Gil Friend

'Lost Discoveries': The Non-Western Roots of Science. Dick Teresi has chronicled the contributions of Arabs, Indians, Chinese, Polynesians and Mesoamericans to modern scientific thought. By Stephen S. Hall. [New York Times: Science]
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The Secret Life of Henry Kissinger. Let me, as one of the world's leading dissident Henry Kissinger scholars, tell you a few things about him that until now only I have known. By Neal Pollack. [New York Times: Opinion]

Another opinion on the Kissinger appointment, from "someone who knows":
This is the third least sensible appointment that I know in political history: the second silliest being that of Che Guevara as head of Cuba's national bank, and the all-time prizewinner being Caligula's appointing his horse as a consul of Rome.
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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, November 26, 2002

A group of prominent philanthropic foundations has created a $10 million commission of former energy-policy planners from both the Bush and Clinton administrations as well as representatives from industry and environmental groups to chart a long-range energy policy.

The National Commission on Energy Policy, which expects to present its report in two years, could pave the way for the federal government to re-examine energy policy and come up with a coherent strategy to balance energy use and environmental protection that will pass Congress.

Could go somewhere, could go nowhere. But the breadth of the commission members -- from NRDC to the CEO of the nation's largest group of nuclear-power plants -- and the savvy of its funders -- the Hewlett, Pew, MacArthur Foundation and Packard Foundations -- suggests that something interesting might just happen.
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Executives Could Face Liability Over Climate Change

CERES: Company executives could find themselves losing protection against climate
change-related liability claims brought by shareholders. SwissRe, the
world's second-largest reinsurer, has announced it will withdraw coverage of such claims for senior executives of companies that fail to adopt adequate
climate change policies. In the November issue of Environmental Finance,
Roger Wenger of SwissRe said, "As an insurer, we only give coverage to
'fortuitous events.' If it is predictable that a liability would arise, we
would have to exclude that cover from the policy."

The insurance industry understands the issue far better than the White House. They don't need scientific certainty; their whole business is about playing the odds. And they can't even afford the risk of climate change and its consequences.

Look for actions like these to have far more impact on business practices than treaties and regulations.
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Jay Leno's thinking about climate change too:

What's the difference between Chanukah and an SUV? Chanukah is about a day's worth of oil lasting 8 days, whereas an SUV is about 8 days worth of oil lasting one day.

:-)
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Never one to pull her punches

I Stand with Israel: I Stand with the Jews

Oriana Fallaci

Corriere della Sera | December 2, 2002

I find it shameful and see in all this the rise of a new fascism,
a new nazism... much more grim and
revolting because it is conducted and nourished by those who
hypocritically pose as do-gooders, progressives, communists,
pacifists, Catholics or rather Christians, and who have the gall
to label a warmonger anyone like me who screams the truth.... I have often had
disagreements with the Israelis, ugly ones, and in the past I
have defended the Palestinians a great deal. Maybe more than they
deserved. But I stand with Israel, I stand with the Jews. I stand
just as I stood as a young girl during the time when I fought
with them, and when the Anna Marias were shot. I defend their
right to exist, to defend themselves, to not let themselves be
exterminated a second time. And disgusted by the anti-Semitism of
many Italians, of many Europeans, I am ashamed of this shame that
dishonors my Country and Europe.
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Can Global Warming Be Studied Too Much?. Many climate experts say the perennial need for more study can no longer justify further delays in emission cuts. By Andrew C. Revkin. [New York Times: Science]
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A Carbon-Atom Combo: Diamonds Found in Crude Oil.

Tiny diamond fragments found in crude oil might be just what scientists want: potential building blocks for the construction of molecular-scale machinery. By Kenneth Chang. [New York Times: Science]

I've always felt that oil was far too valuable to burn...
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CNet.  Xerox researcher finds a new polymer that can replicate the price/performance of silicon-based displays.  Will Xerox blow it again? 

