TCS Daily : January 2002 Archives
Dumb, But Pretty
"Our fourth graders are doing PowerPoint presentations," the teacher says, proudly. It's no big deal. Manipulating software isn't hard for kids who've grown up with TV, DVD, VCR, microwave, cell phone, pager and answering machine technology. Writing is hard....
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HDTV's Blurry Future
Earlier this month, Korean engineers released a report that should be of substantial concern to American television viewers. The test compared two broadcast standards for digital TV - the standard adopted by the U.S. versus a competing standard chosen...
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Ousting Saddam
President George W. Bush's most forceful statements yet against North Korea, Iran and, particularly, Iraq in his state of the union address suggest a showdown sooner rather than later in the battle against terrorism. If so, at least in...
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The Greatness of Our Union
The State of the Union has somehow become shorthand for the President addressing Congress and the nation on his policy initiatives, or discussing important developments 'in the news.' On that front, President George W. Bush did nicely last night. But...
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First, Do No Harm
Imagine a woman in a rural community so small it doesn't have a first class breast clinic, and yet she has her mammography results analyzed instantly by cancer experts at a National Cancer Institute like New York's Sloan-Kettering Medical Center....
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Learning Faster
Albert Einstein once said that the most powerful force in the universe is compound interest. There's a good argument for this position, but I think that the most powerful force in the human universe is the learning curve. The...
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Rush Hour
In a June 11 Rose Garden speech, President George W. Bush detailed his plan to address the perceived threat of man-made global warming. Wisely, the dominant theme of the speech was his pledge of financial resources in pursuit of...
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You Get What You Pay For
The Broadband Outlook 2002 conference last week concluded with a familiar refrain. Broadband ain't ready for prime time. Yet. However, the fact that 70 percent of homes have high speed networks available for them to hook into but only...
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Green Acres
Americans who worry that heartland values have disappeared have new cause for optimism: Shame, recent reports indicate, is still with us. The grim part of the story is that taxpayers are shelling out large bushels of money to prove this...
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Blue Light Specials
Originally published in The Washington Post Looking for a bargain? A surprising number of readers in recent days have excitedly asked me about two stocks they want to buy because they look so cheap. One is Enron; the other...
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Climate Lies
Winston Churchill once remarked that "a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." If my recent travels are any indicator, the Last Lion may have understated the case. "Dear...
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Promises, Promises
Promises, promises, why doesn't SBC keep its promises? The largest of the remaining four regional Bell phone giants was again charged by the Federal Communications Commission with failing to open its phone lines to competitors, as it promised to...
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Hey, Big Spenders
Even before the Congressional Budget Office released its report last week showing the dramatic budget surplus meltdown, Democrats were blaming the fiscal deterioration on President Bush's tax cut. It starved the government of money, they said, making it impossible
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No Sympathy
Why can't I muster much sympathy for the terrorists held behind bars in Guantanamo Bay? Well, let me count the ways: Because they're not very sympathetic fellows. They seek to destroy our civilization and remain willing to "sacrifice" their...
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Science Non-Fiction
Last week we considered some of the threats the world faces in the era of suicidal terror and weaponry of mass destruction. In this dangerous world, we must continually scan the horizon for threats, be they probable, possible, or theoretical....
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The Future of News
This week I was prepared to write about the communist Chinese government and all the nefarious things they've been up to of late (it's a lot). But so many interesting developments in technology surfaced that China bashing is on the...
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What's at Stake at Gitmo Bay
Cuba has always held a special place in the hearts of social justice advocates and the left as a whole, so it should be no surprise that it is the newest location for their war on the war on...
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...and Osama's Secret Weapon
Osama Bin Laden has a secret implement of war. No, it's not in the form of anthrax-laden letters or other weapons. Rather, it's in our heads - our almost compulsive fear of anything to do with radioactivity. Bin Laden, or...
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Chernobyl's Real Victims...
The UN Development Programme and Unicef have finally admitted in a new report what many scientists and policy wonks have known for years. Chernobyl killed thousands -- not from radiation, but from policy based on radiophobic hysteria. (Editor's note:...
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...and Osama's Secret Weapon
Osama Bin Laden has a secret implement of war. No, it's not in the form of anthrax-laden letters or other weapons. Rather, it's in our heads - our almost compulsive fear of anything to do with radioactivity. Bin Laden,...
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Chernobyl's Real Victims...
The UN Development Programme and Unicef have finally admitted in a new report what many scientists and policy wonks have known for years. Chernobyl killed thousands -- not from radiation, but from policy based on radiophobic hysteria. (Editor's note:...
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Stemming an Ethical Debate
In what could be an extraordinary and important discovery, scientists at the University of Minnesota believe "a stem cell has been found in adults that can turn into every single tissue in the body," the magazine The New Scientist...
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A Sad, Infuriating Tale
Some business stories make you angry - like the collapse of Enron. Other business stories make you sad - like the bankruptcy of K-Mart. Still others make you both - like the suit filed yesterday by AOL Time Warner...
