TCS Daily : August 2005 Archives
The Emerging Independent Majority
Big picture strategists in both the Democratic and Republican parties like to speculate on the "emerging [insert favorite party] majority." Yet the only trend in evidence is an emerging independent majority. A 2001 University of Michigan study claims that the...
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The Washington Consensus Gives Way to a Keynesian Consensus
A new consensus - or, at least, a return to an old consensus - seems to be forming in response to the hiccups seen in the New Economy. The so-called Washington Consensus is being pushed out in favor of...
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Space Elevator: Stuck Between Floors
Last week I mentioned the growing promise of space elevator technology, and I've noticed that interest in the subject continues to grow. (Here's a roundup on developments from National Geographic. And the Times of London even reports that Google has...
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Jude Wanniski, 1936-2005
Jude Wanniski, one of America's great contrarians and polemicists and the man who turned me -- and thousands more -- on to free-market economics, died suddenly Monday afternoon of a heart attack. He was 69. Wanniski was always cheerful, always...
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Katrina and Disgusting Exploitation
A profound tragedy is unfolding in New Orleans, the most beautiful city in America, with the richest cultural history and the most wonderful style of living. I lived in New Orleans for seven years. I was married there. My children...
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No Ordinary Shipyard
In the summer of 1980, after years of suffering under a regime that wasted their energy and suppressed their wills and minds, thousands of Polish workers in Warsaw, Swidnik, the Silesia region, Poznan, Lodz, Gdynia and many other cities and...
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Grey-Area Medicine
"If people 'go to the doctor grudgingly, because we're sick' -- i.e. because we conclude we're sick -- you'd think we could also conclude rationally when we're more sick and when we're less sick, when we really need of a...
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Scotch Tape
EDINBURGH - Sadly, religious incitement to violence is almost as old as religion itself. Take the Reformation, Scottish-style. The adorable seaside town of St. Andrews -- so named because its founder carried the remains of its namesake across the sea...
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"Greetings from Baghdad"
On August 3, Steven Vincent earned the dubious distinction of being, according to the New York Times, "the first American reporter to be attacked and killed in the current Iraq war." He was shot dead and left outside of Basra,...
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What If Syria Is Guilty?
BEIRUT -- Late last week, Detlev Mehlis, the German prosecutor investigating the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on behalf of the UN Security Council, released a preliminary report on his inquiry, scheduled to be completed by mid-Septem
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A Real Nor'easter
Environmentalists recently leaked to the New York Times plans for costly regulations that will significantly raise energy, goods and services prices for both businesses and consumers within a nine-state region of the northeast. The regulations will have adverse imp
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Kids, Fries and Cancer: Is There a Connection?
It's been a tough time for French fries lately. First there was the unpleasant association with, well, all things French that led to one of America's favourite foods being renamed, at least within the Beltway, Freedom Fries. Then there was...
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Putting the General in Surgeon General
It's nice to know that just like Big Brother, the Fat Police never sleep. While most of us have been have been trying to catch a few days of vacation during the last bit of summer, the fat police...
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It's Not Just the Spending
Before leaving town earlier this month, Congress approved nearly $300 billion in increased spending. But spending, supported through taxes, is not the only way the federal government diverts resources from the private sector to accomplish its goals. The other is...
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Make San Francisco the Leftwing Paradise It Hopes to Be
San Francisco's city supervisors voted 8-3 against allowing the USS Iowa to become a tourist attraction in their city. The battleship saw action in WWII, Korea and the Persian Gulf. One supervisor voting against the USS Iowa complained about the...
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Islam Gives the Pentagon the Boot. What Next?
The Uzbek autocratic President Islam Karimov served notice to the Pentagon that the U.S. should vacate the Karshi-Khanabad military base (K-2 in military parlance) within six months. In the post-9/11 era, this is the first time that a U.S. ally...
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10 MPG: The Road to Energy Independence
With gasoline busting three bucks a gallon, the Bush administration Tuesday proposed higher fuel economy standards for SUVs and minivans, along with what the Washington Post called "a new regulatory system that sets different mileage goals for six sizes of...
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Oil Prices and the Rule of Bigness
The largest retailer in the world, Wal-Mart Stores, reported last week that sales and profits for the three months ending July 31 were a little worse than expected because "our consumer continues to be impacted by higher gas prices." The...