"The reason the cost is lower is that we don't need the same capital-intensive process as the one used with silicon," Ong said. "In our process, we can make the material into ink and ink-jet print it to create a circuit."

Leading the way once again

Oakland Tribune: The city of Berkeley's entire fleet of recycling trucks are now running on biodiesel from restaurants and doughnut shops. Under consideration: the city's public works fleet. Biodiesel is nearly double the cost of
petroleum-based diesel, but prices are beginning to fall.

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Arthur C. Clarke. "CNN is one of the participants in the war. I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected president but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power." [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]

[Undated, probably from first US / Iraq war.] Follow the link to other pithy items from Clarke
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Invest on the Cheap. Bill Mann wonders why companies aren't using the weak economy to invest in their futures. [The Motley Fool]

A weak economy may be a difficult time to grow sales, but it's a perfect time for investments in resource efficiency -- for example, low risk, high return investments in energy efficiency that deliver real dollars to the bottom line -- as well as in the strategies that can position you to come out of the gate strongly, once the gate pops open.
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Hey: It's democracy time!

Jennifer Klyse: I want to build a service that allows individuals to monitor, on a daily or weekly basis, all official activity of their elected officials in Washington. [Scripting News]
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Quotes of the day:

"High finance ain't burglary, an' it ain't obtaining money under false pretenses, an' it ain't manslaughter. It's what ye might call a judicious selection from th' best feature of them arts." -- Finley Peter Dunne
[via the reliably lucid Jon Carroll]

How Gandhi Defined the Seven Deadly Sins:
Wealth without work; Pleasure without conscience; Knowledge without character; Commerce without morality; Science without humanity; Worship without sacrifice; Politics without principle
[via Ted Smith, Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition/Campaign for Responsible Technology]
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A very skeptical view of the iraq inspection effort

Debka: "Washington Gathers Own Evidence of Saddam's WMD":
Saddam's demonstration of openness is in fact another exercise in
obfuscation.... Washington in any case had no expectation of
substance from the UN inspectors. Thursday, December 5, the White
House declared it already had "solid evidence" that Iraq does indeed
have weapons of mass destruction. Where did that evidence come
from?... the secret, independent inspection project launched by the
United States well before the UN Security Council sent its inspectors
to Iraq.
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Scienceagogo has a follow up article on break-through last month that may make inexpensive, super-efficient solar cells possible. If this is actually possible, then it would open up a clear path to decentralized energy. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
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How Green Is BP?.

The world's second-largest oil company is advertising itself as environmentally responsible a tough sell when you make most of your billions drilling the earth. By Darcy Frey. [New York Times: Science]

Long and worth reading. Comments to come.
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The New Republic: IS CHINA'S ECONOMIC BOOM A MYTH?

Minxin Pei, a China scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, estimates that corruption costs China as much as 8 percent of annual GDP. The government auditing body has admitted that more than two-thirds of the biggest Chinese companies falsify their accounting--an astonishing statistic given that investors attacked U.S. stock markets in the wake of this year's corporate scandals, even though most economists believe less than 5 percent of American companies cook their books.
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Tropical Rivers Produce More CO2 Than Previously Thought

Science a GoGo: U.S. and Brazilian researchers say the amount of carbon dioxide coming off streams, rivers and flooded areas of the world's tropical forests is triple that of some currently accepted estimates, meaning such forests aren't the carbon sponges some scientists believe.

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Let's be careful out there

That's what the sargeant on Hill Street Blues used to tell the cops before sending them out on the beat. It's a phrase that comes often to mind:

McKinsey and Failing Airlines. McKinsey was the central "consultant" at Swissair during the several years that led to the destruction of the Swiss airline. Their "work" cost Swissair about $60 million dollars -- while it lost all profits, revenues, and assets. McKinsey is also well-known for having preached at Enron, and presented that company as a success to emulate, until the fall. Business Week: Many of the intellectual underpinnings of Enron came from McKinsey...

