TCS Daily : July 2006 Archives
Give Peacekeepers a Chance? No
Day 19 of its offensive against Hezbollah has not brought the Israel Defense Forces much closer to the goal of removing the threat of Hezbollah's Iranian-supplied missiles. What it did bring, however, was a dreadful scene at the town of...
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Meat n' Greet?
From time to time for us armchair political philosophers, events in our personal lives illustrate larger concerns of public policy. For me this most often happens in the area of democratic theory. To wit, I have this crazy belief that,...
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A Little Eco-Nomics Never Hurt
Technological advancements have elevated mankind to its healthiest and wealthiest level in history. Our lives are longer, our health is greater, our food is more plentiful, and modern conveniences are now so affordable that even the poor among us own...
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American Politics: The Greatest Show on Earth
Most days I don't think about it, any more than you do, but there are times when I just love being an American citizen. It's about the best job a guy (or gal) could have. It pays well, in the...
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Vicious Circle
Technology increases the velocity of life -- and of vice. As in "Miami Vice." As the film shows us, technology helps people do whatever they want to do -- faster, better, and of course, cooler. So "Miami Vice" can be...
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Cold Comfort
Last week, two separate House hearings on climate change provided a study in contrasts -- one filled with controversy and anger, the other with mostly good feeling, except by those who didn't show up. At the first hearing, held by...
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All Politics Is Local - Even in Lebanon
Why has Hassan Nasrallah launched the legions of Hezbollah against the state of Israel? Because he hates Jews? Because the Iranians told him to? Because the Syrians wanted it? Because he believes in a Shia Muslim doomsday scenario in which...
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Cut the Minimum Wage With Ockham's Razor
Do we know with certainty what effect raising the minimum wage will have? Maybe not. But even if we don't, that doesn't mean we can't take a position on the matter. Consider a recent post on the economics blog, Marginal...
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Risky Business
On looking at the very forgiving way in which markets presently price emerging market risk, one is reminded of the story about Fischer Black, the famed MIT finance professor of Black-Scholes option pricing fame. When asked what he had learnt...
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What's the Big Idea? Podcast with Andrew Keen on Internet Regulation
This week's guest is Silicon Valley entrepreneur and digital media critic Andrew Keen, who discusses whether more regulation is needed on the Internet due to the the rise of pornography, blogging and user-created encyclopedias. To listen to the podcast, visit...
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UN Praises Israel for Restraint...
NEW YORK (SATIRENEWSSERVICE) -- Yesterday, the General Assembly of the United Nations voted 190 to 4 with one abstention in favor of an Egyptian and Jordanian sponsored resolution that commends Israel's "disproportionately restrained responses in opposing decades o
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Know Your Moon (and Solar System)
Children have long been fascinated by space, but good children's books about space exploration and astronomy only show up once in a while. Two new books provide valuable guides to the celestial for kids of about 10 years of age...
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Perks for Perps?
Remember ex-Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski's $2.1 million birthday trip for his wife, Karen, and their $6000 gold-and-burgundy floral patterned shower curtain? Well, Kozlowski's in jail, but lavish corporate spending on executive perks hasn't gone away. As the SEC readi
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Designer Jeans From Designer Genes
As the "new biotechnology" -- gene-splicing, or "genetic modification" (GM) -- enjoys ever more varied and impressive successes, the intractable opposition from environmental and other activists has become reminiscent of the old cartoon cliché about the person who
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Sales Tax? Hong Kong Fooey
Hong Kong's administrative government announced a $1.8 billion surplus for 2005-06. The move to a public-sector surplus in Hong Kong is good news. Until recently, government deficits accounted for 23 percent of GDP, up from 20 percent in recent years....
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Science In the House of Pain
Editor's note: On July 19, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee held a hearing on "Questions Surrounding the 'Hockey Stick' Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments." Those studies, under the lead authorship of paleoclimatologist Michael
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Gamblin' Man
The House of Representatives voted passed -- by a margin of 317 to 93 -- a bill that would outlaw the use of credit cards on Internet gambling sites, and even allow service providers to block access to the sites...
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Bingeing on 'Doing-Good'
"Simplify, simplify, simplify," admonished 19th Century writer/philosopher Henry David Thoreau. Considering his roots, you might think The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) would take a bit of his advice before giving its own advice about how to deal with...
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Save the Whales!... From Sonar?
On July 7th -- four days after a preliminary injunction was granted halting the use of active sonar -- the US Navy settled a lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) seeking to halt sonar training in order...
