TCS Daily : July 2003 Archives
The Clausewitz Curse
Author's Note: In June of last year, when I was writing my essay "Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology," the question on everyone's mind was, 'Was the U.S. prepared to handle another Al Qaeda strike?' Needless to say, this question was...
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Just Add Water
Last week, President Bush announced that the water problem in Iraq would be alleviated in two months. Given the complexity of the task, that wouldn't be a bad performance time utilizing the best 20th century technology. This is,...
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A Renaissance Revival?
Today, fine art and engineering are about as far apart as two disciplines can get. One is all about aesthetics and beauty; the other is all about functionality and measurement. Those few people who try and bridge the gap...
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The New WMD?
Hans Blix did not find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq because he was apparently looking in the wrong place. Like that sought-after document in Edgar Allen Poe's "The Purloined Letter," a weapon of mass destruction was right there...
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God's Physics Experiment
Physicist Stephen M. Barr has fired the latest broadside in the contentious debate over what science tells us about the existence of God. His book Modern Physics and Ancient Faith presents a case that developments in physics and related fields...
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The Great Race
The movie-going public is being treated to a depiction of the rivalry between two Depression-era horses -- War Admiral and Seabiscuit. One can view the future outlook for the United States economy as a similar contest, in this case...
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'Regime Decapitation'
Let's not worry much about criticism of the Pentagon's decision to show the images of the late Uday and Qusay Hussein -- RNIP, Rest Not In Peace. Instead, let's worry about what's not being said about the targeting of specific...
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The Virtues of Being Virtual
Education in this country is often seen as unresponsive to changes in society and dismissive of innovative ideas, but let's not forget that some of these innovative ideas have become fundamental to the education of our children. Around...
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Where's the Epidemic?
"The war on fat has reached the point where the systematic distortion of the evidence has become the norm, rather than the exception," wrote Paul Campos in the Rocky Mountain News on April 2, 2003. Campos is professor of...
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Greenpeace and Nanotechnology
Greenpeace has just released a report on nanotechnology and artificial intelligence entitled Future Technologies, Today's Choices: Nanotechnology, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics; A Technical, Political and Institutional Map of Emerging Technologies. That Gre
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They're 'Against Us'
Don't we have a right to know if a "friendly country" bankrolled the 9-11 attacks, and continues funding terrorists bent on destroying more of America? Obviously so. Then why is President George W. Bush hiding evidence of...
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World Wide Web of Taxes
Fearful that overtaxed consumers might want to escape the value-added tax, the European Union concocted a plan to impose VAT on software, videos, computer games and music downloaded via the Internet from non-EU companies. This raises the possibility that...
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Futures Shock
You would think that if any member of the Senate Armed Services Committee understood a thing or two about futures markets, it would be the Cattle Queen of Arkansas, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Not only did Clinton display Soros-esque market...
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Marginalized
The current hysterical assault on industries that deal in intellectual property, primarily pharmaceuticals and entertainment, seems utterly baffling. These industries spew out extraordinary floods of worthy things: life-saving, life-enhancing drugs; breathtaking mo
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Foes of the Earth
Those who call themselves advocates for the environment continue in their desperate campaign against biotech-improved crops -- the most critically needed farming technology in half a century. In a world that already farms nearly half the non-ice covered land...
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Thank You, Pew!
You've got to hand it to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change -- their timing is impeccable. Pew's latest big-splash report, U.S. Energy Scenarios for the 21st Century, hit congressional offices just as members began debating amendments to...
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Stasis vs. Dynamism
Michael Jackson, the "Gloved One," might lead a strange life, but he expresses a common sentiment when he says "I am speechless about the idea of putting music fans -- mostly teenagers -- in jail for downloading music." Jackson was...
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'Enemy Mine'
Who is the enemy? Victory depends on our answer. We think of the enemy as "the other" -- either as our opposite, or as a dark mirror of ourselves -- so how we define the enemy also defines...