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How Economists Really View Health Insurance
"Policy is driven by more than politics, however. It is equally driven by ideas, and in the past few decades a particular idea has taken hold among prominent American economists which has also been a powerful impediment to the expansion...
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The U.S. Orders Chinese Takeout
This summer, a firestorm of controversy erupted in the nation's capital when Chinese oil giant CNOOC made a hostile $18.5 billion bid for U.S. oil company Unocal. Most troubling for some U.S. politicians, the CNOOC bid followed a number of...
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Falling Down on the Jobs
"You can look at lots of numbers. If you actually work with economic numbers, you have less respect for them than people who don't. There's a mix of numbers. Some of them are pretty good. The unemployment rate looks...
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Despite Media Blackout, Fallujah Rebuilds
After crisscrossing Fallujah by foot and Humvee in May, I reported on tremendous progress being made to restore "the city we had to destroy to save." Actually fighting left most of the town unscathed; most damage was from three decades...
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Atomic Bombast: Carrots Are For Rabbits
"The principal lesson to be learned from the war in the Persian Gulf is never fight America without nuclear weapons." - Sharad Pawar, Indian Defense
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Suffering and the Forgettable War
About fifteen years ago, a teacher of my acquaintance opined that the Super Bowl should be cancelled. A terrible set of racially motivated murders had come to light, and this teacher could not bear the notion that, in the face...
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Libertarian Basics
"While American conservatives have retained their passion for Big Ideas, their passion for the biggest idea of all -- the Holy Grail that will refute liberalism -- has waned... What libertarians do not have, however, is a comprehensive argument for...
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Iraq's Constitution of Liberty
"The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people just now are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean...
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Plus Ça Change...
Legal problems have been mounting lately for computer-chip giant Intel. First it came under attack from the Japanese antitrust authority. Then its main competitor on the microprocessor market, AMD, announced at the end of June that it had filed a...
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Nation-Strengthening
DJIBOUTI, Africa -- Djibouti is one of those places few can pronounce (ja-boo-tee) and fewer visit. Situated in the dangerous geographic "elbow" known as "The Horn of Africa" -- with Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea its immediate neighbors -- the former...
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A New Jersey State of Mind
PRINCETON, NJ -- Whenever I visit my alma mater, I am reminded of how beautiful a state New Jersey is. Yes, you read that right: The land of Tony Soprano and James "I am a gay American" McGreevey, of big...
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Fear and Hope in Sudan
For the moment, the fragile peace in Sudan's North-South civil war (a different conflict from the conflict in Western Sudan's province of Darfur) appears to have survived the death of the South's long-time leader, John Garang. Garang was the leader...
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Reality-Based Tax Policy
Better than expected. That is the headline being given to the progress of the US economy. Last year the deficit was a humiliating 3.6 per cent of gross domestic product. The deficit this year, new numbers suggest, will be 2.7...
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The Great Shift?
There are reasons to doubt whether the US economy can continue its global dominance. These include US trade and fiscal deficits, massive dollar reserves held by Japan and China, billions of new workers in India and China, and the relocation...
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Laughing All the Way to the Brink
What to make of Herman Kahn, more than two decades after his death? Was he the prototype for Dr. Strangelove, or was he a sage for the new age of reason? The title of a new book, The Worlds of...
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Ciao, Italia
Over the years, the Italian economy, sliding further into stagnation, has grown accustomed to bleak reports. Recently the national association of industrial enterprises, Confindustria, issued a damming forecast for one of the most dynamic exporting regions of Ital
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Space Program: Looking Up
I've written here in the past about NASA's work on space elevators, and on the new leaner, meaner, prize-oriented approach favored by NASA Administrator Mike Griffin. Now there are some signs of real progress on a number of fronts. As...
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We Invented It. Let's Use It
As the "global war on terrorism" enters its fifth year, it has become increasingly evident that the United States and its allies are involved in an ideological war, in which propaganda and moral suasion will play a large part....
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Who's Watching?
Data retention used to be about fighting organised crime, cybercrime, and tax evasion. But since the 9/11 attacks it become a focus of the War on Terror. Sweden, together with France, the UK and Ireland, submitted a far-reaching and costly...
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Incumbent Politicians vs. the Long Tail
Which of the following describes your party affiliation? (a) I identify with the platform and leading spokesmen of the Democratic Party (b) I identify with the platform and leading spokesmen of the Republican Party (c) None of...