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Dictators and Distractions
Saddam Hussein, Butcher of Baghdad and occasional Muncher of Doritos, was derailed from his three-week hunger strike Sunday in preparation for closing arguments this week in his trial on charges of crimes against humanity. But as Saddam lies hospitalized at...
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This Year's Dumbest Political Idea....
We're only halfway through 2006, but the winner of this year's prize for the dumbest political idea can already be announced. Its originator is the British environment minister, David Miliband, who in a recent speech to the British Audit Commission...
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I'm EU, You're EU
As its popularity flounders, the EU is focusing on "getting itself closer to the people" by, among other things, launching webcasts of its meetings, organizing cake-baking competitions, and attempting hostile takeovers of popular song contests. Not surprisingly, mo
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Doha's Message: No Free Ride to Growth
Reality finally bit. The Doha Round talks have been put off indefinitely. This is the second best result: There was no deal worth doing in the Doha Round right now. Susan Schwab, the US Special Trade Representative blames Peter Mandelson,...
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Double Trouble
In his recent TCS column, For Stem Cell Research: A Lesser Malevolence, Michael Rosen offered a thoughtful and balanced analysis of the morality of embryonic stem cell research. There is much in Rosen's analysis that people of good will on...
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World War What?
So is it World War Three yet? One of the smartest figures in American politics says that it's here -- the Big One. "This is World War III," Newt Gingrich told The Seattle Times last week. As they say in...
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Edwardian Poverty
I realize that I'm excessively optimistic in thinking that politicians should be economically literate. I might as well ask that they be fiscally continent. I am clearly whistling in the wind with a request that Senator John Edwards actually learn...
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X(ercise) Box
The screen went blank, and words appeared. PLAY AGAIN? - Orson Scott Card, from Ender's Game. When it comes to how to deal with social issues, God created two basic types: regulators and entrepreneurs. The former think about what government...
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First Crippling, Then Ceasefire
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is in the Middle East today, meeting with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Her job is tough: not just how to end the fighting in Lebanon, but how to...
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Maybe Now We'll Get It
Maybe, as this terrible business in Lebanon unfolds, we'll finally get it: Guerrillas like to hide behind civilians. Muslim guerrillas take it a step further: "Civilians" are a weapon to them -- as much a part of the fight as...
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For Stem Cell Research: A Lesser Malevolence
Note: this is the third article in a series on the politics and morality of embryonic stem-cell research from a traditional Jewish perspective. The first two installments can be found here and here. On Wednesday, President Bush deployed his veto...
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Coming to America
For many Eastern Europeans a US tourist visa means more than just sending postcards and visiting tourist destinations in the Land of the Free - indeed, a tourist visa often amounts to a ticket to increased economic well-being. The practice...
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Go Gradual, or Big Bang?
North Korea seems to have real staying power when it comes to remaining on the radar screen of 24-hour news coverage. When it is not popping off missiles or making incoherent gestures of defiance against real and imagined enemies, Pyonyang...
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Greying Temples
Much has been written about how best to prepare the US for the retirement of the baby-boomers. But the challenges of an aging population for a country's economy are perhaps even more pronounced in Japan, a nation whose 'greying population'...
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Cowboys in Deutschland
As the date of his arrival approached, the prospect of George W. Bush on German soil unleashed a veritable frenzy of outrage and condemnation. Die Zeit, the country's most influential weekly of ostensibly educated opinion, plastered across its front page...
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It's Getting Ugly in Mexico
Can legitimacy emerge from breaking the law? Apparently Mexican presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador believes it can. After the closest election in Mexico's history, López Obrador is still questioning the overall validity of the electoral process. At
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Getting More Than 'Halfway to Anywhere'
This week, thirty-seven years ago, humans first walked on earth's moon. But for those who find decadal anniversaries more emotionally compelling, consider that exactly seven years later, thirty years ago this week, the first Viking Martian explorer successfully lan
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Shaken and Stirred
The US invasion of Iraq has so shaken and stirred the Middle East that some exceptionally strange things are happening. More importantly, these things unequivocally favor the US in influencing the outcome of the Israeli-Hezbollah War now taking place in...
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iConfused
I spend a certain amount of time reading things on the Interweb -- a newspaper, a couple of magazines, some blobs -- and I usually come away with the sense that I've managed to keep abreast of things, at least...
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Modern Stone-Age Family?