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To Your Health
Frances Berg, M.S., wrote in a March/April 1999 Healthy Weight Journal editorial that the then new federal guidelines, labeling over half of Americans overweight and "recommending that millions of already weight-obsessed Americans lose weight, are dangerous in tha
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Tipping Toward Google
The conventional wisdom about the IPO market holds that only a big, splashy IPO from a company like Google will be able to pry open the IPO window, paving the way for other, smaller technology companies to raise money...
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The Globalization of Gaza
Suicide-bombing is spreading. In May 2003 five simultaneous attacks ripped through Casablanca, Morocco. Earlier this month two female suicide-bombers triggered explosive belts at an outdoor concert in Moscow. On the same day three Sunni Muslims blew themselves up i
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Churchill Would Understand
We often hear about the importance of the separation of power among the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. But for the general welfare it is just as important to maintain a clear separation of government and the Fourth Estate,...
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Mandatory Libertarianism
"I'm a geneticist," the woman said, as she began an impassioned speech against vouchers and school choice. "I don't want to see schools where students are not taught evolution. And I want to make sure that they get sex education...
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An Antietam Moment
The deaths of Saddam Hussein's heirs apparent -- Uday and Qusay -- gave the Bush administration a much-needed Antietam moment. An Antietam moment is something all good politicians know about. It's about using a successful event to make...
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Virtual Barbed Wire
In Iraq, clear and secure property rights are sorely lacking. Hernando de Soto explains in The Mystery of Capital that a big problem in the Third World is the fractured and uncertain state of land rights. Much land is owned...
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What About Freedom?
Polls show that Bulgarians strongly support their country's effort to join the European Union. This is striking when compared to the situation in the former communist countries acceding to the Union next year. Sure, Bulgaria's EU prospects are rather...
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Tribal Warfare
I like to help reduce communication barriers that isolate and alienate people. This task is especially compelling when individuals share core values. However, the exchange of ideas across ideological camps is difficult and rare. The debate over benefits and costs..
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Here's the Plan
On Thursday Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans released the Bush administration's Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) strategic plan. According to the press announcement: "The strategic plan describes the research activities to
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Dietary Demons
When the FDA announced its ruling last month requiring food labels to specify the amount of trans fatty acids (TFAs) present in products, media coverage was prodigious, completely one-sided, and lacking in any scientific perspective. The take-home message wa
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Close the Internet?
The Baby Bells are an awful lot like Little Orphan Annies. For when it comes to broadband investment, it's always tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya', tomorrow. And tomorrow is always just a Federal Communications Commission decision away. The latest rendition...
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Needed: An Endangered Marines Act
"Our new radar -- it's a remarkable scientific achievement capable of spotting an intruder in the air at quite a long range... But we can't get permission to put her up [on top of the mountain from] the National Park...
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Gangland Slaying
Few things say more about a society than how it imagines its future. Until not long ago, Iraq thought its future would be dominated by one or both of the sons of Saddam Hussein, Uday and Qusay. And that...
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Early Birds Get Returns
To invest is to defer. It's an act of faith, the abnegation of desire. When you buy a company's stock or a government agency's bonds, you decide not to consume your cash today but to entrust it to an institution...
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One-Click Treason
Accusations of treason fly when a nation goes to war. Sometimes, those claims stick. After World War II, the U.S. punished several of its citizens for having served as paid Axis propagandists. Recent terrorist attacks on the U.S. have triggered...
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Rolling the Rx Highway
It's hard to use things that don't exist, no matter how much you're willing to pay for them. That's one thought to keep in mind in observing the new hands-across-the-border rage in American and Canadian relations -- cross-border trips...
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Occupational Hazards
To better understand what's happening in Iraq today, it's useful to examine previous American military occupations. The study of the American experience in Germany, for example, is revealing in that it shatters some commonly held myths regarding the post-World War.
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The War on Fat's Casualties
With all of the pressure to be thin, the onslaught of diet messages finds a ready audience. At any given time, up to 80 million American adults are on a diet. Women and children are the primary victims of...
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Much Ado About Nothing?
The last year has been a bad one for future AIDS victims. The U.N. AIDS conference in Barcelona was an activist circus. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson was shouted off stage by activists, unable to complete...
