TCS Daily : December 2001 Archives
Science Says: End of Recession Likely
Much has been said and written about the official recession we are now experiencing. Most analysis has now turned from whether we are in a recession to when this recession will end. As I mentioned in the previous Greenbook, historians...
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Space Race for 2002
OK, 2001 was no "2001," but there was more good news than bad news. The movie "2001: A Space Odyssey," was re-released this year, just to torment us spacers with visions of what could have been. The Stanley Kubrick/Arthur...
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The Clinton Team's Betrayal
Newspaper readers have been treated in recent days to an orgy of gut-spilling by Clinton administration officials rather painfully eager to show that when they were in office they, too, exerted themselves mightily to get rid of Osama bin Laden...
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Friday Fodder: Scheer Madness, Seeking Refuge, and WW III
Scheer Madness - The Los Angeles Times has in recent years cultivated one of the best opinion pages in the country, far better, more interesting and important than the New York Times. The exception to the page is its...
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Preventing Nanoterror Now
As various publications produce their recaps of the year that was, one point is going almost unnoticed. 2001 was the year that people started to get serious about the promises and dangers of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology - by which I mean...
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Tech Fund Managers Can`t Be Trusted
Originally Published in the Washington Post The mutual fund, one of the great democratic inventions of the 20th century, seems to have gone astray. A mutual fund is a portfolio of stocks -- about 100, on average -- grouped around...
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Unnecessary Threats
Editor's Note: This article first appeared in National Review Online Environmentalists are to be commended for a new appreciation of national security. But rather than champion more robust U.S. military programs, some are championing more robust government regulati
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How the GOP Lost the AMT Debate
Editors Note: A version of this article first appeared in the Wall Street Journal. With talks over a stimulus plan over for now, the one certainty is that this tax debate has been a disaster for Republicans. The House passed...
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Ken Adelman's Christmas E-Card
This holiday greeting e-card is to all the readers and fans of the TechCentralStation website -- especially our men and women in uniform -- wishing you good luck, safety and joy this blessed season. The passage comes from the first...
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The Worst Gift Idea of the Holiday Season
Here we go again. Yet another mechanical miracle guaranteed to break the American love affair with the automobile. Following limited success via mass-transit buses and light rail, bicycles, jogging shoes and assorted urban people-movers, we now have the Segway...
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Tango Lessons: Argentina Shows Austerity Is No Way Out
Talk about a country in need of an economic stimulus, Argentina sure could use some. Three years of recession have provoked riots at supermarkets and in the streets. Sixteen people were killed in showdowns this week. Unemployment tops 18...
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Friday Fodder: Cool School, Revenge of the Nerds, and Happy Holidays!
The Fodder will feature some more lighthearted features than usual this week given the egg nog is flowing, the carolers are singing, and after a dastardly fall that tested and tried this great country, it's time to pause and spread...
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Model Behavior
The Environmental Protection Agency is telling the Northeastern United States to be very afraid. "Climate change" will prompt flooding of its shores, it will chase away its current mix of flora and fauna, and it will generally make life, well,...
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"Girls, Gambling and Games": In Search Of Killer Apps
What's needed to get and keep broadband rolling? The Commerce Department's Technology Administration trudged into that miry question this week. The agency brought together officials from key associations for cable, telecommunications and entertainment, as well as
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Lessons Learned the Hard Way
While wrapping up the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, we should pause to reflect on what weve learned in the war thus far. Theres much that remains to be done, but here are some of my modest thoughts, while Id...
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Realists vs. Idealists
Newsweeks Fareed Zakaria has written a provocative piece grandiosely titled How to Save the Arab World. In the article, Zakaria calls for several steps the United States can take to pressure the Arab world into important economic and political reforms....
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Joltin' Joe Biden Fouls One Off
Sen. Joe Biden has brass. In one of the most unfortunately timed public appearances in recent memory given just one day before the terrorist attacks on 9/11 the Delaware senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee appeared at...
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Letter From Paris - Science Fiction Meets Fact
PARIS -- Most Americans, thinking of, for example, the clunky and sputtery autos made by Renault and Peugeot, probably don't think much of French science and technology. To be sure, walking through the streets here, I have seen more evidence...
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Letter From Paris - Science Fiction Meets Fact
PARIS -- Most Americans, thinking of, for example, the clunky and sputtery autos made by Renault and Peugeot, probably don't think much of French science and technology. To be sure, walking through the streets here, I have seen more evidence...
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Tech Sector: Blodget, Meeker, and You
Does anyone really need proof that the high-tech craze is dead? If so, it came Monday with the news that Henry Blodget, the handsome, 34-year-old Merrill Lynch analyst with the wavy Richard Gere hairdo, was being investigated by New...
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Mullah Nino?