If somebody told you that Colombia was the second best place on the planet to live, the UK 108th and the US 150th you would suspect them, I am sure, of having ingested copious amounts of the marching powder that...
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Call Off the Dioxin Dogs
Way back in 1985 the EPA decided it wanted dioxin to be cancer-causing and made it so, labeling it a "probable human carcinogen." Fifteen years later it upped the ante, concluding -- to a round chorus of applause from the...
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How Do You Stop Rockets From a Hijacked State?
How do you stop rockets fired from a hijacked state? That's a complex question, but Israel must answer, or risk suffering the most drastic of consequences -- its own demise. Appreciating the thorny, multi-dimensional difficulties Israel confronts -- from bitter...
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The Era of Hostage States
"The [Israeli Military] has found that Hizbullah is preventing civilians from leaving villages in southern Lebanon. Roadblocks have been set up outside some of the villages to prevent residents from leaving, while in other villages Hizbullah is preventing UN repres
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Pirates of the European II: The Empire Strikes Back
May 31st has become a landmark date in the history of the intellectual property debate. On that day police in Stockholm raided the server of The Pirate Bay, an infamous source of pirated films, music, computer games, software and media....
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WTO: Nestorize It
The G-8 Summit has given their trade officials one month to install the Doha Round of trade negotiations. Had George W. Bush proposed applying the "Lebanon fix" (get Syria to get Hezbollah to "stop this shit") to the WTO (get...
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Vulgar Fractions and the Double-Effect
In battling Hezbollah and Hamas, are Israel's tactics unjust? Stephen Bainbridge, responding to arguments presented by Ed Morrissey, J. Peter Pham, and Michael Krauss, examines the concept of proportionality within the Just War theory as it applies to the current..
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Admirable Restraint
As the armed conflict continues in the Middle East, many are finally starting to acknowledge that the connections between the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah and its Syrian and Iranian patrons represent a significant strategic threat not only to Israel, but...
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Spending Warren's Money
With Warren Buffett's largesse added to his own, Bill Gates has about $60 billion to spend on health and development -- how should he spend it? The Copenhagen Consensus, a group (and process) put together by Danish academic Bjorn Lomborg,...
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The Long Tail is Wagging the Dog
Wired editor Chris Anderson's new book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More comes out at an opportune time. Big businesses -- especially big media businesses -- seem to be sluggish, but the economy...
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Gag Order
For forty years, the United States has lived with a variety of government programs applying preferential treatment based on race or gender or both. These programs have generally been limited to education and public contracting. Recently, in a 2-1 decision,...
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Not So Stern Review
Sir Nicholas Stern leads the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, reporting to the United Kingdom's Chancellor of the Exchequer and to the Prime Minister. His report will be published in Autumn 2006. In the journal World Economics,...
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Trouble in the Pipeline
In the past few months Ashgabat, Turkmenistan's capital, welcomed more delegations from Minsk, Moscow, and Kiev than did Brussels, London, and Washington combined. However, it is not the giant sculptures of its president Saparmurat Niyazov or the rotating 3D models
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What's the Big Idea? Podcast with Dr. William Gray on Hurricanes and Global Warming
This week's guest is hurricane expert Dr. William Gray, who discusses whether this year's storm season will be as bad as last year's, and whether global warming has anything to do with it.To listen to the podcast, visit What's the...
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Likely, But Implausible
"That's likely, but implausible." If that statement makes sense to you, then you might seek career summarizing science panel reports, or even working as a science writer for Nature or a major newspaper. For you would be well versed in...
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Just War for the Sake of Argument
Last week, Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano announced that the Holy See condemned "both the terrorist attacks on the one side and the military reprisals on the other," arguing that Israel's right to self-defense "does not exempt it...
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Invisible Schoolteachers
Few people believe that private schools exist in the impoverished, rural areas of China. Private schools are normally assumed to be only for the rich, situated in the developed cities. Moreover, most education in China is administrated and funded by...
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Cartel to Competition
The outlook for the future structure of the credit rating agency sector improved greatly on July 12th, when the House of Representatives passed the "The Credit Rating Agency Duopoly Relief Act" with a solid majority. Ratings on bonds and other...
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The GOP: Drinking Itself Sober
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned: I have succumbed to the Three Deadly Republican Spending Rationalizations. I'm not alone, you know -- seems that legions of congressional Republicans have joined me in my shame. I'm old enough to remember...
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Putin the Great?