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A Perversion of Free Trade
As a consistent libertarian, there are few values that I hold in greater esteem than free trade, in domestic and foreign markets alike. As a matter of principle, we should be deeply suspicious of any competitor who portrays himself...
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Chill Pill
"Closed markets invite monopolistic abuse, punish consumers and mock free enterprise," writes Indiana Republican Rep. Dan Burton in the Indianapolis Star. "Free markets for prescription drugs, as for most other products, work." Burton has a point. The United States
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Tomorrow's Economy Today
A new international study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that Social Security causes workers to retire earlier. The retirement age chosen for a Social Security program causes a reduction in labor force participation around that...
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Here Comes the Sun
More proof of the causes of climate change came earlier this month when the Geological Society of America's GSA Today published a study by a Canadian geologist and an Israeli astrophysicist which shows conclusively that over the past half-billion...
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Importing Socialism
Legislation that would allow the re-importation of drugs from Canada to the United States heads to the House floor Wednesday and has a chance to pass. Sadly, the bill is the work of members of Congress who should know better...
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The Coming Class Struggle
The political right now owns much of the left's former property. Take the expression "politically correct," for example, with its origins in Stalinist Russia. It migrated to the American New Left of the 1960s, gaining a bit of ironic...
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Opening Up the Airwaves
A while back, I challenged FCC Chairman Michael Powell to stand up for free expression on the Internet. Now, undeterred by the lack of any visible response, I'm going to go that one better, and challenge him to stand...
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Dying to Be Thin
"At no time in history have women been so pressured to be thin," wrote Frances Berg, M.S., L.N., in Women Afraid to Eat -- Breaking Free in Today's Weight-Obsessed World (Healthy Weight Network, 2000). Women and girls are bombarded...
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All Mixed Up
June 9, 2003 brought the release of "The Second Interim Report of Dick Thornburgh Bankruptcy Court Examiner," a riveting 218-page document chronicling the ascent and discombobulating of WorldCom. According to Mr. Thornburgh, little effort was ever made by WorldCom
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Moonshine State
It's been more than thirty years since man last set foot on the moon. We planted a flag, collected a few rocks and then went home. And home is where we stayed. The space race had been won, after all....
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Time to Buy Candles
Propellers are clustering on the cold, windy coasts of Europe. Germany already prides itself in producing half of Europe's wind energy, and plans more offshore wind parks along the North Sea and Baltic coasts. Ending nuclear generation has been...
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Science and the GOP
Editor's note: this is part of a continuing series on the interplay of religion, science, and politics. Pinkerton last touched on these themes in his June 6 piece. Are you a "Bright"? If you're reading TCS, it wouldn't be a...
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A Risky Shot In the Dark
The latest word is that the bill to permit reimportation of drugs mentioned in my previous piece is very close to having enough votes to pass. The reason the bill is so close to becoming law is that a...
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Who Is Failing .hu?
Driving through central Budapest last autumn, my fellow passenger, a top Hungarian politician, pointed out the car window at a massive shopping mall with pride. He explained that the owner of the Mammut mall made his fortune in Silicon Valley...
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Emission Improbable
It's a Saturday morning in summer, and I'm going back and forth to the local Ohio E-Check station, getting emissions tests for the two family cars. The Environmental Protection Agency has just reported that the United States achieved a...
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Aerial Fertilizer
One of the global problems formally addressed by the United Nations for more than a decade is desertification, particularly in Africa. In many of the world's dryland areas, poverty, political instability, deforestation, overgrazing, bad irrigation practices, and n
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The Eclectic Skeptic
Martin Gardner is a prolific author who has written broadly on science, philosophy, mathematics, religion and literature. For many years, he wrote the popular "Mathematical Games" column at Scientific American. More recently, he wrote a regular column for Skeptical
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They ALSOS Served
America started trying to fathom the nuclear ambitions of hostile powers before the birth of the atomic bomb. It's never been easy. Early in World War II, General George Marshall ordered secret missions to "cover all principal scientific military developments...
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How We Called North Korea's Bluff
Toward the end of Stanley Kubrick's Cold War classic, Dr. Strangelove, the Soviet ambassador announces that his country has just succeeded in creating a Doomsday's device. It works like this: The moment a nuclear attack takes place on Russian...
