lévy, the French uber- (or, hyper- it would be...
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The Crucifixion Will Be Televised
Am I the only who thinks it's miraculous that we could all watch the workings of one of the world's oldest religions, live on worldwide TV? Seeing Pope Benedict XVI's appearance before the throng at St. Peter's Square, I thought...
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Benedict XVI
What will be the driving concerns of Benedict XVI's pontificate? As I ponder that question, two key facts stick out: 1. The College of Cardinals chose a European 2. Josep
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A Microeconomist on the Loose
The philosopher Isaiah Berlin once divided intellectuals into two categories, based on a fragment from the ancient Greek poet Archilochus: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Thus, hedgehogs produce work that reflects a single...
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Energetic Ignorance
There's no public-policy topic more prone to intellectual abuse than energy. Take conservation. Refrigerators, automobiles, houses, factories... They're more than twice as efficient in using energy than they were 50 years ago. Fine. But, despite the conventional po
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ASEAN Restlessness
This has been a rough first quarter for ASEAN. Following the devastating tsunami on the eve of the new year, the first few months of 2005 have seen new challenges confronting the regional grouping. The ten ASEAN members are currently...
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Top Down and Bottom Up
As I write this, I'm in the back seat of a car heading down Interstate 81, accessing the Web via the Verizon EVDO card in my laptop. (And pretty zippily, too -- I'm getting around 150kbps even though I'm in...
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Japan-China: Why All the Fuss?
Relations between Japan and China continue to smolder, as Chinese crowds trash Japanese restaurants in China and hurl rocks and bottles at the Japanese embassy and at consulates around the country. Now it's reported that many Japanese living in China...
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Your Money for Your Life
"Years after the discovery that colorectal screening can decrease cancer incidence and deaths, few countries have adopted widespread colon cancer screening programs, although some are inching their way to that goal. The reason, say many experts, is the burde
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California's Extreme Makeover
If California truly is the bellwether for the rest of the country, get ready for more government intrusiveness in your life. The legislative Sages of Sacramento are emulating European-style over-regulation: They plan to ban the traditional production of foie gras,.
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Che vs Pinochet?
A friend of mine went to Cuba, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt. It was one with this classic Che Guevara picture, with beret and all. Revolution, romanticism and a sexy-looking young man. That is all you need...
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Is That All There Is?
With the ever-increasing retirement of Baby Boomers, the public sphere is inundated with controversies surrounding Social Security reform, prescription drug benefits, estate taxes, and other issues that, while hugely important to the nation as a whole, are most dir
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Choice and Its Enemies
H.L. Mencken famously defined Puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy." Being a libertarian-conservative means being possessed of the haunting fear that someone somewhere is itching to play busybody on a level one might have once...
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We're Watching What You Eat!
In an extremely arrogant move, the EU has decided that Europeans are too simple-minded to be able to determine independently which foods are good for them and which foods are not. Forget the instinctual knowledge of good and bad foods...
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Why Diamonds are Like Greenhouse Gases
"Energy study finds greenhouse gas limits affordable" according to an Associated Press story on a new Energy Information Administration report.[1] The EIA analysis, performed at the request of Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), assessed several greenhouse gas (GHG) redu
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Thy Kingdom Come
I just got back from Walt Disney World, that magical place where middle-class families from all over the world gather to wait in line. I snacked on popcorn and ice cream that cost more than my college textbooks and rode...
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What Realism Isn't, and What Libertarianism Is
Pejman Yousefzadeh recently published an article in TCS that seems to misunderstand both realism and libertarianism. In his article, "Idealism at the Water's Edge," Mr. Yousefzadeh's explanations of the two concepts are muddled to the point that both realism and...
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Health in the Balance
Paul Krugman's column on April 11 announced that he was going to look at and then offer plans for reform of the American health care system. Slightly contrary to what you might think, given my consistent sneering at his political...
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Open Source, Mugged by Reality?
SAN FRANCISCO -- The Open Source Business Conference held this month in San Francisco was chock-full of information on how to make money using open source software. Once a bastion for socialist thinking, the open source (OS) community is finally...