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The Limits of Altruism and the Power of Self-Interest
For the last thirty years, many well-meaning organizations have spent lots of time and money trying to convince more Americans to donate their organs after they die. These efforts have relied exclusively on appeals to altruism, and they have...
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Good Morning, Vietnam
The public's support for the war is ebbing. According to one of the latest opinion polls by Today/CNN/Gallup Poll, 56 percent of those asked said the war is going badly, while 57 percent say the war is making us...
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Slavery and Belarus
"Human trafficking" is a fast-growing problem in society, and is now the third most profitable criminal activity in the world. Besides becoming highly lucrative, trafficking in people is increasingly transnational in scope. According to the UN Office on Drugs and..
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Devolution of Advice and Consent
After striding to the podium and humbly accepting his nomination to the Supreme Court, Judge John Roberts returned home with a keen appreciation of the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation process that awaits him. Some twenty-four years earlier, he assisted Ju
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A New Balance on Counterfeit Goods
The sports shoe manufacturer New Balance is about to return to Argentina after four years of absence, after it completes some sort of "cleaning" of the market of pirated copies of their famous shoes. Tired of complaining about counterfeits they...
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19th Century Taxes in the 21st Century Economy
Over the past few decades, economists have spent a great deal of effort understanding the optimal design of the tax code. One undisputed result is that the government should try not to play favorites, taxing one activity much heavier than...
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The Bosnia of Our Time
Every day 500 black African Muslims are murdered by Islamists in Sudan's northwestern region of Darfur. The total number of dead now exceeds 400,000. That's 133 September 11ths. The U.S. is airlifting 1,200 Rwandan troops for humanitarian relief. It's a...
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Vision Impaired
China now has global economic muscle. It is sustaining growth in the global economy and its cheap goods are holding inflation at bay. So when China suggests rearranging current agreements or formalizing new ones, people go along, even if it...
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Why 'Theology Is a Simple Muddle'
Editor's note: What follows is an essay, divided into four chapters, that is considerably longer than that typically published in TCS. For your comfort, please consider printing the whole thing to read away from the computer screen. While we are...
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American Eden
Would you like to see cheetahs and camels, lions and elephants, Przewalski's Horse and wild asses introduced into the US? The creation of parks (both public and private) perhaps the size of the Serengeti for them to roam free? There's...
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Health Uber Alles?
The World Health Organization (WHO) has always had a rather expansive notion of what it means to be healthy. If one looks at the official definition it defines health as a "state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and...
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Poland's Great Right Hope
Some 15 years after the anti-communist revolution, Poles are turning to the right. This year is politically the most important in the new history of this young democracy. Polands future depends on the next coalition of parties in power. But...
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The Next Democracy
An Iraqi democracy, whatever its final form and written constitution, will be both controversial and dangerous. According to philosopher Paul Woodruff, controversy and danger are innate characteristics of democracy. I read Woodruff's provocative new book, "F
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The Real Tragedy of AIDS
The press these days is obsessed with avian flu. "Officials are preparing as though the virus is the heir apparent to the 1918 international flu pandemic, which killed more than 40 million," says the Baltimore Sun. Precautions are encouraging, but...
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Don't Call It a Comeback
A group of scientists has proposed to "re-wild" North America with elephants and lions, thereby replacing large megafauna that became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene about 12,000 years ago. The proposal's authors, led by Cornell University grad student...
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La Cage Aux Pols
My reaction to politicians tends to wander around a little between what I consider to be the only three possible options. Laugh at them, ignore them, or experience a (so far repressed) desire to have them tap dancing on air...
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Iraq Is Improving
Monsignor Rabban al Qas, a Chaldean bishop in Iraq, was recently interviewed by a foreign journalist, who asked him, "Twenty-three Iraqis are killed every day in Iraq. Nearly two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, there is no security...
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Trust in Marx: To Undermine Tehran, Leave It Alone
Karl Marx wasn't right about much. But one thing he did get right is the social dynamic leading to political revolution. Genuine revolutions, Marx noted, do not take place in a friendly environment amenable to gradual and piecemeal reform. They...
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The Yanquis Are Coming!
In the run-up to last month's passage of the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the anti-globalization doomsayers were out in force with bold predictions about the "final blow" the deal would mean to the economies of Central American countries....
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Always Low Tactics. Always.
The War on Wal-Mart continues apace this week in New York City. There, the cost of living is high -- as is the demand for Wal-Mart's services. But the labor movement's tactics, as always, are lower than low. Their latest...