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Your Brain on Drugs
Congress is poised to pass a new law that will make it legal to import drugs from foreign nations. This "reimportation" bill has strong bipartisan support, and may well become law. If it does, the results will be disastrous. The...
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Storms on the Trade Horizon
'Climate Change has always been the implicit driving force in the trade and environment debate. From the EU perspective, the economic imperative to achieve WTO cover for protectionist actions, which might be taken pursuant to the Climate Change Convention, has...
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The Route to Poverty
The farmers' market in Bozeman, Montana is a charming way to purchase locally grown produce and handicrafts. The ideal of self-sufficiency such markets imply is often advocated by environmentalists and community food co-ops, e.g., "Be a yokel, buy local." But...
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Energetic Eggs in One Basket
Long ago, our mothers and fathers told us not to put all our eggs in one basket. But this is what U.S. electrical utilities have done in the past few years. Now they, and their customers, are paying the price....
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Cleaning House
Agricultural biotechnology suddenly is headline news -- the focus of a vitriolic transatlantic trade squabble, and the subject of pointed public comments recently by President Bush. At a conference in Washington, he extolled biotechnology's achievements and its pot
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The Diet Problem
Looking back 40 or more years, the movie stars and bathing beauties we admired were healthy full-figured gals with plenty of jiggle and cellulite. The nation didn't have a "weight problem." The difference between then and now is that "diet"...
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More Than Race
The controversy over the Supreme Court's recent decisions on affirmative action stems from our nation's inability to break free from its deeply ingrained, narrow framing of the issue. One side argues reverse discrimination and holds up the ideal of...
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From Businesses to Consumers?
There are several reasons voice over IP (frequently abbreviated to "VoIP", and pronounced just as it's spelled) is quickly becoming the way businesses are connecting their phone systems: more flexibility in routing customer's calls among several offices, the possib
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"Bring Back Saddam!"
The Democrats are smelling blood. They believe they have finally found a way to bring George Bush down in the next election. Time magazine has already announced the campaign theme -- Untruth and Consequences: How Flawed was the case for...
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Let Them Eat Subsidies
In September, the world's trade ministers will meet in Cancun to check on the health of the so-called "development round" started in Doha two months after the September 11th attacks. The general consensus was for this round of World Trade...
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Freedom, Lies and the Constitution
The following is an excerpt from a longer poem, entitled On the Field of Life, on the Battlefield of Truth. The poem concerns the experience of major illness and hospitalization, and the sense of being trapped that results. It sets...
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War Profiteers
"War profiteers" are those who use military conflict to make a quick buck or push an agenda that would fail in peacetime. That describes various extremist environmental groups and their champion, New Jersey Democratic Senator Jon Corzine. For over a...
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The Skinny on Fat
A host of sinful foods have been demonized as the root of obesity and poor health of American adults and children. Fast food restaurants have been sued, accused of contributing to customers' obesity because their food tastes too good and...
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Share and Share Alike?
The music industry is ratcheting up its legal fight against Internet piracy. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has announced that it will take legal action against those who illegally distribute ("upload") copyrighted music files on the Internet,
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The Uranium War
The topic on everyone's mind (and lips) these days is President Bush's January State of the Union address. I have heard it said many times - mostly in the liberal press - that President Bush lied when he said that...
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Talking Turkey
Washington is trying to "get Turkey right" after the Iraq war. Until the election of the Islamist AK Party in the fall of 2002, Turkey looked like the staunchest U.S. ally in the region. In the aftermath of its Parliament's...
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Gipper Ship
NORFOLK, Virginia -- The commissioning of the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier on Saturday was a perfect blend of ceremony, reunion, and nostalgia. The ceremony was to activate into the fleet our 13th carrier -- a massive floating city and...
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Dubble Bubble?
Is high tech really back, or are we headed for Dubble Bubble? Whitney Tilson, venerable and circumspect columnist for the Motley Fool, has no doubts: "Times like these make me sigh, hold my head in my hands, and groan,...