When Julian Bond of the NAACP accused President Bush of appointing Cabinet officials from "the Taliban wing of American politics," no one much noticed this petty and inaccurate slur. After all, this sort of cheap shot is the stuff...
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Bush's Missed Opportunity at The Citadel
By revisiting at The Citadel last week the scene of his bold, 1999 speech on military transformation, President Bush essentially dared observers to grade his progress so far, calling transformation the military and moral necessity of our time. So whats...
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News Flash! We're In For 'NAS'ty Weather
A couple of days ago, the New York Times blared out in a dramatic headline that Drastic Shifts in Climate Are Likely, Experts Warn. It was a classic piece of virtual risk ecohype, emulated widely by other newspapers, such as...
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Friday Fodder: Monsters in Kandahar, Hot Kofi, and Noble Nobel
The Devil Giggles in Kandahar -- A tape was released Thursday of Osama bin Laden and his cronies in a safe house in Kandahar. The tape shows them discussing the 9/11 attacks in explicit detail, chuckling with glee like little...
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News Flash! We're In For 'NAS'ty Weather
A couple of days ago, the New York Times blared out in a dramatic headline that Drastic Shifts in Climate Are Likely, Experts Warn. It was a classic piece of virtual risk ecohype, emulated widely by other newspapers, such as...
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'NAS'ty Report Cuts Kyoto Off at the Knees
Nothing has undercut the Kyoto Protocol limiting carbon dioxide emission from industrial countries like the latest report from the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises. The trite headlines
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Philosophy 101: Global Warming Myths vs. Empiricism
I think it`s time to re-examine the concept of global warming more philosophically. Weather and climate change every second, of every minute, of every day, of every week, of every year, of every decade, of every century, of every millennium,...
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Philosophy 101: Global Warming Myths vs. Empiricism
I think it`s time to re-examine the concept of global warming more philosophically. Weather and climate change every second, of every minute, of every day, of every week, of every year, of every decade, of every century, of every millennium,...
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Who Do You Trust? Bush or the Bells?
Who Do You Trust? was great as a game show in the early 1960s, providing the liftoff for Johnny Carson to become host of the Tonight Show. But there were no fun and games in the stark choice House lawmakers...
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ABM: RIP
The United States has announced its withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. Its about time. The treaty had been, for several years now, a serious impediment to American national security. It is a clich to call it a relic of the...
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Arafat Creates the "Conditions In Which Terrorists Thrive"
Enough is enough. We've had enough of terrorism and we've had enough of Yasser Arafat. Al Gore uttered a memorable phrase at the Democratic Convention in 1988: "It 's time for them to go," he said. Gore's ditty is...
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What`s the Frequency, Congress?
Unmanned aircraft, bombers, and bombs are not the only instruments of U.S. power occupying the skies above Afghanistan - they`re just the visible ones. Equally important are the space-based satellites that take pictures of the battlefield, allow the aircraft...
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"You Dirty Rats": Activists Jeopardize Biomedical Research
In mid-November Congress approved an agriculture spending bill that allows the US Department of Agriculture to start developing new rules to regulate the use of mice, rats and birds in scientific research. These creatures, roughly 30 million of them, represent...
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Focus on What Matters: Economy, National Security - Not Tauzin-Dingell
Ready for remonopolization of telecommunications? That's what Verizon co-CEO Ivan Seidenberg is pushing these days, in the process contradicting the promises of the key sponsor to legislation for removing restrictions on his company and other local Bell phone monop
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Happy Birthday! Now Grow Up, Libertarians
Today is the 30th birthday of the Libertarian Party. So let's take a moment to offer a hearty congratulations to America's third largest political party. But it's also worth taking a minute to admonish the LP, and perhaps there's...
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Enron`s Lessons: Be Skeptical of Experts
Originally Published in the Washington Post Leafing through a recent edition of the Value Line Investor Survey, an excellent research service with a track record for prudence and accuracy, I ran across what looked like the perfect company. Its...
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Lester`s Brownout: Activist Exploits Poor Islanders
The environmental activist Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute has been accused of many things throughout his career, but poor taste had never been one of them. That was, until America suffered the worst terrorist attack in history. Just...
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Best Remedy for Recession? Break Up the Bells
Editor`s note: This speech was delivered to the Michigan Alliance for Competitive Telecommunications in Lansing, Michigan It is an honor to participate in this conference on the future of telecommunications in Michigan. More and more Americans today are asking a...
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China`s Long March to Space, Part II
Last week I noted the increasingly ambitious Chinese space program and considered the possible threat that such a program could pose to the United States in the future. And I observed that China, sitting atop 5000 years of history,...