NYT: Now that United Airlines has filed for bankruptcy protection, the critical challenge facing the airline... is to find a business strategy that works. To that end, United has hired McKinsey... Why McKinsey? While Andersen helped cook the books at Enron, didn't McKinsey also play a key role in that massive failure? [Jinn of Quality and Risk]

Note:  the article also lists some recommendations from McKinsey on how United can improve performance.  Unfortunately, these improvements will barely offset the monthly fees McKinsey is charging the airline. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

It's not that consulting is a Bad Thing. (I should know; I am one!) But consulting that takes you away from ethics, good sense and business fundamentals? Let's be careful out there!

PS: It's not that airlines being in trouble is anything new. Check out the systems analysis done by UC Davis prof Kenneth EF Watt in the 70s. (I'll see if I can find the citation.)

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Let's be careful out there II

Photographer arrested for taking pictures of Vice President's hotel: "An amateur photographer named Mike Maginnis was arrested on Tuesday in his home city of Denver - for simply taking pictures of buildings in an area where Vice President Cheney was residing." [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson] [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
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Lance Knobel on US Treasury Secretary-designate John Snow: The Wall Street Journal reports that Treasury secretary-designate John Snow's company, rail freight giant CSX, is no great shakes. "For all its progress, CSX still has the worst operating ratio, a common measure of railroad efficiency, among big North American railroads." That sounds like a recommendation.

But wait! There's more!

And in 2001, Snow earned "$2.2 million in cash, plus $7.1 million in restricted stock awards. In addition he received $753,057 in additional compensation, including $117,900 in life-insurance premiums and $323,266 in 'above market' interest on deferred earnings". When he retires he qualifies for Welch-like perks, including "use of private aircraft for the remainder of his life". Just the man to tackle concerns about corporate governance.
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John Robb. Electronic Portfolios for Students (a K-Log?) [klogs] [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
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Quote of the day...

comes from KARL ROVE, Bush's long-time political guru and White House advisor:
"As people do better, they start voting like Republicans... unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing."
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WWF: subsidies destroying industry

[PlanetArk] GENEVA - European Union subsidies totalling 1.4 billion euros a year will doom the fishing industry unless halted soon, the conservation body WWF-International said.

But Cripps warned that failure to reform would further harm the industry. Fish stocks have plummeted in EU waters over the past 30 years because of overfishing.

The cycle is all too familar: resource is over-harvested (as are all major fisheries worldwide, not just Europe's); beleaguered industry cries for help; government provides subsidy; industry invests in "productivity" (ie, more capacity); resource is further over-harvested; etc; etc. So much for free markets.
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This is kinda cool

Google does time lines.

Here's what else is cooking in labs.google.com "Google's technology playground".
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Keeping an eye on you

Lance has a diagram of Poindexter's TIA (total information awareness) program up.  [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

They're going to know everything about you, so you might as well know a little about them...
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Butterflies' Flights Disclose Free Spirits.

Scientists at the University of Oxford have taken high-speed digital photographs of free-flying butterflies and the intricate, swirling patterns their wing beats make in wisps of smoke. By James Gorman. [New York Times: Science]

The Times article posts only two of the photos. I'd love to find the rest of them...
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Another way to start the day

Very cool.  Here is interactive look into the "Massive" system used to animate characters in action sequences for the Lord of the Rings.  Much of this will probably end up on the desktop in a couple of years. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
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Waking up to Bob Dylan: "Stayed in Mississippi way too long." Thinking of Trent Lott...
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Keeping Track of John Poindexter

John Poindexter wants to know everything about you. So people are starting to reurn the favor.

"Why, for example, is their $269,700 Rockville, Md., house covered with artificial siding, according to Maryland tax records? Shouldn't a Reagan conspirator be able to afford repainting every seven years? Is the Donald Douglas Poindexter listed in Maryland sex-offender records any relation to the good admiral? What do Tom Maxwell, at 8 Barrington Fare, and James Galvin, at 12 Barrington Fare, think of their spooky neighbor?" [Wired]

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A First Step to Cutting Reliance on Oil. Fuel cells could ease the threat of global warming without taking away freedom and mobility. By Tom Redburn. [New York Times: Science]
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Finally!