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The Case for Complementarity
The following is a speech that was delivered to an international conference on "America's Changing Role in the World: Implications for World Order and Transatlantic Relations", organized by the German Council on Foreign Relations (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärt
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Bill of Frights
Senator Schumer's "Cell Phone User Bill of Rights" -- introduced June 9th -- will harm the consumers he wants to help. His proposals, similar to stringent regulations proposed in California, will reduce consumer choices and increase their monthly bills. The...
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A Revolution's Lessons
The July 9th protests against the Islamic regime in Iran started out with the reform movement announcing that it would cancel protests because of concerns that the regime would crack down harshly on the protestors. In reward for the forbearance,...
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Taxing and Chilling Speech
Last month in Boston, nannyists, trial lawyers and the obesity police gathered at Northeastern School of Law for a hush-hush strategy session on how to get rich off America's expanding waistline. Attendees were required to sign an affidavit promising...
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Storm Front
"We wrote this book," Professors Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick state, "because we got tired of opening the newspaper or turning on the TV news and seeing a river of idiotic, alarmist nonsense rushing out at the public" on catastrophic...
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Terror War? What Terror War?
I've been skeptical of "homeland security" for a long time. In fact, back on September 11, I warned: It's Not Just Terrorists Who Take Advantage: Someone will propose new "Antiterrorism" legislation. It will be full of things off of...
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The Truth About Obesity
In the fight against obesity, we're told: 'Being fat is simply a matter of energy balance. It's easy to lose weight, just eat 3,500 calories less than you burn and you'll lose a pound. We've become a fat nation because...
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No Subs for Subs
In the Cold War, U.S. subs slinked around the north Atlantic, carrying multi-ton torpedoes that were meant to be fired at the Soviets. In the Iraq War, at least one U.S. sub slinked around the Persian Gulf carrying commandos armed...
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Cosmic Ray Days
The global warming debate has been complicated in recent years by a growing body of evidence that the sun's variability is a major factor in climate change. Some recent research affirms this emphasis on the sun, but also suggests that...
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Please, Outsource to My Daughter
"...many of us have our shirts laundered at professional cleaners rather than wash and iron them ourselves. Anyone who advised us to "protect" ourselves from the "unfair competition" of low-paid laundry workers by doing our own wash would be thought...
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Telecom Investment Bonanza
The Federal Communications Commission should not quarrel with success. Telecommunications investments -- a sparkplug of economic growth and prosperity -- have boomed since the inauguration of competition for local exchange service under the umbrella of the 1996 Te
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The Decade of the Mind
The new brain sciences are full of technological promise. Through them we may be able to find and explain the deepest recesses of our thoughts and actions, and our decade could become "the decade of the mind." In less than...
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High Sierra
On its website for student activists, the Sierra Club makes the following criticism of free trade: Countries cannot raise environmental or labor standards, because if they do, the corporations that have built factories in that country because of its...
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Triple Threat
"The triple bottom line (TBL) focuses corporations not just on the economic value they add, but also on the environmental and social value they add -- and destroy. At its narrowest, the term 'triple bottom line' is used as a...
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The Threat to Medical Innovation
The dog days of summer are here. And like mad dogs and Englishmen, Senate Republicans ventured into the heat to introduce their version of medical liability reform -- the Patients First Act of 2003. For although the measure called...
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Kissing Cousins No More
In a great variety of areas -- foreign policy, demography, religion, economics -- Americans and Europeans are growing apart. Some Europeans complain that the U.S. is increasingly heading off on its own without them. They are right. America's psychic link...
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Warming, Italian Style
Europe has been suffering a heat wave for a month or so, but the temperature is finally getting cooler. Everywhere, that is, except for Italy. But this "global warming" is being fueled by the heated political climate surrounding Italian...
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Totally Recalling Vanilla Sky's Matrix
The idea that reality as we experience it may be a technologically based simulation is a staple of science fiction, showing up in films such as The Matrix, Total Recall and Vanilla Sky. It also has been of some interest...
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Brand Matters
The gay marriage debate is really a fight over whether to expand the marriage brand name. Successful brand names signal quality. Companies like brand names because they quickly convey information to consumers; for example, even though you may never have...
