TCS Daily : June 2009 Archives
Not Doing What Comes Naturally
Wouldn't we be better off if we just learned to live with the risks and threats posed by terrorism? That's essentially the question Duke University ecologist Raphael Sagarin is asking. "Organisms do not try to get rid of risk in...
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Fuelling Controversy
Gaza on the Mediterranean, with an offshore natural gas resource worth an estimated $4 billion and with Palestinian statehood believed an imminent proposition, should be looking at the brightest possible future. But still abject poverty and hopelessness rack Gaza a
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Heritage For Sale
A good brainteaser to describe land preservation, 21st century style, could go like this: When does a conservation program not put conservation as its top priority? Answer: When there's money to be made. So goes the latest National Heritage Area...
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Chemical Ban Will Not Help Kids
Activists and some politicians are exploiting parents' legitimate concerns for their children's health by trying to convince state governments to pass a ban on the safe and eminently useful chemical bisphenol-A (BPA). BPA has been used in many familiar guises...
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Saving Phantom Jobs
There is nothing new about politicians making preposterous claims. Sometimes, even though they should know better, they actually believe what they are saying. Other times they calculate it is advantageous to argue a point they realize is not true. Since...
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Tax Reform: The Narrow Road
"It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion." -- Adam Smith Taxes are the price of living in modern society...
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The Worst Emerging Disease of All
Cases of H1N1 swine flu continue to appear -- especially in Australia, which has seen a quadrupling of cases in a week, with the number of confirmed cases surpassing 1200. But that is hardly a surprise: Flu virus is transmitted...
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A Bold New Breed of Environmentalism
If Adam Werbach, 36, former environmentalist prodigy and lapsed vegetarian, doesn't seem like your typical green activist, it's because he's adamantly not one. Dressed in the simple, casual corporate attire popularised by Silicon Valley's finest, the Californian ca
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Summers vs. Bernanke? I'd Take Summers
The New York Times ran a front-page story today on personal tensions between Larry Summers and other top Obama economic advisors. Parsing through it, it looks like Austan Goolsbee, who argued against the Chrysler bailout, has the cheekiest relationship with...
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I Knew Two Heroes
As they do every five years or so when the calendar turns to June 6th, presidents and prime ministers are descending on Normandy to commemorate the D-Day landings. They will intone about the lessons of history and the need for...
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The Swine Flu Solution: Fund the Best Minds in Science
Spurred by the spread of swine flu, President Barack Obama recently called for more than 3 percent of our nation's GDP to be spent on research and development, saying "[T]his represents the largest commitment to scientific research and innovation in...
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Stifling Innovation
Despite the plethora of bad economic news this year, good news abounds for pro-regulatory, litigation-happy "consumer activists" on the left -- and their attorney camp-followers. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson recently announced her plan
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No More Minnesotas - Part 2
Continued from Part 1... IntegritySome folks think electronic voting machines are unreliable, and perhaps even rigged. They contend that the only way to verify vote counts is for these machines to produce paper trails that show how each voter voted....
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No More Minnesotas - Part 1
About 8 years elapsed from John F. Kennedy's proposal to put a man on the Moon to the Apollo 11 mission. And on July 20, 1969, Man set foot on another world. Setting that foot involved an enormous amount of...
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