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Judge Not
The American people treat their court system a little bit like an IQ test: When they get the result they want, the verdict is just; when they don't like the outcome, the whole thing is suspect. Consider what Republicans have...
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Why Is HIV So Prevalent in Africa?
Ninety-nine percent of AIDS and HIV cases in Africa come from sexual transmission, and virtually all is heterosexual. So says the World Health Organization, with other agencies toeing the line. Some massive condom airdrops accompanied by a persuasive propaganda cam
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South Park Conservatives: Snapshot of the Culture Wars
One of the side benefits of presidential elections every four years is that it allows for fairly close readings of where America's culture as a whole currently stands. That's one reason so many books on the topic are released shortly...
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Must an Independent Judiciary be a Unilateral Judiciary?
Two recent cases, taken together, reveal a systemic problem with the American court system. In Roper v. Simmons, a juvenile death penalty case, the court asserted a right to base it decisions on sources other than law, appealing to both...
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Health Care Intelligence Failure?
"The United States has the most privatized, competitive health system in the advanced world; it also has by far the highest costs, and close to the worst results." -- Paul Krugman The small cabal wants to launch an attack...
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Information on Trial
The UIPP (French Crop Protection Association) recently launched an advertising campaign outlining the benefits of pesticides. Accused by environmental groups of spreading misinformation, this grouping of French pesticide manufacturers was summoned to court in Renne
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Fertile Ground for Democracy or Extremism?
The Bangladeshis have much to be proud of. They achieved independence and a pluralistic state after a hard fought war. They took to the streets nearly twenty years later dissatisfied with military rule and stood united for democracy. Devastating annual...
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Withholding an Opportunity Society: Why We Need Personal Tax Savings Accounts
The government is playing accounting games with taxpayer money by spending withheld income while it should still be the property of the wage-earner. The concept of ownership society is the backbone of the Bush administration's actions on Social Security, lifetime..
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Climate Science: In Need of Due Diligence
At their Summit of 22 and 23 March, European leaders decided to cancel the initial target to reduce CO2 emissions in 2050 by 60% - 80%. But they have upheld the target of a 15%- 30% reduction in 2020. Should...
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A Carnival of Piracy
The current debate in the United States over how Americans will finance their retirements has focused so far on reforms to Social Security, such as President Bush's proposed private accounts. But as important as this debate is, America's retirement security...
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Science, Pseudo-Science, and Architecture
A few years back, I wrote a critical survey of Princeton University's architecture for the school's alumni magazine. The article argued that the buildings that had gone up on the campus since the 1950's -- the modernist buildings -- were...
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From Mecca to Jerusalem
I wrote late last year, in a TCS column about the death of a leading Sufi, or spiritual Muslim teacher, who had lived for many years under repressive conditions in the Saudi kingdom. His name was Syed Mohamed Alawi Al-Maliki....
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Misunderstanding "Market Failure"
A noble effort is underway to improve research and development into diseases that kill the poorest people in the poorest countries by offering guaranteed sales to pharmaceutical research companies that make breakthroughs. Healthcare spending is pitifully low in man
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Idealism at the Water's Edge
"I'm a small-l libertarian Republican who studies international relations, which means I'm frequently conflicted between my laissez-faire instincts and my clear-eyed recognition that there is no substitute for nation-states in world politics."-Daniel Drezner The co
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South Zimbabwe?
JOHANNESBURG -- The people of Zimbabwe recently voted in a general election with the result that Robert Mugabe's ZANU PF party remains in power. Most European countries and the United States condemned the election as illegitimate, un-free and unfair, yet...
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Religioso, Ma Non Troppo
Are we in the midst of a religious revival that will change the face of America, and the world? Some people on the Right hope so, while many people on the Left fear so. I suspect, however, that the trend...
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India and Kyoto
Among environmentalism's most fundamental flaws are the beliefs that commerce is the enemy of conservation and that energy conservation will automatically lead to a cleaner environment. The Kyoto Protocol is the epitome of this flawed thinking. It seeks to promote.