In his TCS article, "G7 + 1 Autocracy," K. Caldwell Harmon voices an increasingly common view: that "G8 member countries should examine whether Russia deserves to be represented in a group intended to represent the developed, free world," in view...
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Stretched to All Proportions
While Israel continues its war of self-defense following two invasions by neighboring governments, the usual critics of the Jewish state have managed to find a reason to show their disapproval. The European Union issued a statement noting that it was...
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More Than Hezbollah Can Chew?
The Israeli dismantling of Iran's expeditionary force in Lebanon -- Hezbollah -- began in earnest over the weekend. Hezbollah played its big card when it carried out the carefully planned kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers. Now it's Israel's turn. The bombing.
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Give a Hoot, Don't (Call It) "Pollute"
This summer is only half over and already we have been treated to the film "Too Hot Not To Handle," Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," as well as the news that the Supreme Court will get involved in the question...
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Defining Binladenism
The ideology of Al Qaeda can be refuted, but only if it is clearly defined. Defining and refuting binladenism today would serve us by helping capture terrorists and foiling attacks: Al Qaeda is alive and well, but the recruits who...
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Be the One
One Pill to Heal Them All. Those words -- apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien's "one ring to rule them all" -- kept going through my mind as I attended Wednesday's press conference spearheaded by acting Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr....
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Reform the Works
EU leaders say they want higher economic growth and more jobs. They talk the talk about the need for reform. But in most of western Europe, they have failed to walk the walk. This is especially true when it comes...
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Keystone Comp
The apparent glee European Commission competition regulators took in imposing yet another massive fine on Microsoft this week was short-lived. The day after the EU's latest Microsoft move, the Court of First Instance shot down a decision the Commission had...
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G7 + 1 Autocracy?
On July 15, the leaders of the free world will descend upon St. Petersburg, Russia to commence the annual G8 Summit. Given the meeting's location, it seems appropriate to address Russia's place among the Group of Eight. More precisely, the...
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Not So Fuzzy Math
The latest figures on the federal deficit had Washington all atwitter this week. The Bush administration is crowing about the fact that the deficit is coming in much lower than the budget forecasters had predicted a few months ago (which,...
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'We Solve More Problems Than We Create'
Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg, who became a punching bag for environmental activists after he challenged the popular wisdom that the natural environment is deteriorating, recently granted a fascinating interview to Wall Street Journal editorial board mem
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Germany's Green Hypocrisy
Germany has finally bid auf wiedersehen to "the first climate neutral World Cup", as FIFA dubbed it. Yes, the organizers worked hard to give the host country the greenest tint possible. For example, according to BBC News, the stadium in...
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Coulda Had a G8
This week, anticipating a tough G8 summit in St. Petersburg, the EU leadership finally issued a long-overdue statement of intention to move to a free-trade deal with Russia following Russia's accession to the WTO. The statement, issued by the European...
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When Collaborators Have Chemistry
A "landmark" treatment; a "new paradigm" of separate companies working to produce a single drug: "proactive collaboration" between the Food and Drug Administration and drug developers. That's how FDA Acting Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach described the developme
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Israel: "Act of War"
"This was an act of war." Thus Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert succinctly summarized the facts, the law, and the consequences of the raid Wednesday by the Lebanese terrorist group-cum-governing-partner Hezbollah into Israeli sovereign territory that resulted in
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Frisco's Folly Trolley
The San Francisco city council apparently knows something that health safety regulators around the world don't. If the city council there is to be believed, American parents need to worry about the plastic baby bottles they give their children and...
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Making Lemonade out of Hamdan
BERKELEY, CA -- It goes without saying that my wacky hometown -- where cars proudly display bumper stickers like "Who Would Jesus Bomb?", "U.S. Out of My Uterus!", and (my personal favorite) "I'm for the Separation of Church and Hate!"...
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It's the Productivity, Stupid
We've all seen the "Why oh Why" pieces floating around about the economy? Why, if productivity is booming, GDP growth is strong, oh why is the labor market weaker than we think it ought to be? Why aren't Joe Six-pack's...
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Mumbai: Deadly Numerology
Terrorists didn't need to conduct a detailed reconnaissance. The commuter trains of Mumbai (Bombay), India, classify as a "very soft target." According to Indian government statistics, 6 million people a day ride Mumbai's commuter trains. Checking every bag and bri
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Ethanol's Dirty Little Secrets
Today's politicians try to justify ethanol's upward pressure on gasoline prices by touting it as a "clean fuel," but that claim is dubious. In fact, ethanol was on the verge of being outlawed by clean air laws in October, 1992,...