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Podcasting and the New Media
In the past, I've written here about MP3.com, and its sort-of successor, GarageBand.com, in terms of their influence on the future of music. But, increasingly, we're seeing that there's more than music to the equation. I talked recently with GarageBand's...
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Awakening to "Moderate" Saudis?
After the death of King Fahd, everything looks very much the same in the Saudi political landscape. The stakes are high. According to Hudson Institute fellow and author of the forthcoming book "Princes of Darkness : The Saudi Assault on...
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When an Ounce of Prevention Is Not Worth a Pound of Cure
It appears to be all about science. After five days of WHO-think on health prevention at the Bangkok Global Conference on Health Promotion, it would be easy to conclude that science is the foundation for everything that the World...
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Are We in a Brave New World of 'Personalized' Medicine?
BiDil, a new drug labeled for treatment of blacks with severe heart failure, has begun to arrive in pharmacies. Approved by FDA in June, it has stimulated speculation that we're entering a brave new world of "personalized" medicine in which...
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Are You Being Served?
Old habits die hard: as a former WTO trade negotiator, I still find time to read WTO reports. The other day I picked up Director-General Supachai's report to the WTO General Council on the state of play in the Doha...
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Terror on the Internet
What do we do about terrorist incitement on the internet? I have noted on several occasions that the main enemies of democracy and pluralistic Islam -- al-Qaida, the ultra-Wahhabi clerics of Saudi Arabia, and jihadists in Pakistan -- seem to...
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Where I'd Bet Against Kurzweil
"I proposed a bet to Kurzweil. Under the bet I would give him a very small amount of money today and in return at some future agreed-upon date he would give me a 10-meter-diameter solid diamond sphere." -- James D....
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An Organization Pregnant with Contradictions
Women's bodies are theirs to do what they want, but for the National Organization for Women (NOW) that only seems true as long as what the women want to do is politically correct. Despite NOW's rhetoric, the laws they have...
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"Me Too Republicanism" with a Vengeance
Last year I wrote an article stating that President Bush was endangering his re-election campaign by displeasing natural supporters with his failure -- or unwillingness -- to rein in the growth of government. In my article, I argued that the...
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Competing Goods, Competing Evils
[Author's note: this is the first in a series of articles exploring and reflecting on several aspects of the Embryonic Stem-Cell Debate from a traditional Jewish perspective] The debate over embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR) is at least as morally, politically,..
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For Washington, It's Asia in the Balance
The second George W administration team is certainly Asia-savvy, but the region is changing at a rate with which a Middle East-distracted Washington finds it hard to keep pace, and is making demands for which the administration finds it...
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The Blood of Martyrs
Banners are flying today in Gaza that read: "The blood of martyrs has led to liberation." They are the banners of the popular militant Palestinian group Hamas, and they enunciate an unpleasant truth that proponents of the so called peace...
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The Global R and D Arms Race
When Microsoft filed a temporary restraining order in late July to prevent a high-level Internet researcher from accepting a similar position at Google, the reverberations of the move were felt throughout the tech industry. This was about more than just...
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The Singular Sensation
Most of us will become gods. And not one of those wimpy anthropomorphic gods from Greek myth, but gods trillions of times more intelligent than mere mortal men. Such is the thesis of Ray Kurzweil, who argues in The Singularity...
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American Hajj: Toward an Open Society
Which of the following best fits the label "the open society": a) the United States, or b) Saudi Arabia? (Hint: It's a trick question.) Annually, almost twenty-four million foreigners travel to the United States -- equal to about 8%...
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We Need 250 States
"It is always costly to ensure that agents [government officials] act on behalf of the citizens and that they do not use their power to extract rents from their constituents... The costs of monitoring agents increase not only with...
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The Atomic Ring
Sixty years ago today, the Japanese government surrendered, ending World War Two. Ever since then, America has been on a wild ride of technological innovation and military competition. It's been a strange and sometimes scary trip, but the only...
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Leaving the Europeans Behind
Now that a new climate initiative has been signed by the US and five Asian and Pacific countries, the European Union finds itself increasingly isolated. The Bush administration has been able to put together a coalition of countries that account...
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Why So Scared of China?
Congratulations, Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif) of the Armed Services Committee, Lou Dobbs of CNN, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) of the Midwest isolationist caucus, and all the rest of the xenophobic crew. By misleading and frightening the U.S. public, you've managed.