The mystery unravelled: Google Glossary: "In old England, anyone caught in illegal cohabitation was charged with 'unlawful carnal knowledge'---that was the technical term. It was a very common offense and, on the blotter, instead of writing out that so-and-so was being held 'for unlawful carnal knowledge' they would just write, 'F.U.C.K.'

No idea on when it became a 'dirty' word. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]

No idea whether true or not, either....

[Several hours later:

At 4:54 PM -0800 12/15/02, Gautam wrote:
not true

http://www.snopes.com/language/acronyms/fuck.htm

Sigh. And me the inveterate Snopes checker...

Oh, fuck.]
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And in case we haven't pissed you off enough yet...

50 Most Loathsome People. Don't miss the Beast's 50 Most Loathsome People in America --it's funny, provacative and just mean enough without being ugly.... [Steve's No Direction Home Page] [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]
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A cool thing

Jon Udell: "If your local public (or college) library is one of the nearly 900 Innovative Interfaces' Web-enabled libraries listed below, drag its link to your browser's link toolbar." [Scripting News]
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Inspect the Brains. To learn about germs and nukes in Iraq, knock on the doors of the country's 50 leading scientists. By William Safire. [New York Times: Opinion]

Unfortunately, he may be too late, according to Debka-Net: According to reports reaching DEBKA-Net-Weekly, eleven scientists working on illegal weapons programs - biological weapons experts, virologists, chemists and nuclear engineers, possibly three heads of projects - were put to death more than a week ago with some 12 of their close relatives, to ensure their silence, both to the weapons inspectors and in the eventuality of a war ending in American victory.

Problem: UN and Hussein play by different rules.
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Senator urges US take EU to WTO on biotech

[PlanetArk]: The incoming chairman of the Senate Finance Committee on Monday said he has urged the Bush administration to launch legal action against the European Union for thwarting sales of U.S. genetically modified crops....

In recent weeks, the EU has taken some steps in toward lifting its moratorium. But those steps may be too little too late to stop a U.S. trade case now that some biotech food aid from the United States is being turned away by starving Africans who say they fear getting on the wrong side of the EU's ban.

This has been one of the great fears over globalization: using the WTO to override local health/safety/environmental concerns. Granted the EU ban has an element of protectionist flavor, but there is serious market pressure about the safety of GMOs. (One of the reasons that the organic food market is growing at 20%/year.) Odd that the party of smaller government and local control (and long time opponent of the UN) will use this global institution to override local control.
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Flexibility

Nature's Secret to Building for Strength: Flexibility. With an experiment of soap film and a short glass fiber, mathematicians have worked out how something like a willow tree withstands powerful gusts. By Kenneth Chang. [New York Times: Science]

"We build to a criterion of stiffness. Nature tends to build to a criterion of strength. It usually takes less material."
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Carbon Emissions Climbing

[Earth Policy Institute]: Though economic growth slowed throughout much of the world during 2001, world carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels continued their relentless upward trend, surpassing 6.5 billion tons. (See data.) As a result of the consistent growth of emissions, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) has increased from the preindustrial level of 280 parts per million (ppm) to today's 370 ppm, a 32-percent increase. In the last 20 years, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased at the unprecedented rate of 1.5 ppm a year.
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A JRo essay.  "2003: Oil and War" [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

This is obviously the kind of stuff gruff oil men talk about over scotch and cigars late at night to scare each other.

The most amazing thing to me is that there hasn't been any major effort to fund programs or incentivize adoption of alternative sources of energy. We are marching off to war with little hope of an exit strategy.

It's a lot to expect of an administration so closely tied -- some would say "joined at the hip" to the oil industry. And yet there is a rising tide of voices -- not yet a clamor, but from increasingly diverse sources -- talking of the need for energy independence as a national security strategy. (Those who think Alaska is a significant part of that option should take a look at John Robb's sketch of the numbers.)