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Reflections on the Revolution
"We are in a war of a peculiar nature. It is not with an ordinary community, which is hostile or friendly as passion or interest may veer about; not with a State which makes war through wantonness, and abandons it...
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Poland's Day After the Day After Tomorrow
WARSAW -- The European Union works very hard at exporting its impotence. Its bureaucrats have created the greatest central plan in human history: the post-Kyoto strategy. They want to decrease carbon-dioxide emissions by 80 percent by the year 2050. The...
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The Science Haters Target Johnson
Stephen L. Johnson, President Bush's nominee as EPA Administrator, is the first career scientist considered for this key position. All agree that the EPA could do with a good dose of science -- or do they? Science has traditionally been...
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Forced Impotence: Bolton Gets the Summers Treatment
The Capitol Hill hearings over John Bolton's nomination to serve as the United States ambassador to the United Nations fit the pattern of partisan and ideological attacks. The Democrats and Republican "moderates" -- some, wannabe Democrats -- having expended themse
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The Dream Deferred?
Is it really the Republican Party's goal to reduce the wealth of its core constituency, which is middle-class homeowners? Moreover, is it really the mission of the GOP to have fewer folks own their own homes in the future? Most...
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SOXing It to Small Businesses
On April 13th, the Securities and Exchange Commission will (finally) hold a hearing on the impact of Sarbanes-Oxley's internal controls reporting requirements. It's a small step in the right direction. It's now beyond dispute that Sarbanes-Oxley has imposed a much.
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Do We Own Our Ailments?
Ask an economist what is the best type of health insurance, and he or she is likely to respond "catastrophic coverage." Our assumption is that rational consumers should be motivated by risk aversion and low cost. Risk aversion means that...
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The Paper God
Remind me to stay out of Washington, D.C. Weird stuff happens there, and for all I know it's catching. We've always known that D.C. is a strange place, of course, but just comparatively so -- stranger than Chicago, say, or...
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Excessive Asian Reserves?
Reflecting a fetish for hard currency similar to the Mercantilist obsession with gold, East Asia's foreign-exchange reserves have more than doubled since the turmoil in 1997-98. Japan's foreign reserves of over $840 billion were the highest in the world for...
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Paul Krugman, Your Paper Needs You
Like all good bloggers and writers I delight in the errors and mistakes of my enemies, enjoy bringing such to the attentions of the masses and thus hear the lamentations of their women. Actually, like all bad bloggers and writers...
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How the West Was Wet
One of the problems in communicating climate science concerns peoples' perceptions versus climate reality. For example, most middle-to-slightly-older-agers who grew up in the Mid-Atlantic region will tell you that it just doesn't snow like it did in their youth...
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Night-Watchman State Works Round-the-Clock
Is it me or does every "crisis" pronouncement by government officials yield a reduction in individual liberty? Consider: The "crisis" of narcotics use -- essentially, adults harming themselves -- has engendered a wholesale erosion of the time-honored 4th Amendment
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Among the Few and the Proud
PARRIS ISLAND, South Carolina -- It's a lovely March day here in the Carolina Lowcountry. The sweet spring winds are sweeping down from the north, caressing the live oaks and palmettos. It would be a good day to stroll the...
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Debate Down Under
Last week the post-Kyoto future was debated in Australia during three conferences. The British Government and the US-based Pew Centre supported conferences urging extension of the Kyoto model to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Energy companies backed the third c
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Saddam Burgers?
In the century he's been on this earth, Roy Neuberger, the former window dresser who invented the no-load mutual fund and made a fortune as an investor, has gained a lot of perspective. "Some people waste their lives in the...
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Understanding the Wal-Mart Effect
"I'm writing this column in West Virginia, USA having just come back from shopping in Wal-Mart, the extraordinarily successful supermarket chain that makes our own look slow and tiny -- not to mention expensive! I had to keep blinking at...
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Polluted Climate
Climate change is one environmental issue that hasn't had much traction at the federal level. Congress has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, while the Bush administration has opposed explicit carbon dioxide reduction requirements. Thus, it should come as no...
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Inside Scoop -- Not Any Longer
Canada is in the midst of a corruption scandal.The bullet is that the Liberal government in power during the 1990's used public money to buy advertising in Quebec. Around 100 million of that money has left no audit trail. Some...