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A Soldier's Story
Meet Pete the Barber. Pete's story illustrates why Col. Henry Gole's "Soldiering: Observations from Korea, Vietnam, and Safe Places" (Potomac Books) is no "old soldier's war story," but a fascinating hybrid of gripping personal history and rigorous personal essay.
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Pape-al Fallibility: It's Not All About Us
Islamists have killed thousands of Westerners over the past couple of years -- thousands in New York City alone. But they have killed far more of their own fellow Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Algeria, and too many...
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I've Been Over There and "Over There" It Ain't
"Peace at any price" purveyors are going gaga over the new FX Channel series "depicting" the Iraq war, "Over There," produced by Steven Bochco of Hill Street Blues fame. "Wow! Anybody else watch Over There last night?" gushed a writer...
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Mrs. Miniver Is Dead
I have sad news for my American friends: Mrs. Miniver is dead. The funeral was held some time ago, and there were not many mourners in attendance. For the benefit of TCS readers under the age of 40, I should...
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Franco-Israeli Detente?
On the face of it, the warm reception reserved for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during his recent visit to Paris would seem to represent a turning point in Franco-Israeli relations. Despite calls by a coalition of some 50 leftist...
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Beyond Bad Bureauspeak: Something Quite Menacing
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about a billion people lack access to safe drinking water, while 80% of all illness in the world's poorest regions is linked to water-bred diseases. Poor water and sanitation annually kills about five...
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No Pork Left Behind
Congress is frequently like a self-centered toddler who couldn't care less about the welfare of others. The transportation bill is the best example of that. The bill is two years overdue, billions of dollars higher than the President wanted and...
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Damn That Market Mentality!
The cause of food shortages such as the one plaguing Niger right now may be a perplexing problem to Nobel Prize-winning economists. But its no mystery to the Washington Post news section. The Rise of a Market Mentality Means Many...
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Some Convergence of Global Warming Estimates
In one of a trio of new global warming papers in Science, Mears & Wentz (2005) address what they consider to be a large source of uncertainty in our (University of Alabama in Huntsville, "UAH") satellite estimate for global lower...
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Waiting for the Telecom Godot
If you liked "Waiting for Godot," you've probably loved this year's congressional telecom reform drama. Much like the characters in the Samuel Beckett play -- who keep audiences waiting for the appearance of the apparently important, but ill-defined title character
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Nationalizing Science
It seems as if you can't turn anywhere without hearing that industry is destroying science these days. Former editors of the New England Journal of Medicine allege that pharmaceutical companies are perverting health science. The National Institutes of Health have..
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Don't Trim the Hedges
The worldwide hedge fund industry has nearly tripled in size over the past five years to become a $1 trillion behemoth capable of moving financial markets in a matter of minutes. But does that mean that they should be tied...
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Selective Amnesia: The Ultimate Fallout Shelter
These first two weeks in August we are being treated to yet another chapter in a little ritual of selective amnesia and psycho-history that repeats itself every five years or so. People gather, chiefly in the two Japanese cities of...
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Mocked by Mullahs
Iran's recent move to resume its nuclear activities both defies the European Union's warnings and makes a mockery of the EU's diplomatic efforts in the Middle East. It is a defeat of Europe's policy toward the Islamic Republic. It demonstrated,...
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There Is No Joy in Juiceville. Why Not?
Am I the only diehard baseball fan in America not particularly put out by the ongoing baseball steroids scandal, now starring Baltimore Orioles slugger Rafael Palmeiro? The well-regarded Raffy -- by the end of this season, he will almost certainly...
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Stop Talking, Start Doing
Why is innovation so important? It is the engine of productivity growth, as well as economic and social development. In a competitive world national prosperity depends on society's ability to revitalize itself. This has always been the case. But today...
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Where Angels Fear to Tread: The FEC
Why is it that campaign-finance-reform advocates and their accomplices in the media are able to recognize politicians as the petty criminals they are when it comes to mundane issues such as highway-bill pork and tax-loophole drawing, yet their heads implant...
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The Proper Attitude Toward Financial Regulation
Editors note: this is the last in a series of essays on financial markets and the economy. 6. Financial Regulation "Remember: GENES ARE NOT THERE TO CAUSE DISEASES" -- Matt Ridley, Genome, p. 263 Frequently, we open...
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Turning 'Unknown' Into 'Unknowable'
My high school chemistry teacher posed the following problem to the class: If a 50-pound block of pure iron were to oxidize completely, how much would the resulting rust weigh? After allowing us to ponder the question for a bit,...