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Errors That Kill Medical Patients. Reform aimed at preventing medical errors can succeed only if the medical profession gets behind changes that expert groups and plain common sense suggest.

Important because
44,000 to 98,000 patients die each year because of medical mistakes -- more than are killed annually by automobile accidents.

Amazingly, though,

Less than a quarter of the doctors think it would be very effective to use computers instead of paper forms to order drugs or to include pharmacists on hospital rounds, two approaches that have been shown to reduce medication errors in hospitals.

Amazing at a personal level too. I've spent a lot of my spare time this year managing the managed care system -- spending face time in hospitals where ailing parents were in the hands of very capable and committed health care professionals working with woefully inadequate systems. Case in point: mom turns out to be allergic to oxycodone; that gets noted in her chart; next hospital visit, they give her... oxycodone!... because no one reads the history? because it's too hard to read? Case in point: one doctor puts her on new meds, other doctor puts her back on old meds... not because he's reversing the decision, but because he didn't even know about it, since there's no system, process or mechanism that supports or encourges her five doctors to talk with each other.

This shouldn't be hard: a modern information system, six sigma quality systems, and 10-fold reduction in this death rate within 10 years. Seems like a great business opportunity for somebody.
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Doc Searles: Consume not, lest ye be consumed

Just so you don't feel alone being mislabeled as a consumer.

In the 19th century, "consumption" was the name of a disease (now known as tuberculosis) that "consumed" people from the inside out. How fitting, and what an odd hook on which to hang one's identity.
If you've been "mislabeled as a consumer," you may be suffering from the more contemporary disease of affluenza.
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"Brave Green World"

[American Prospect]: Architect Bill McDonough is an environmental innovator, but his politics are a lot less thoughtful than his buildings.

The authors seem to have the most trouble with McDonough and Company's approach to regulation:

The company's larger vision, he says, is to help the EPA drive the transition away "from a command-and-control culture to one that encourages positive creative activity."

Part of the authors' concern -- McDonough's emphasis on design vs regulation ("ultimately regulation is a signal of design failure") -- is misplaced, imho. Market drivers and business advantage can be far more powerful innovation forces than regulation -- at least for some companies. We see evidence of that in industry after industry after industry, and the adversarial refleces of some environmentalists would do well to relax a bit, and focus on the bad actors.

On the other hand, part of their concern is well placed. The timing of all this matters a great deal. At a moment when environmental nongovernmental organizations are working overtime to defend basic protections such as the Clean Air and Clean Water acts from President Bush and a Republican Congress, America's most famous green architect is in the media dissing regulation as a mostly unnecessary relic.

As with so many contemporary issues, the simple "either/or" answers are not sufficient to the problem. Regulation as we know it is a relic. Unfortunately, it is also not unnecessary.
The alternative? For companies, it's what we call "regulatory insulation" -- design products so good, and processes so efficient, that you don't care what the regulators want, because you're years ahead of their wildest dreams; let your competitors spend money on lawyers and lobbysists, while you invest in design and marketing. For governments, it's "regulatory re-engineering" -- redesigning the regulations, and regulatory process itself, with an eye toward the cybernetics of change and a commitment to the underlying driving needs of all the stakeholders.

The payoff is substantial, and not just in reduced operating expenses and legal fees; there's even greater payoff in impact on market share and time to market.

[More to come]
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Jon Carroll (re trent Lott):

I think it's a bad idea to discourage people from saying what they really think.
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Is All Corporate Debt Bad?. For many companies, debt isn't a red flag. [The Motley Fool]
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The Art of Collecting Cash. Jeff Fischer explains what Pfizer and J&J's cash conversion cycles mean to their businesses. [The Motley Fool]
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Do the math: NOT the path to energy independence.