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Parliament of Bans
Scandals, incompetence, and profligacy at the UN are hardly news these days, but many of the organization's worst transgressions are hidden from public view. Among the worst examples are the organization's attempts to police all manner of scientific, technological
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Rebooting Your Doctor
Andy Kessler has worked in Silicon Valley for a long time. He's seen the way that improving technology can lower costs and increase capabilities in all sorts of areas, and now he says that it's time for silicon to do...
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Black, Blanc et Beur
The French daily Le Figaro, a bastion of tradition, described the match between France and Togo in the recent World Cup tournament as the only game played between two African teams. It was referring to the overwhelming presence of black...
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Bend it Like Bamboo
Former Malaysian Premier Mahathir Mohamad has once again unleashed a leadership conflict in Malaysia. Mahathir has leveled a number of public criticisms at the government since leaving office, often relating to changes in policies initiated by the former PM while..
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High-Struttin', Head-Buttin' France
What do they have in common, the bald noggin of Zizou d'Aguemoune and the white mane of Galouzeau de Villepin? What is the connection between the vainglorious 2003 UN oration of then Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin and the inglorious...
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The First, Refuge of Scoundrels
"No doubt administrations tend to confuse what is embarrassing politically with what is essential for national security -- the Nixon administration perhaps more than most," Henry Kissinger observed in his memoir Years of Upheaval in a section about the Pentagon...
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Paulson's Prerogative
Defying concerns that a serious new candidate for Treasury Secretary would be difficult to find, the Bush Administration engineered a coup with its nomination and successful confirmation of Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO Henry Paulson to head up the Treasury...
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The Price of Rationality
"If it barks, it must be a dog." That is why it is important to consider the arguments offered by those attempting to explain that something barking is not a dog. Concerned about the rise of inflation, the Argentine government...
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Sewing Discontent
Globalization continues to be a boon to mankind. Economic benefits once reserved to residents of the developed world are spreading rapidly throughout the developing world. Thanks to free trade, companies from rich countries are bringing improvements in health, safe
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Through the (Digital) Grapevine
In prior columns (see, e.g., The Wrath of Grapes), I've bemoaned the ponderous development of a national online market for direct-to-consumer sales of wine. In too many states, the big liquor distributors who oppose such sales still have a stranglehold...
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The Paranoid Manifesto
Unfocused, ambitious, naïve: Finland has drafted a tedious agenda for its six-month EU presidency. Judging by the outreach efforts implied in that document, Helsinki is under a severe global-power inferiority complex, which it plans to rectify while presiding in Br
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Tokyo Drift?
During the 1990s, Japan's economy languished -- rocked by what seemed like an endless stream of financial and political scandals. Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa was forced to resign in April 1994, just eight months after taking office, following allegations that.
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Thucydides Today
The lessons Thucydides offers in his History of the Peloponnesian War remain as relevant today as they did in the time of the Greek city states. With the United States working through the issues and challenges raised by its superpower...
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Reflections on Euro-Islam
Having lived in the nation's capital since the months approaching September 2001, and as founder of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, I have long been frustrated by the poor quality of Washington's discourse on Islam and terrorism. Aside from an...
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Main Street Fights Back
The good news is that nearly 50 percent of all U.S. households now own stocks. The bad news, though, is that the individual investor who directly owns stocks without the use of financial intermediaries (i.e. mutual funds) is a disappearing...
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Lead-Free Zeppelin
Environmental law and regulation is the only thing that will save the planet, don't you agree? We cannot let private interests, money-grubbing capitalists and uncaring fools ruin the planet for the rest of us now can we? We need those...
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France's New Poverty
In Summer 2004, the New York Times declared that the great day had arrived: Europe had eliminated -- nay, "abolished," as if by a legislative act-- poverty: or, at any rate, its "desperate" variety. "Even America's defenders must admit to...
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Five Reasons Americans Should Cheer For France in the World Cup
Two opening disclaimers: First, I am far more Anglophile than Francophile, much preferring, for example, Henry V to Joan of Arc, Wellington to Napoleon, Lloyd George to Clemenceau, Churchill to De Gaulle, and Blair to Chirac. Second, to butcher a...
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That Other Gore Movie
If you show me a movie genre that's tired and worn out, I'll show a movie genre that's due for a comeback. Like everything else in the free market, when the conventional wisdom tilts one way, the contrarian goes the...
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Kelo's Backlash: Imminent Success?