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What's the Matter with (Ar)Kansas?
Last week, former President Clinton appeared on CNN to discuss what he called a major health crisis involving children and food. Was Clinton addressing the situation in Niger, where perhaps three million people, including 800,000 children, are in serious danger...
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Cottage Industry and Science Fiction
A while back I mentioned Steve Stirling's novel Dies the Fire, in which people's grasp of out-of-date technology turns out to be vital to civilization's survival as pretty much everything modern mysteriously stops working. He's got a sequel coming out,...
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Divine Evolution
Oscar Wilde remarked that to be happy it is not enough to be a success; our friends must fail. Religious views -- whether theistic or atheistic -- are, alas, the same: for our view to be right, all the...
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And After The Gaza Withdrawal?
On Aug. 15, Israel is scheduled to begin its unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip. This unprecedented action, which is expected to take about a month, will see the dismantling of 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza (as well as four...
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Big Government Libertarianism
Something odd is happening. Support for a non-defense discretionary spending hike is coming from some surprising quarters. Big-government liberalism is nothing new; the time when liberalism was associated with laissez-faire economics is long past. In recent years,
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Hope Springs Infernal
Hope is the most dangerous of all drugs. And America is the biggest pusher. Recently I read the final National Review article of Steven Vincent, may he rest in peace. He explained why the Iraqi city of Basra suffers from...
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The People Versus The Powerful
WASHINGTON -- A non-profit public policy activist group launches a lawsuit challenging a massive regulatory structure affecting virtually the entire country. The suit is filed in a gritty town in middle America, and it invokes a little-known part of the...
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Judging Faith
Questions are being raised in some quarters about Supreme Court Nominee John Roberts' apparently devout Catholic faith. Christopher Hitchens, for example, tackles the issue with his usual sensitivity and couth: The Roman Catholic Church claims the right to legislat
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Europe's Lonely Heart
The era of globalization does not seem to have touched Belarus. This country in the very heart of Europe is becoming more and more isolated from the rest of the world. But the world needs to pay more attention. Last...
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My Stalker
A stalker is after me. His name is Paul Krugman, formerly a respected economist, with whom I frequently agreed, but now a polemicist on the op-ed page of the New York Times, assiduously and boringly toeing the Party line....
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Pruning The Constant Gardener
Growing up in Africa, I witnessed first hand the benefits of prescription drugs. My stepfather, a South African, survived polio as a child in the 1940s; 40 years later, I survived a severe case of malaria while I was living...
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What's In A Name?
"We are, thereby, thanks to you, definitely in possession of a new world"-- French astronomer Le Verrier to German astronomer Galle, who first recognized the new planet Neptune on September 25, 1846 Three new worlds (one with a satellite) just...
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Financial Innovation in Perfect Capital Markets
Editors note: this is the fifth in a series of essays on financial markets and the economy. 5. Financial Innovation "A significant fraction of Fischer's work for the corporate finance side of Goldman concerned potential applications of one or...
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The Poverty Trap
Revered so much by President Jacques Chirac and most of France's political class, the French welfare system is considered by many to be a model for preserving the European social cohesion. Yet among its numerous flaws is one rarely talked...
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The Aceh Peace Accord
Barring any last-minute glitches, the Aceh peace accord brokered in Helsinki on July 17, between the government of Indonesia (GoI) and the separatist Gerakan Aceh Merdeka ("the Free Aceh Movement" or GAM), will be formalized Aug. 15. If the Indonesian...
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Hugo Chavez's Latin Al Jazeera
Dressed down in their best proletarian duds, sympathizers of the FARC Marxist paramilitary take to the streets brandishing their best hammer and sickle flags. Manuel Marulanda Vlez, chief leader of the terrorist group, makes an appearance. An ominous voice takes...
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Vincent And Van Gogh
Casualties of war. That phrase conjures up thoughts of the young drafted soldier who never returned to the farm he grew up on. It makes us think of generals ordering grand armies to sweep across plains or ships sunk by...
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Faith-Based Evolution
Twenty years ago, as a PhD scientist, I intensely studied the evolution versus intelligent design controversy for about two years. And finally, despite my previous acceptance of evolutionary theory as "fact," I came to the realization that intelligent design, as...
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Phonies on the Family
Recent press reports have noted that Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens is dissatisfied with the way the team's management has treated him. Owens stated that he would not play for the Eagles this year, and demanded a trade. The...