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Tauzin Talks Of Competition, Seidenberg Only Of More Mergers
Ready for remonopolization of telecommunications? Thats what Verizon co-CEO Ivan Seidenberg is pushing these days, in the process contradicting the promises of the key sponsor to legislation for removing restrictions on his company and other local Bell phone monopo
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Tauzin-Dingell Will Kill New Telecom Investment, Study Says
The House leadership has shown little enthusiasm for the pet project of Reps. Billy Tauzin (R-La.) and John Dingell (D-Mich.), a bill that would gut the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which was responsible for a huge capital-spending boom in the...
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Breathe Easy, But Not for Long
America`s air quality continues to get better. A recently released Environmental Protection Agency report concludes that "since 1970, aggregate emissions of six principal pollutants tracked nationally have been cut 29 percent." This good news may come as a surpris
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Friday Fodder: Hugo the Boss, Scary Larry, and Erin Brockovich
Scary Larry -- In an effort to generate goodwill for his plans to help the feds develop a national ID system, Oracle`s Larry Ellison recently donated his company`s software to the U.S. government for security purposes. Despite the controversy...
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The Sorry CSAP Flap: It's Worse Than It Looks
On November 1st, Christina Hoff Sommers, a noted feminist scholar, was invited to speak at a conference hosted by the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP), part of the Department of Health and Human Services. The topic: should CSAP undertake...
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Don't Be Afraid. Don't Be Very Afraid: Nanotechnology Worries Are Overblown.
When physicist Richard Feynman first raised the possibility of molecular nanotechnology in 1960, terrorism was the last thing he had in mind. But since September 11, nanotechnology is back in the crosshairs. A while back, it was Bill Joy's article...
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Europe and the US: Separated By a Common Science
It was George Bernard Shaw who perceptively observed that the US and the UK are "two nations divided by a common language." We might further comment that they are now divided by a 'common science,' and that this division extends...
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Free Trade: A Consumer Revolution
Editor`s Note: The remarks were first presented at Hillsdale College in Michigan. It's a pleasure to be here today at Hillsdale and thank you for inviting me. I speak on a lot of different topics and I'm going to talk...
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Insecurity Blanket: Greens Preparing Kinder, Gentler Guilt Campaign
September 11 brought to the fore numerous realities that in our comfort we had sublimated, including the frivolity of numerous erstwhile "serious" pursuits. Only a truly rich and seemingly safe world would spend tremendous sums of human and financial capital...
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On Global Warming, We Know What We Don't Know
After nearly a decade of heated debate about climate change, the effect of human activities on global warming is still one great big unknown. The lack of light on that issue results from one thing - too much politics and...
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The Gift of Liberty: Into Iraq By Christmas
Last week President Bush announced that Saddam Hussein must allow the United Nations to reconstitute on-site inspections of Iraqi facilities - or else. That's shrewd as a first move - but not at all adequate as a full move. It's...
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Maple Leaf Jitters: Canada Blinks on Kyoto
It`s a rule of thumb that when President George W. Bush leaves the United States to visit other Western countries, the press can be counted on to report the conventional wisdom that US opposition to the Kyoto Protocol regulating...
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Wanna Beat the Market? The Feeling's Mutual
It`s been a miserable couple of years in the stock market, but investors in a remarkable mutual fund, based here in Washington, aren`t complaining. Since the start of 2000, the benchmark Standard & Poor`s 500-stock index has lost 22 percent...
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Direct Hit! One Small Step For National Security
So the Pentagon scored a direct hit in its latest missile defense test. This follows a test earlier in the year in which missile defense architects effectively "hit a bullet with a bullet." The Pentagon is on a roll....
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Freedom`s Blessing: Pass Trade Promotion Authority
Every president since Gerald Ford has had the legal authority to negotiate trade agreements and then submit them to Congress for a simple up-or-down vote. Every president, that is, until President Clinton lost that essential power in 1994. The authority,...
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It's Time, Time, Time for Broadband
Launch Broadband Interactive Time, time, time: thats what broadband - those high-speed connections to the Internet - is all about. And for one simple reason: time is money. Broadband will enable merchants to reach customers more easily; millions more...
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Beware China's Long March To Space
Editor's Note: This article is the first of two parts In 1972, Henry Kissinger met with Chou En-lai in Beijing and asked the Chinese foreign minister if he thought the French Revolution of 1789 had benefited humanity. "We Chinese feel...
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Auto Sales Boom and Help the Economy; But Politicians Set Ambush
Recent economic news has been terrible. Unemployment shot up from 4.9 percent to 5.4 percent in October as the number of jobs fell by 415,000 - the biggest one-month loss since 1980. Factory orders fell sharply in September and industrial...
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Wade Into Social Security Privatization: A TCS Interview
Editor's Note: "By creating private accounts, you'd create private assets and private assets could be passed onto another generation as capital. And I think that would change the lives of millions of people," says Wade Dokken. And Wade would know....
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