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How to Cripple an Economy
Energy, as the late Julian Simon said, is the "master resource." It enables virtually all the activities that make modern life possible. It is the linchpin of our economy. The latest information from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), one of...
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The Bad News Bearers
There was news recently that some medical researchers in Australia discovered an effective treatment for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. If true, it would be a wonderful breakthrough. The article I read was properly cautious about the preliminary...
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When Efficiency Is Bad
With one hand they giveth and with the other they taketh away -- and so it is with taxes in the European Union. Recently the German government announced it would lighten the very heavy tax burden on its citizens...
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Left in the Organic Dust
For the next several decades, biotechnology will be a leading area of science and industry, of employment, and for enhancing our quality of life. It has the potential to improve our quality of life through medical applications, improved and safer...
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SDI: The Next Generation
Recent revelations that North Korea is designing nuclear weapons to fit on its ballistic missiles are really bad news. Having the vilest weapons on earth controlled by the vilest tyrant on earth poses the #1 danger facing America today. Ditto...
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A Lunar Klondike?
It's happening again. With commercial interest in space exploration beginning to pick up steam, scientists are complaining that someone is stepping on their turf, as an article (sadly, not available on the Web) from last week's Financial Times makes clear:...
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Meet Iran's Future Leaders
With all of the attention being paid to the effort to effect regime change in Iran, it is only natural to ask what candidates might replace the clerically dominated Islamic government in any new secular administration. Learning about these candidates...
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'Culturally Appropriate'
The priorities of famine relief would seem obvious to most of us. Yet it increasingly appears that only the naïve think that its purpose is first and foremost to avert starvation. At the World Food Summit in Rome last year...
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Walden Puddle's Candidate
"I believe decentralization is THE theme for our times. It's what the Net and the Web were about in the first place. It's what Cluetrain was about. It's what the successes of Net-roots movements like MeetUp, MoveOn, DigitalConsumer.org, AOTC, Warblogging,...
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The 'Critical Mass' Mess
Two weeks have passed since the Supreme Court handed down its momentous decision on the Michigan affirmative action cases. While the Court's highly political "split decision" has prompted much discussion, nearly all commentary has overlooked the simple fact that th
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A Singular Sensation?
After World War II some 900,000 Jews lived in the Arab world, most of them middle class, which in that time and place meant servants, a fine apartment or house, good restaurants, a rich cultural life. Some of them were...
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Smarter, Harder Patriot
The Patriot Act gave the government sweeping authority to gather intelligence on American citizens and imprison them for long periods without due process. Ever since the law was passed, libertarians and liberals have been decrying the government's newfound ability
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The Pain Caucus
In his June 30 column, Arnold Kling is exactly correct in discussing the future financial problems of Social Security and how they result from the program's pay-as-you-go financial structure. Under that structure, current tax payments are not saved and...
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The Dose Makes the Poison
Humans have many uses for mercury: in light bulbs, pesticides, batteries, paint, thermometers and barometers. Over the past few decades, the ubiquitous and persistent nature of mercury has become known and made it an environmental and human health concern. During..
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Blood and Iron
It is a truth so large as to almost be a truism that democracies can hardly conduct a foreign policy; that the thing must be left to an oligarchy, to an elite class of soi-disant experts. The Demos is too...
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A Bit, But Not Too Much?
Germany's most prominent political figure these days is Horst Seehofer. The 54-year-old conservative, who served six years as minister of health in Helmut Kohl's government, represents the current discussion about the future of public health care. Seehofer is torn
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Perfect Pitch
Next time you walk into your local Tower Records, you may be surprised by the following label on Miss Fortune, the new CD by singer-songwriter Allison Moorer, apparently placed at the behest of her producer, R.S. Fields: "Absolutely no vocal...
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Digital Divisions, Tunnel Visions
Before the arrival of the "digital divide" cult, the issue used to be simple. Citizens of rich countries swim in the overcapacity of communication networks, while billions of people in poor countries have never made a phone call. Forget the...