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Who's Screwing Up America?
Talking on the phone with me, Bernard Goldberg is angry. "The very people who seem to be most concerned about the environment", he exclaims, "somehow think that the cultural environment doesn't matter!? Somehow it just doesn't matter what goes...
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Game, Set and Match?
The politics of climate change has been moving with breakneck speed recently. Leaked plans for Asia-Pacific Climate Plan, which generated the front page headline in Australia's national paper last week ("New Asia-Pacific Climate Plan"; The Australian, July 27), may
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Congress' Homeland Insecurity
If power companies invested in infrastructure like the Department of Homeland Security fights terrorism then a resident in New York City wouldn't be able to run a hairdryer but every cowboy in Bozeman, Mont., could light up a stadium. Because...
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Oil, Money and Confidence
Russia is generally associated with bad news rather than good. After all, it's perhaps the only country in the world to have a whole ministry dedicated to emergency situations. However, Russia is not only the Yukos scandal, Chechen terrorists...
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Medicine to Fit Your Genes
The Food and Drugs Administration's (FDA's) approval of the heart drug BiDil® marks a new understanding of health disparities. These differing patterns of death and disease are seen in subpopulations defined by age, gender, race, ethnicity, geographic location
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Terrorist Task For New Saudi King
Here's a question for a little weekend bet around the barbecue: Will high oil prices be good or bad for Saudi Arabia, whose King Fahd died Monday? Everyone knows expensive oil is good for the royal family. Members of the...
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Bush and Darwin
In an interview earlier this week, President Bush made a strange and even paradoxical claim. When asked to give his opinion on the controversy surrounding the teaching of intelligent design theory versus the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution,...
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Poland's Horror Without End
It is hot in Poland, and not because of summer -- though summer this year is really beautiful. It is because of the election campaigns for the parliament and the presidency planned for this autumn. And it is particularly because...
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Excise Wide Shut
Recently, Lithuanians were reminded about a scheduled increase in tobacco and fuel prices. This will come as part of Lithuania's commitment to the European Union to raise its excise duties in order to reach the EU's minimum levels by...
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By Reason Or By Markets
Flamboyant, cravat-wearing bastion of Chilean capitalism Hernan Somerville spoke to me with enthusiasm, on a recent visit I made to Santiago, about a five-hour dinner he had enjoyed a few days earlier with socialist presidential candidate Michelle Bachelet. Bachele
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Bean-Counter as Scapegoat
All the media attention paid to Bernie Ebbers' conviction has given us a taste of what we can expect when the trial commences against the architects of the decline and fall of the Enron empire. It would not be...
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Breaking Barriers to Competition
Recently, legislation was introduced in both the Senate and House to spur communications competition by encouraging the entry of telecommunications firms into cable markets. While technology already is driving change in the sector, the benefits can't be fully reali
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Stardust Contemplates the Stars
In 1967, a monk named John Dobson was kicked out of a California monastery run by the Vedanta Society, a Western offshoot of Hindu philosophy. His transgression consisted of unauthorized absences which were assumed to involve, as he later...
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A Kinder, Gentler Chirac
Political turmoil in France and Germany continues to play havoc with E.U.-U.S. relations. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder could be out of office by September, French President Jacques Chirac, who we'll have to kick around for two more years, will find...
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Ask Judge Roberts
As I have previously put forth, there exists recent precedent militating against asking a Supreme Court nominee such as John Roberts close questions about how he might adjudicate certain cases. That precedent is entirely justifiable as well, given the need...
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Heat Wave Hot Air
In case you have been living in a cave, it has been hot this summer in the United States. Much of the nation has been in the midst of a substantial heat wave, and the global warming crusade is making...
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Less Live 8; More Self Help
So I guess that now the G8 have signed on for more aid to Africa, the Live8 stars are all cuddled up with their increased royalties and we are generally being more caring and sharing with the taxpayer's money, everything...
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The Sunni-Shiite Divide
A year after the fall of Baghdad, I asked a senior U.S. official involved in planning the Iraq war whether the whole thing was a Shiite-centered project. He insisted it was not, and that Saddam Hussein had engaged in "equal...
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Crop Circles
The expected World Trade Organization arbitration in the fight between Washington and Brussels over genetically modified (GM) crops did not happen at the end of June, but a revolution by the European Council unexpectedly did. For the first time...