US Fish and Wildlife Service:  How much oil in the arctic national wildlife refuge (ANWR)?  To sum up:  there is a 50% chance of finding 5.3 b barrels of recoverable oil (~7 b at the high end) there (this represents a little over 20% of US reserves or 1.5 years of extra production at current US rates).  At its peak (probably in 2020), Alaskan oil production from the ANWR will likely be 800,000 barrels a day.  That's 1/10 the current US production or 4% of what we currently use each day. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
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Europe Limits Cod Fishing, but Rejects Ban.

Fisheries ministers of the European Union agreed on Friday to cut fishing fleets in hopes of saving dwindling cod stocks. By The New York Times. [New York Times: Science]

Similar overfishing all but erased cod from North America's Atlantic waters 10 years ago, and the fish stocks have yet to recover.

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Donating Technology's Castaways.

One way to help the environment, and to possibly save a little on your tax bill this year, is to donate your old gadgets to charity....Yet only about 5 percent of discarded PC's are being donated to charities or nonprofit groups.... The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 80 percent of discarded computer components will end up in landfills. By Barbara Whitaker. [New York Times: Science]

Donations won't be enough to turn the tide. European product take back requirements and corporate take back initiatives like HP's will be more significant drivers of change.

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dutch pols using weblogs.

Yesterday I was interviewed for the Dutch version of Entertainment Tonite about weblogs. I was particularly happy about the quotes the used (I'm getting good at handing out soundbites :) "Weblogs will one day be as important as the telephone or typewriter"


But the real story in this country is that politicians have latched onto blogs.[Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]

The real story will be not only politicians using weblogs, but voters and activists.
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More on e-waste

Cell-Phone Makers Sign Life-Cycle Management Initiative

Major mobile-phone manufacturers have signed a declaration expressing their interest in cooperating with the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal and with other stakeholders in the mobile-phone sector on the environmentally sound management of end-of-life mobile phones.

Expression of interest isn't quite the same as commitment to action, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

Also in greenbiz.com, Ted Smith of the Silicon Valley Toxics Campaign addresses The Challenges of Producer Responsibility in Electronics and the Computer Take Back Campaign:

This platform has now been endorsed by hundreds of groups around the U.S.... This past year, 20 states introduced legislation related to e-waste, and the California legislature passed the first two bills in the country. Tellingly, all of the U.S. electronics companies and their trade associations opposed the California legislation, with the exception of Apple Computer.

Dell Computer Company has emerged as the campaignês chief target because they are the industry leader in market share but have consistently been ranked as a laggard in the Computer Report Card.

Consumer campaigns, especially focused through college campuses, are also in the works. But pressure from the organized purchasing power of large corporate and institutional buyers -- especially in Europe, but also including state and local government in the US -- may be what moves this opportunity through the tipping point.

(Why 'opportunity'? Because it makes no sense to consign all that chemistry, metalurgy and engineering to the landfill -- especially when design for Extended Producer Responsiblity (EPR) will yield better products, with better price performance ratios. Translation: market share and profits for the companies that lead the way.)
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Patent Drift and Property Rights

Tom Abate gets the title right:

Agriculture, biotech mix uncomfortably

He poses a key question:

Schmeiser grew patented seeds. But he did not steal them from the seed store. Whose fault is it that Monsanto's seeds grew on Schmeiser's farm?

He ultimately comes up with the right answer:

But seed that drifts through the air, grows into a plant and produces new seed belongs to the person who owns the harvest. We are all familiar with the concept of exempting a practice from a new law, also called grandfathering. Seed saving is so ancient that it is Adam-and-Eved into the fabric of civilization. Schmeiser's right should trump Monsanto's patent.

Unfortunately, some of his science, law and reasoning along the way are a bit weaker. Abate suggest that because patented Monsanto canola seeds blew onto Percy Schmieser's Canadian prairie farm, and 'a Canadian judge found that Schmeiser either knew or should have know that he was growing patented seeds that he hadn't paid for and ruled in Monsanto's favor.'

But it wasn't the seed that drifted, it was the pollen -- which then contaminated Schmeiser's own property -- his legally owned seeds.