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From Xi'an to Rotterdam?
If you thought reviving the Silk Road was a job for the World Tourism Organisation you would be right. At least until recently. This lesser known WTO has been peddling the idea of a continuous overland link between China and...
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'Be Careful What You Wish For'
Do Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the government created secondary mortgage market makers, pose a threat to the nation's financial system or a safety valve for the economy? That's a question for lawmakers as they assess the testimony this week...
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The Other Sudan Crisis
Although the media coverage here in the United States has been non-existent, much of the world has been experiencing one of the great food scares -- and food recalls -- of modern times. The epicenter of this latest food scare...
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Greatness Is By Nature Enigmatic
It is understandable that there would be serious confusion in properly evaluating a man such a Karol Wojtyla. For one thing greatness is by nature enigmatic -- and there can be no doubt that John Paul II was a great...
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Seoul Searching
Several lessons can be derived from the resignation of South Korea's Finance-Economy Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hun-jai over speculative property transactions. Just as revolutionaries devour their own children, Mr. Lee was hoisted on the petard of the g
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From Inventions to Innovation
Are intellectual property rights crucial to boosting innovation in Europe? That was the question addressed last week at a TechCentralStation Europe Hayek Series debate, where a panel of EU experts convened to discuss the challenges facing Europe's drive to create..
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WHO Wants You in the Dark Ages
Paul Volcker's report last week on the oil-for-food scandal uncovered shocking incompetence and venality at the United Nations. But if Congress really wants to reform the agency, the place to start is the World Health Organization (WHO), which, in the...
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Is the World Using Up Its Resources?
There was a recent story in The Guardian about a new United Nations study, with the misleading headline, Two-Thirds of World's Resources "Used Up". It's not the first time we've seen such hysteria, and it certainly won't be the last....
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Columbia's Whitewash
Inopportune comments by Harvard President Lawrence Summers back in January about possible innate differences between men and women were enough to set off a national firestorm that raged for weeks and is still smoldering today. So why is the bullying...
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Let the People Decide
Advertisement bans have been popular with politicians in Europe, though their end may be drawing near. The Financial Times reported last month that EU Enterprise Commissioner Günther Verheugen is moving ahead with plans to end the continent's draconian ban on...
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The Mythical Health Care Man-Month
"If each part of the task must be separately coordinated with each other part, the effort increases as n(n-1)/2. Three workers require three times as much pairwise intercommunication as two; four require six times as much as two. If, moreover,...
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Little USSR
Just like big cities often have their own peculiar neighborhoods -- Little Italy, Chinatown, Greek Town, etc. -- the EU has its own Little USSR. It's called France. In my country, anti-free-trade policies are up front and collectivist dogma is...
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A Medical Catch-22
Since it was conceived in March 2000, the EU's vaunted Lisbon Strategy has been somewhat downsized. It once sought to create the "most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better...
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What Color for Minsk?
The last months of 2004 saw an unexpected finish of the political season in the countries neighboring the EU to the east. Belarus held a general election and referendum that was falsified and not recognized by the international community. To...
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Not So Cool Brittania
As usual, Tony Blair finds himself on the horns of a political dilemma: the whim of public opinion leads him one way, and reality struggles to pull him in another. Bruised and battered in the polls from his support for...
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'A Privatization From Below'
Back in the 18th Century, some of the Spanish colonies in what today we call Latin America were richer, better developed, and the population enjoyed a higher standard of living than the English colonies in North America. That was to...
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'Be Not Afraid'
In my lifetime, there have been three Popes, but only one who in that period of time so thoroughly dominated the world's imagination: Pope John Paul II, known once as Karol Józef Wojtyla. It wasn't simply because his reign was...
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The Science Haters
Republicans are too anti-science to become good professors. That's the essence of Paul Krugman's recent New York Times column explaining why there are so few Republican college professors. Of course, recent events at Harvard indicate that it's the academic left...