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One Price for Risk
Editors note: this is the fourth in a series of essays on financial markets and the economy. 4. One Price for Risk "The CAPM world that Fischer imagined back in 1969 is a world much simpler than the one...
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Megafauna Murder Mystery
"After centuries of debate, paleontologists are converging towards the conclusion that human overkill caused the massive extinction of large animals in the late Pleistocene." So sayeth a new paper to be published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organizati
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Way, Way Beyond Kyoto
In a surprise move that caught Europe's smug moralists and the environmental movement's noisy extremists flatfooted, the United States announced in Vientiane, Laos, last week that it was joining five other nations - China, India, Japan, South Korea and Australia...
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On Embryonic Stem Cells, Frist Backs A Loser
What does embryonic stem cell research have to do with the space shuttle? Seemingly nothing. Dig deeper, though. Whatever NASA may claim, there's little the shuttle can do that unmanned spaceships cannot - at much lower costs. But NASA knows...
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Is Small the New Big?
Blogger Jeff Jarvis writes: "Last month, I wrote that small is the new big. More demonstration of it: eBay is fast becoming one of the largest employers in America. Of course, it hardly employs anyone, but it enables a lot...
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Time To Raise The Bar
A few months ago I had the audacity to point out publicly some pretty fundamental flaws in the free trade agreement (FTA) that had been negotiated between Thailand and New Zealand. I went so fare as to suggest that New...
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Yes to Growth; No to Kyoto
Japan's decision to join the new Asian Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate will raise anxiety in Europe's leading capitals, for overnight it transforms the European Union from climate change cock of the walk to climate change feather duster....
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On Board the Discovery
The seven astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery face an unknown and possibly dire fate. In addition, the fate of the three-decade-old shuttle program itself looks bleak. Indeed, the path of humanity's trek into space looks murky and bumpy...
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Do Antitrust Laws Protect Consumers?
Many people think that antitrust laws are in place to protect consumers. But as Microsoft's current troubles in Europe show, that isn't necessarily so. The European Commission is using antitrust to carve out a market share for RealNetworks Inc., Microsoft's...
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REACH and Risk
One of the key reasons the European Union's proposed constitution was rejected by French and Dutch voters is that they dislike having their lives controlled by rigid, centralized dictates from Brussels. The most recent example of job-killing, nanny-state policy fro
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'There is a Use for Violence in Our Movement'
With the recent bombings in London, most concerns about terrorist strikes on the US focus on the jihadist movement. But the next major terrorist strike in the US could come from an unexpected direction -- the extremist animal rights...
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Iran's People's President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a populist outsider, has won the election for the presidency of Iran by a landslide, and many in the West have expressed dismay and shock at this result. Both in the United States and in Europe, the...
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The San Diego Zoo
It gives me no great pleasure to point out my town's shortcomings, but I'm only stating the obvious: San Diego is a royal mess. In 2005, the Southern Californian paradise that calls itself America's Finest City has absorbed much more...
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Easy AIDS Charity
Anyone with an "ethical and responsible commitment to people living with HIV/AIDS" knows perfectly well the options available to satisfy that concern: voluntarily contribute time, property or money. Politicians do something else though, they travel first class, sta
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A Plague of Alarmists
Tragedy is striking the Niger. An estimated 3.5 million people are starving in the former French Colony of West Africa, and thousands are expected to die daily. Drought and poverty are the main causes for the lack of food, but...
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Fear Not Biotech
How nervous should we be about biotechnology and its potential for changing humanity? Critics of biotech, such as Francis Fukuyama and Bill McKibben, coming from different points on the political spectrum, think we should be plenty worried. They argue that...
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The Time Is Now?
Never being one to jump on a bandwagon early, I waited until June of this year to join the big leap into digital television, buying a high definition TV set as a present from my wife for Father's Day. I...
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Italy in Argentina's Shadow
On looking at Italy's present economic predicament, one has to wonder whether one has not been to this movie before. Indeed, one has to wonder whether that movie might not have been called "Argentina", which was set mainly in Buenos...
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Slicing the Pizza in Perfect Capital Markets
Editors note: this is the third in a series of essays on financial markets and the economy. "People often ask: Can you summarize your theory quickly? Well, I say, you understand the M&M theorem, if you know why this...
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Sick Transit
The surest way for an industry to get a boost in federal funding is for it to suffer a terrorist attack. Such is the case with transit security. But will more spending make us safer? Not necessarily. Pointing to the...
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