In his June 29 piece, ("Unhappy Birthday, Kelo"), Pejman Yousefzadeh asserts that "[t]he year after Kelo has largely seen anti-abuse forces fail in the political arena to organize any kind [of] meaningful pushback against the dangers posed by the Kelo...
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Keystone Food Cops
At any given moment almost two-thirds of American men and more than three quarters of American women are dieting or watching their weight, at least according to a Center for Disease Control survey back in 1999. (Not much has likely...
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The Financial Paradox of Our Time?
My friend Rich Karlgaard, the omnivorous and 'air-apatetic' publisher of Forbes magazine has declared that the simultaneous existence of a flat (and, sometime, inverted) yield curve and high gold prices is "the financial question of our time." I agree. Supply...
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Inherit the Wind?
Anyone flying over the Scottish coast in the next few years might be forgiven for thinking that the land mass was taxiing for take off. Such will be the profusion of 400-foot-high wind turbine propellers on view if proposals to...
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A Conversation with Boyden Gray
On his recent visit to Vienna to meet with EU leaders, US President George W. Bush was met with angry protests and tough, sometimes belligerent, questions from the European Press corps. But is all as bad as it seems? TCS...
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Cooperating on What Ends?
At their recent summit, the leaders of the members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) -- China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan -- issued a declaration on "international information security." The statement expressed concern t
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Give the Devil Her Due
Let's check in on what the liberals and ultra-liberals in Hollywood are up to. Oh, and while we're at it, let's also monitor moviedom's lefty pals over in the Mainstream Media (MSM); maybe we can see how the Hollywood-MSM alliance...
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Beyond Jeremy Rifkin
Mendacity and misrepresentation are nothing new from anti-meat, anti-technology, anti-capitalism activist Jeremy Rifkin. His statements about biotechnology's threatening "a form of annihilation every bit as deadly as nuclear holocaust" and civilization standing per
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The Hezbollah Nexus?
The Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah has enjoyed a respite in Western news of late, even though it continues to augment its considerable weapons stockpile despite being required to disarm by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 and by anti-Syrian factions in...
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The Primacy of Contract
On June 26 Judge Lewis Kaplan delivered a stunning blow against government excesses in prosecuting white collar crime. Judge Kaplan's 83-page opinion in U.S. v. Stein is not only a powerful rebuke, but it establishes an important principle for future...
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Courting Regulatory Disaster - or Clarity
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case being brought by a dozen states, several major cities, and environmental groups who want carbon dioxide, widely believed to be contributing to the current global warming trend, to be designated as...
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The Silver Bullet Fallacy
Regular readers of this column know that I'm a big fan of nanotechnology, and expect it to produce dramatic progress in coming years. So I was pretty excited to read this in PhysOrg.com: "Energy is one of the greatest challenges...
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Farewell to Sarajevo
After more than a decade in business, the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina (OHR) is planning to close shop in June 2007. The June 23 announcement by High Representative Christian Schwarz-Schilling met with Brussels' approval: the...
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The Politics of Managing Failure
Pascal Lamy, Director General of the WTO, gathered 60 trade ministers in Geneva last week to secure a "breakthrough" in the stalled WTO Doha Round trade negotiations. They failed, yet again. This is the fourth time in 2 years. Peter...
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Germany's Cup Runneth Under
Even after its heart-stopping overtime loss to Italy in the semi-finals, Germany is riding the waves of World Cup Mania. The IFO business confidence index hit a 15-year high, the young German team showed top form and defied criticism in...
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The Missiles Behind the Elvis Summit
The scene had a decidedly surreal quality: Before an amused and startled crowd that included President George W. Bush, a rock star-struck Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi crooned in the Jungle Room of Elvis Presley's Graceland Mansion. Koizumi performed a.
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Grandma's Fancy Feast?
Break out the cat food! Seniors are again under attack by Big Pharma. Crushing drug prices under the new Medicare Plan D will not only force grandma and grandpa to steal kitty's din-din and turn off the A/C, they may...
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The Lunar Bureaucrat
In 2013, NASA is scheduled to launch a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope called the James Webb Space Telescope. The planned telescope, unlike Hubble and various other space instruments, is not named after an astronomer or physicist. James E....
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When 'The Law' Means 'Corruption'
In December, 1989 the Armed Forces of the Philippines seriously threatened President Corazon Aquino in a coup, claiming she was corrupt and needed to be removed. The saintly housewife, affectionately called "Cory," led the movement that drove the corrupt dictator,.
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