Abate suggests that since Schmeiser 'knew that some of his saved seed carried the Monsanto brand -- since Monsanto inspectors warned him not to plant the saved seeds', that he's rightly guilty of patent infringement. I see it quite differently. Since he saved seed grown from seed he planted legally, that was subsequently infected by Mosanto drift, he's no more guily than someone who has evidence planted on him.

It's Monsanto that should be liable -- for criminal trespass (of their patented genetic code onto his land and into his seeds' genomes), and destruction of private property (by rendering his legal owned private property unusable).

;The courts have yet to deal with the concept of 'biochemical privacy' articulated by the late Dr Robert van den Bosch, but eventually they will. When they do, they'll recognize pollution as a violation of fundamental property rights: no one has any business forcing their chemistry into anyone else's property -- biological or physical -- without permission.

With that said, some interesting tort law will develop (contracts and rents for pollution?). And some even more interesting right-left political alliances will form.
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Debate Erupts Over Authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Though much has been written about the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves, the ruins of Qumran where the scrolls were found was largely unexplored, until now. By John Noble Wilford. [New York Times: Science]

"There is no new consensus," Dr. Katharina M. Galor, a Brown archaeologist and an organizer of the conference, said during a break in the talks. "Or the new consensus is that the old consensus is dead."
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The Origin of Religions, From a Distinctly Darwinian View. Dr. David Sloan Wilson, a renowned evolutionary biologist, proposes that religion evolved because it conferred advantages on those who bore it. By Natalie Angier. [New York Times: Science]

I've found that when you go beyond the superficial definitions of religion, it's very difficult to distinguish anything fundamental about religion that is not also fundamental to other social organizations.

This perspective could lighten some of the polarized debate. I heard Oakland (California) Rabbi Burt Jacobson observe a few years ago that perhaps the 'Ten Commandments' -- those stern pronouncements of a jealous, patriarchal god -- weren't commandments at all; perhaps they were gifts, a roadmap, a clue. Along the lines of: 'Listen carefully. I'm going to let you in on a secret. Here are the rules for how things really work. If you pay attention to them in your life, your life will probably go a lot better than if you don't.' [
The Laws of Nature: Sorry, no referendum available, no amendments possible]

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Keeping an eye (or two) on you

JD Lasica spots the FBI's latest terrorist tracking tool.

Don't worry. It's for your own good. :-)
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How the Web Will Change Campaigns. Eventually, the Web will be indispensable for elections, if only for one reason: campaign finance reform. By Matthew Hindman. [New York Times: Opinion]
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Thomas Jefferson is smiling

12/6/02: "That weblogs would play a role in the toppling of a major US political leader, is growth from the top down, and it's happening very quickly." [Scripting News]
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Or not...

Nicholas Monahan: It's seemingly becoming the norm in America - lies and deliberate distortions on the part of those in power, no matter how much or how little power they actually wield. [Adam Curry's Weblog]

You'd think people would know by now that it's not, uh, prudent, to yell at airport security people. OTOH, when they handle and humiliate your near-to-term pregnant wife, calm and discretion may falter.

So apparently, can the good sense, and sense of proportion, of those charged with our protection.
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Do tell.

The Lebanese parliament angered human rights organisations when it passed a law a year ago banning Palestinians from acquiring property in Lebanon. The 376,000 Palestinian refugees living in wretched conditions in a dozen camps across Lebanon are subject to severe discrimination by the authorities, for fear that if they settle in the country they will upset its delicate religious balance. They are also barred from practising some 60 jobs, bringing construction materials into their camps or having hospital treatment without advance payment or a guarantee from the UN Palestinian refugee agency that it will cover the cost.

I'm waiting with baited breath for the cries of racism, the demonstrations, the academic boycotts.... [Judith Weiss, Kesher]

One more from Kesher:

"We will use the skulls of Zion's sons to build a bridge to Heaven.": That is "militant group" Hamas' latest slogan.