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The Hyperactive Corporation
On the surface, USA Interactive (recently re-named InterActiveCorp) and AOL Time Warner appear to be corporate twins separated at birth. Both are Internet era conglomerates, both played up the "convergence story" on a madcap e-commerce acquisition binge and both ar
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The Future of Iranian Nationalism
The twists and turns of domestic Iranian politics can be tracked by examining the evolution of Iranian nationalism throughout the 20th century, and how nationalism has shaped modern day Iran. Nationalism will continue to be a significant influence on Iran's...
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Germany Rising
More than 9,000 German peacekeeping troops are currently deployed in South East Europe, the Caucasus, Afghanistan and Africa. And, practically unnoticed by the rest of the world, the number is steadily increasing. Is Germany clandestinely becoming a military power
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Googlelashing
For a long time, internet users and commentators had nothing but praise for the increasingly popular search engine Google. But today, Google tends to come in for trenchant criticism. Why? Google started off when two computer science Ph.D. students, Sergey...
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Transformation Not Yet Done
Judging by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's reported interest in devoting Army troops to a non-UN, standing international peacekeeping force, his highly unusual decision to pass over the current crop of Army leaders to choose a retired general as Army chief...
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Bush's Critics as Repeat Offenders
The response to my inaugural column in TCS, "Bush's Critics Meet the Logic Police," was overwhelming and, I must admit, gratifying. Unfortunately, much of the response was confused. As you may recall, I argued in the column that one can...
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Reality and the Code
Science fiction writers have written about mind uploading for years. Somehow (the actual process is generally left a bit vague in the stories, though the technology seems to be developing), you copy your mind from the organic computer that...
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Socialism's Farewell Note
The proposed European Constitution represents the last gasp of European socialism. With its 260 pages and 70,000 words, it is one of the longest and most uninspiring farewell notes in human history. Like the Roman Emperor Diocletian, who tried to...
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Junking Junk Science
The label "junk science" has been one of the most powerful tools in ensuring that political and legal decisions are taken based on only the soundest of footings. Alarmism, hype and scaremongering have all been avoided by scrutinizing scientific data...
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Progress Report
The farm reforms agreed by the Europeans last week 'gives the EU a very good platform in the WTO negotiations. The ball has now been played to the other WTO partners', claimed Renate Kunast, Germany's Farm Minister. Her claims are...
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Pandora's Cornucopia
It was warm work, but the stevedores of Texas City were glad to be loading the good ship Grandcamp. The Marshall Plan was ploughsharing ammonium nitrate once bound for bomb casings into fertilizer for the fields of France. Hungry...
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Techno-Judgment Day
"Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines" may be a shamelessly money-lusting sequel that puts special effects ahead of creativity. It may also be an attempt at propelling Arnold Schwarzenegger's political career; if he's a good and resourceful cyborg, why...
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Wise Move?
Flush with its victory letting it pry the names of computer users from their internet service providers, the Recording Industry Association of America is on the attack again. With a full-page ad in the New York Times Thursday, RIAA has...
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Musical Scares
The Record Industry Association of America dropped the other shoe last Wednesday when it said that its anti-downloading enforcement actions will no longer be limited to the purveyors of swapping software. It will go after the users themselves, finding them...
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Hot Soil?
The May 23 science update from the online journal Nature highlighted a paper just published in the American Geophysical Union's Geophysical Research Letters by climate researchers from the prestigious U.K. Hadley Centre. The update noted that the "[h]olistic model
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Wanted: Fewer Troops in Iraq
Citing chaos, Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean told NBC's Tim Russert, "We need more troops in Afghanistan. We need more troops in Iraq now." This issue is a hot topic as coalition soldiers are ambushed almost daily. Besides Dean,...
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Webfare Warfare
Ladies and gentlemen, as we prepare for takeoff, please turn off your cellular phones and secure your laptop computers. The use of cellular phones and other electronic devices not on the approved list located in the seat pocket in front...
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Punishing the Good for Being Good
Commissioner Margot Wallström has long worked to color the EU's environmental policy much greener, even if it hits her native Sweden quite hard. By signing the Kyoto treaty in 1997, the EU committed itself to reducing its emissions of greenhouse...
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