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Making Sausage
WASHINGTON - If you are pleased to hear any sentence that starts "Congress failed to pass . . ." then 2001 was a banner year. Consider what Congress didn't accomplish last year: Lavish new farm subsidies, expensive prescription drug and...
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The Kass Council: Some Advice
The President's Council on Bioethics, chaired by Professor Leon Kass, is now up and running. Having served on a White House advisory committee myself (back under the prior Bush Administration) and having watched others succeed and fail, I have...
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Rewind, Repeat
WASHINGTON -- Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts Tuesday issued the Democratic response to the Bush administration's push for an energy plan. He saddled the administration with "old thinking" about how to meet the nation's energy needs. He then proceeded to...
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Dare to Be Obscure
One danger sign emanating from Enron before its collapse was that its top executives couldn't shut up. Specifically, they couldn't stop talking about how wonderful their firm was -- the "World's Greatest Company," as a sign in the lobby of...
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Risky Business
Trial lawyers have brought a civil suit in Maryland's Montgomery County Circuit Court against Pfizer Inc. - claiming that the drug company put profits ahead of patient welfare with its diabetes drug Rezulin. Monica George died in 1998 from...
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Risky Business
Trial lawyers have brought a civil suit in Maryland's Montgomery County Circuit Court against Pfizer Inc. - claiming that the drug company put profits ahead of patient welfare with its diabetes drug Rezulin. Monica George died in 1998 from liver...
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Alaska Is Not Heating Up
Thermometer readings from various locations around Alaska indicate that a warming occurred during the last five decades. But can this Alaska warming be connected to the air's increased carbon dioxide concentration from human activities like fossil fuel consumption?
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Nobility In Failure
There is a nobility in military failure that Hollywood loves to celebrate. Arnhem, Gallipoli. The Alamo. Khartoum. The latest in the genre, and the number one film in America, is director Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down. An adaptation of Mark...
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Enron's Lesson: Diversify
When shares of Enron plunged from $84 earlier this year to practically zero, thousands of the company's employees lost not just their jobs but also most of the value of their 401(k) retirement accounts. For the average employee, Enron stock...
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Lessons From Gettysburg
There's now a lull after our stunning victory against Taliban troops in Afghanistan. Americans calling for another assault - this one against the most important terrorist, the tyrant in Iraq - are being quieted, or ignored. The minds of many...
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Mr. Greenspan's Opus
On January 11, Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan presented his most content-laden economic speech in many years. The speech, which was presented at the Bay Area Council conference in San Francisco, reviewed the past year's economic events and placed them...
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Fields of Dreams
If you have ever worried that environmentalists are genuinely thwarting progress in the field of agricultural biotechnology, then now may be the time to think again. In 2001, over 5 million farmers opted for the future rather than for...
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Fields of Dreams
If you have ever worried that environmentalists are genuinely thwarting progress in the field of agricultural biotechnology, then now may be the time to think again. In 2001, over 5 million farmers opted for the future rather than for a...
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McNealy Gets It!
McNealy Finally Gets It -- Back in November, the federal government and several state attorneys general reached a settlement with Microsoft to bring the lengthy anti-trust case against Mister Softee to an end. At the time, many of us cheered...
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Leahy's Legacy
The prospect of 600 U.S. troops being sent to the Philippines this month to help defeat the terrorist-linked Abu Sayyaf guerrillas has more than one Vietnam-era baby boomer blanching about "quagmires in Southeast Asia." But in truth, the only valid...
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Science Priorities After 9/11
The annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) held late last year in San Francisco gathered over 8000 scientists in the year's largest and most important meeting on earth science. Research on climate change was front and center....
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Isn't It Enron-ic?
It's a tough argument to make - that the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history is actually good for markets, for consumers and for the economy. But given what we know at this point, that may be exactly the case. In...
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Look Out, Detroit
For decades it has been fashionable to brand General Motors a rust-bucket company run by gray-faced Midwestern accountants producing dull-witted automobiles and trucks while bi-coastal trendies scoop up high-tech German and Japanese machinery at an ever-increasing
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Broadband Visions
Washington often gets caught up in the mire of legislative infighting between special interest groups. This week, TechNet - an organization made up of more than 300 chief executives and senior partners of infotech, biotech, venture capital, investment banks...
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Guilt By Association
Democrats hope to bell the Bush administration with the Enron debacle. Democratic National Committee spokesperson Jennifer Palmieri crows: "Enron now becomes shorthand for Democrats trying to convey to the American people the irresponsible way that the Bush admini
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The Comfy-Chair Revolution
I've noticed a gradual change in public surroundings over the past few years, and I think it's driven in part by personal technology. Unlike the hard, unappealing settings of traditional retail space (ground rule: "get 'em in, get their...
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Trader Woes
Few people know it, but the great outdoors photographer Ansel Adams was also an accomplished pianist. During one private concert, however, he had trouble keeping his left hand in time with his right one. "I went through the entire nocturne...
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Kass Commission Names Emerge
President Bush will announce as early as Wednesday afternoon the members for the Council on Bioethics, sources have told Tech Central Station. Created last August, the President's Council on Bioethics was established to advise President Bush on controversial biotec
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No Alternative
The nation's energy issues were put on the back burner after the events of Sept. 11. But since every American uses energy every day, those issues, unlike the al Qaeda network in Afghanistan, can't be buried forever. The House passed...