Joy to the world...
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G.E. Research Returns to Roots. A team of researchers for G.E. are hoping to usher in an era of cheap, clean-burning lights, batteries, solar cells and the beginning of plastic-based electronics. By Claudia H. Deutsch. [New York Times: Science]

For G.E., that change is nearly as radical as the science being pursued. John F. Welch Jr., Mr. Immelt's predecessor, spent two decades pushing the Niskayuna lab to churn out profitable products. Now Mr. Immelt is letting it return to the mission that Charles P. Steinmetz, a G.E. engineer who set up the lab, laid forth more than 100 years ago.

"Steinmetz did not want this lab to worry about next quarter's product," said Scott C. Donnelly, senior vice president for research. "He wanted it to work on the next big idea, even as G.E.'s businesses were refining the last one."

A sign that myopia -- which was not ever what built great companies -- may finally start going out of fashion on Wall Street?
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We feel like rabbits

A must-read article in today's NY Times about the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica. It's larger than North America and has doubled in size in the 20 years since it was discovered. The lifestyle of people at the southern end of South America has already changed. "We feel like we are rabbits in a laboratory experiment," said Ivan Mansilla Vera, 36, an engineer and father of two young children. "Nobody knows what is going to happen to us." [Scripting News]
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A thoughtful and important reflection

A Toast to Moral Clarity. Moral clarity, however scarred it may often be by nebulousness, inconsistency and even hypocrisy, is still preferable to moral opacity. By Nicholas D. Kristof. [New York Times: Opinion]

And rather than debating what terrorism is or isn't, Kristof suggests, the world can come to delegitimize it, as it has done for slavery and poison gas attacks. Right idea. The 'how' is less clear.
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Bill Of Rights Pared Down To A Manageable Six

[The Onion]:

A Republican initiative that went unopposed by congressional Democrats, the revised Bill of Rights provides citizens with a "more manageable" set of privacy and due-process rights by eliminating four amendments and condensing and/or restructuring five others. The Second Amendment, which protects the right to keep and bear arms, was the only article left unchanged.

According to U.S. Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID), the original Bill of Rights, though well-intentioned, was "seriously outdated." "Ten was just too much of a handful," Bush added. "Six civil liberties are more than enough."

Comedy isn't pretty...
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More climate news

Carter Brooks, former impressario of the wondeful and sorely missed carter's Reader Seeds, has put together a rich climate change info site -- lots of news, lots of links.
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Pattern lanugage

David Stephenson asks:
'Did you know that they had a web site to accompany the book? kewl.'

I didn't. And it is!

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Happy new geopolitically-significant year

A recent National Geographic survey on geographic literacy in a variety of countries produced the following results:

Among 18 - to 24-year-old Americans

--87% couldn't find Iraq on a map

--70% couldn't find New Jersey

--11% couldn't find the U.S.

Could make it kind of hard to find the enemy...
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Remembering the Permanent Opposition of H. L. Mencken. Every generation needs an observer as critical of the provinciality and double standards of the moment as Mencken was of those in his own time. By Verlyn Klinkenborg. [New York Times: Opinion]

Best line in the article: He once described himself as "a skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own." If he believed in anything, it was the essential liberties, and those are what he stood up for again and again, if often in contradictory ways.
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Looks like we've bitten the hand that feeds us

Worried about overpopulation, pollution, dwindling natural resources and global warming? Well, the good news, according to British paleobiologist Michael Boulter, is that our selfish behavior as a species may not, in the long run, destroy our beautiful planet or most of the life forms that inhabit it. The bad news, however, is that our abuse probably will put an end to most of the larger mammals, in particular us, the soi-disant Homo sapiens, apparently less sapient than billed.[LA Times]

Happy new year to us...
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And on a more cheerful note...

Family Business Magazine has compiled a list of the oldest family businesses in the world. Number one is a Japanese construction business named KONGO GUMI, now reportedly in its 40th generation. [The Trademark Blog]
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