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Self Interest in the Public Interest
The Indian government just approved patent legislation that will provide protection for innovators that, to date, has been largely lacking. The legislation, which will grant product patents for medicines as well as other novel technologies, has been heavily critici
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Scratching Your Head Over Climate Change
No day goes by without another story regarding global warming, and the latest news has scientists throughout the world scratching their heads about climate change. A team of scientists reports in the prestigious journal Science that dandruff levels in the...
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'Now This Passivity Is Over'
My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power. -- Paul's First Letter to the...
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Living and Dying In These Modern Times
Terri Schiavo is dead and so is John Paul II. And one effect has been to get us talking about the whens and hows of dying. It seems that some people are against dying at all; or at least...
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Keeping It Private
Back in the 1980s a physics graduate named Cris met a "quant" guy named Greg and the two founded a company to write options trading software called Devon Systems. Both their "quant" work -- applying complex formulae to value financial...
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Trade Away Donaldson
William Donaldson, the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, keeps reminding us of the big mistake President Bush made some two years ago in nominating him, a former Wall Street insider and CEO of the New York Stock Exchange,...
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Where Is the Poland In This New Cold War?
Pope John Paul II will be known for many great achievements, but foremost among them will be his unique role, in conjunction with Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and others, in helping end the Soviet empire, a feat that few thought...
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The Futile Conceit
GREENWICH VILLAGE, NYC -- We know why intellectuals hate capitalism. In his famous essay on the subject, the late great Robert Nozick reduced this polemical phenomenon to a simple matter of resentment and envy -- basic (and base) human nature....
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Nuclear Medicine
Users of the popular eczema medications Elidel and Protopic will have been stunned by the recent announcement that the Food and Drug Administration is to require the medicines to carry "a strong advisory about a cancer risk" (Reuters, March 11)....
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Conservative Crack-up Over Social Security?
"If we were not so used to it, we would find it odd for the government to collect money from young workers and give it to the old (mostly workers' parents)." -- Robert Barro The headline that Business Week...
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The Dominating Prophet of Freedom
John Paul II will be remembered as a great Pope for many reasons, not the least of which will be his standing as the 20th Century's dominating prophet of freedom. In his encyclical Centesimus Annus (CA), for example, the Holy...
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On States of Sin
Pope John Paul II's death over the weekend has produced an outpouring of grief around the world, and especially here in Poland, his native country. Thousands of people have been gathering in Polish cities, particularly in the places visited by...
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Trade and Troglodytes
A new paper written by three economists suggests that trade among groups of Homo sapiens was an advantage that contributed to the displacement of Neanderthals 30,000 years ago. Homo neanderthalensis appeared in the valleys and caves of Europe and southwest...
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Every Market That Rises Must Converge
The advent of open-source software has been hailed as the most significant event in computing since Apple played David to IBM's Goliath. Yet, while open-source code can be found practically everywhere these days, the companies dedicated to bringing it into...
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Veiled Threat
The atrocious treatment of women in the Arab world is well-known, but people are much less aware of the plight of some European Muslim women. The increasing degradation of Muslim women in Europe is largely due to the work of...
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Cuckolded by the Conservative State
Warnings that the Republican Party has slipped its small-government moorings seem to fall on deaf ears these days -- or at least the owners of those ears are practicing some pretty powerful denial. Take, for instance, a recent column by...
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The Future of Life in America... and Around the World
The American response to the Terri Schiavo case comes from deep within our national tradition. On display, here in the US, is the familiar mix of litigation, religious agitation, and media saturation -- the last of which has now gone...
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Harvard Forgives Larry Summers
Harvard president Larry Summers finally earned the forgiveness of his faculty. Dr. Summers initially incurred the wrath of academia when he suggested that researchers consider the possibility that biology partially explains the dearth of female science professors.
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No Place Like Home
Mid pleasures and palaces though I may roam Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. So wrote John Howard Payne in his song "Home, Sweet Home." First sung in his play Clari, the Maid of Milan at...
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The Big Business of Climate Change Research
In the climate change debate, or more generally for any environmental issue, there exists a widespread assumption that funds provided by "big business" are used to promote falsehoods, while funds going to environmental organizations represent the grassroots will of
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