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Antarctica is Freezing Cold
Baby penguins are starving, and climate change is to blame. But not in the way you might think. Antarctic icebergs called B-15A and C-16 are about 54 miles and 34 miles long, respectively. They calved from the Ross Ice...
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Bank on This
Five years ago I stumbled across a fund I had never heard of with a record I couldn't believe. Tiny and nearly unknown, it was called First Financial, and its manager, Nicholas Adams, ran a portfolio that had increased...
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An Army of Paupers
The image of Army Special Forces Sgt. 1st class Nathan Ross Chapman, 31 and a father of two, bleeding to death after being shot in the leg outside the Afghan town of Khost on January 4, is enough to evoke...
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Centers for Development Control
In a development watched closely by those of us who live beyond the city limits, doctors and researchers from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued a report insisting suburban living is hazardous to your health. This comes as something...
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It's Competition, Stupid
Why do so few homes and small businesses have broadband Internet access? To hear only Edward Whitacre, chief executive of SBC (the largest of the remaining four Bell local telephone monopolies), you'd conclude that federal and state regulations are...
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Tech vs. Terror
Technological Heritage -- The role technology can and will play in protecting Americans from future terrorist attacks is often misunderstood and mischaracterized. Technology will offer no magic bullet solutions to the threats posed by terrorists. But technology pro
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Sinners in the Hands
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Financial News Nonsense
Editor's note: A version of this article appears in James K. Glassman's new book The Secret Code of the Superior Investor. Here's the basic problem with financial journalism: Done well, it's not supposed to be all that exciting. Television,...
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Signs of the Times
Two important Times stories - one in the New York Times, the other in the London Sunday Times - tell us a lot about the news media and help set the record straight about the Clinton administration's failed efforts...
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Wake Up!
Editor's note: This article is the first of three parts. Happy New Year-or is it? Maybe the right way to think about 2002 is, so far so good. Yes, we've won a battle against terror, but the war continues. And...
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Tasty Dish
"Will consumers be better off?" is the question posed to Charlie Ergen, chairman and CEO of EchoStar Communications Corp. regarding the proposed $25.8 billion merger of his Dish Network satellite system with Hughes Electronic Corp. His answer to Tech Central...
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A Technological Reformation
Big journalism is in trouble, and big journalists don't like it. They occasionally go public with their views, as in Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen's tirade against reader email last spring. But most of their complaints are shared only...
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Yucca to Get Green Light
After two decades of study and years of political infighting, the federal government appears ready, as soon as Thursday, to give the green light to opening the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage facility in Nevada, sources tell Tech Central Station....
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What Goes Down...
During a particularly long drench, someone asked Mark Twain whether he thought it would ever stop raining. "Always has," he replied. The same with the stock market. It rains, but the sun comes out again. Stocks fall, but they always...
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Nader Blows Hot Air
Energy is an essential economic and national security asset, a fact placed in stark relief after the cruel terrorist war on America began Sept 11, 2001. But as important as energy policy is to the future of America's economy...
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Assisted Economic Suicide
A White House proposal under final consideration, for possible imminent release, would create a national inventory of certain naturally occurring gases -- such as carbon dioxide (CO2) -- when they are emitted by the combustion of fossil fuels to...
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Small Is Beautiful
Mankind's concern with size has resulted in many off-color jokes, but the fact is that in technology and telecommunications, the best things often come in the smallest packages. So breakthroughs in technologies based on a billionth of a meter...
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Letter From the Editor
Dear Fans and Friends, Welcome to the new and improved TechCentralStation.com! Poke around and tell us what you think. Youll find lots of improvements over the old site that we think youll enjoy, including: Smarter, cleaner, more elegant design The...
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Trying Clinton's Legacy
Worse Than Asleep at the Wheel -- The Washington Post's Matthew Brzeznski has a must-read piece about a foiled terrorist plot in the Philippines. Some of those questioned after the failed plot admitted that among future terror plans were efforts...
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No More CAFE
Should one have sufficient time to waste, a great source of knee-slappers lies in re-reading the predictions issued by media gurus for the year just past. Most were hilariously inaccurate, and included not a single word about terrorist attacks...
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Rocket to Nowhere
Life on Earth was a total waste, I don't care if I'm lost in space, I'm on a rocket to nowhere! Webb Wilder actually wrote these words to describe the drawbacks of a swinging-single lifestyle, but they apply all too...
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The Biggest Loser of 2001
Joining Taliban John Walker, Enron, and baseball contraction on the list of the "biggest losers" of 2001 is a less obvious suspect: the international treaty. First, President George W. Bush treated the ABM Treaty like a 30-year-old son still...
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Put a Price on His Head
What do famed killers Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Doolin-Dalton gang members, and Joaquin Murieta share in common? Answer: These 19th century terrorists were shot dead by gunmen seeking government bounties. Meanwhile, Osama Bin Laden -- who planned the deaths...
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